Seerah of Muhammad (s.a.w)

Episode 3 (part 1)

Last episode, we looked at the birth of Muhammad (s.a.w). He was born in Makkah, and if we look, we will see that it is the centre of the Earth. The person who saw Muhammad (s.a.w) first was the mother of Abdul Rahman ibn Auf. One of the narrations say that she was the midwife.

When Muhammad (s.a.w) was born, he didn't have a father, and we need to realise that Allah chose for the best of the creation to be an orphan. So no one who is an orphan should think for a moment that it is a negative point. Rather it is a positive point- when a person does not have a father, Allah replaces that with so many other virtues, so many other people who take care. Sometimes they may face difficulty when growing up, but Allah presents them with so many other opportunities.

In Islam, an orphan is one who has lost his/her father. If someone has lost their mother, they are not called yateem (orphan in Arabic) on the condition that they still have their father.

When Muhammad (s.a.w) was born, his grandfather loved him so much because he already had information from many sources that he will be the grandfather of a child who will be a leader and so on. He took great care of him, and Allah placed a lot of love for his grandchild in his heart, although he was meant to die just a little while later.

It is easy for us to say that the mother looks after the child, but the man behind it was Abdul Muttalib. The mother looked after Muhammad (s.a.w), along with her slave girl, Umm Ayman- Barakah bint Thalabah. She was a slave girl from Africa. The prophet (s.a.w) said, after my mother, I consider her a mother.

She looked after Muhammad (s.a.w), and also nursed him prior to him going with Halimatu Sadiyyah. This way we can see the virtue of how he was looked after by so many people.

During his infancy, there was a habit among the people of Quraish and Arab tribes that lived in the city at that time- in the cities, people swear, shout and scream, the air is not that clean- so they used to send their children to the pure environment in the Bedouin villages. Among these, there was the village of Bani Sad- one of the top villages where people used to send their infants to be breastfed with the pure milk- we mean not contaminated.

Today we a have a different type of contamination- the genetically modified food. Sometimes we don't even know what is the content of what we are eating and we don't realise that sometimes it is not fit for animal consumption and still we are eating it. It is up to us to make sure we are eating food that is halal and healthy.

They used to send their children to learn good language, mannerisms and etiquette. Muhammad (s.a.w) was a little orphan and they were waiting for the people of Banu Sad to come.

When Halimatu Sadiyyah was going towards Makkah with her group, the donkey she was riding on got injured, began to bleat and slowed down so she and her husband arrived in Makkah after the rest of the group had arrived and already collected the babies they wanted. They would mostly go for the rich families, because these people are poor and they feel if they took care of the rich people's babies, they would get paid something for their service.

Now after they arrived in Makkah, only one orphan child was remaining, as no one wanted to take orphan children because they don't have a father, so who is going to pay them and be responsible? She tried to see if there was anyone else, if not then she would take him because she didnt want to go back to her village without any baby.

So they took the child, and their donkey suddenly became strong and it's wound healed. It became one of the strongest donkeys in the pack, and when they arrived at their village, they found that their goat back home also had a lot of milk to produce which was much more than it usually produced.

Then it also began to rain- the flowers began to blossom, and the greenery began to come out. There was so much blessing, also her breast milk was usually not enough for her one child, but after bringing the orphan, she began producing more milk which was sufficient for both the babies.

She also mentioned how he would look up at the sky and fall asleep that way, and whenever she took off his clothes to bathe him, he would cry until she clothed him again. She spoke of how the house was full of blessing and how the entire group of villagers was full of blessing. He wasn't like other children, fighting over the small things, rather he was calm and relaxed and he grew up speaking powerful, eloquent language from the very early stages in his life.

We should realise from this how the delay in her journey towards Madinah was planned by Allah, and it only brought her benefit. Similarly, when our journeys get delayed, we shouldn't complain, rather we should be grateful, because there is some blessing in it.

See how the Quraysh used to send their children away for benefit, we tend to be more clingy and cannot send our children away, for example to become a hafiz, for a year or two. These people were ready to send them for this dunya (worldly benefit), for moral and character.

*There's still more of episode 3 to come :)*