The life of the Prophet Muhammad (2/11): early childhood

By Michel Abdallah Grimbert · May 31, 2021 · 6 min read

Part 2 of 11 · La vie du Prophète

The Prophet’s early childhood and the affirmation of his destiny

The Prophet of God was born in the year 570, during the year known as that of the ‘Elephant’, for it was marked by the military expedition led against the sanctuary of Mecca by Abraha, the Ethiopian viceroy of Yemen, mounted on his elephant and commissioned by Chosroes, the mighty sovereign of the Persian Sassanid dynasty, who was resolved to divert the pilgrims from Mecca to the benefit of the majestic sanctuary he had built at Sana’a in Yemen. On this occasion God sent a violent and mighty storm which frightened the elephants and camels of his army, as well as His heavenly troops to decimate the enemy and support the Meccans; as the Qur’an reports: (CV, 1-5): ‘Hast thou not seen how thy Lord dealt with the people of the Elephant? Did He not foil their stratagem, sending against them flights of birds which hurled stones of clay at them? He then made them like stalks of corn that had been chewed’.

Besides these troubling events, difficult living conditions prevented Amina, the Prophet’s mother, from suckling him, and she first had to entrust him to Thuwayba, a former slave freed by Abu Lahab, who, though an attentive protector during his childhood, later became, among the Qurayshites, the determined enemy of Islam mentioned in the sacred Text: (Qur’an CXI, 1-5): ‘May the two hands of Abu Lahab perish, and may he himself perish! His riches and all he has acquired will avail him nothing. He shall be exposed to a blazing fire, as shall his wife, the carrier of wood, whose neck is bound by a rope of fibres’.

Later, the stifling climate of Mecca led Amina to entrust Muhammad to a Bedouin wet-nurse from the desert, called Halima. The divine circumstances of that choice were as follows. Halima was travelling with a group of some ten Bedouin women who had come to Mecca in search of an infant to suckle, in order to earn some income. When the Messenger of Allah was presented to the wet nurses, they noticed that he was an orphan and destitute, and turned away; in effect they left Halima no choice but to take this child, for whom she at once felt love, which her husband approved. ‘From the moment I took the child, she said, I offered him my breast. It then miraculously filled with milk until he was satisfied, and his foster-brother benefited as well.’ Halima recounts: ‘On our return, my husband and I, from Mecca to our encampment, our animals, which had been in a famished state, were miraculously reinvigorated and caught up with the mounts of the group of women ahead of us.’ And Halima then tells us that she felt jealousy invade their hearts when they learnt that he was the grandson of ’Abd al-Muttalib.

From that day on, the household was showered with blessings, and the illustrious child grew up in the pure air among the shepherds of the desert. Now one day, when Muhammad, aged four, was tending the sheep with his foster-brother and foster-sister some distance from the tents, two angels suddenly appeared and seized him. They split open his breast, took out the heart and removed a black clot of blood from it¹; they washed it with white snow contained in a golden cup; then they weighed it (its weight exceeded that of a thousand children, and even of his whole people), put the heart back in its place, and marked him on the back, between the shoulders, with the seal of prophecy; whereupon they mysteriously disappeared. This is what the sacred Text reports: (Qur’an XCIV, 1-3) ‘Have We not opened thy heart? Have We not relieved thee of the burden that weighed upon thy back? Have We not exalted thy renown?’

Once this episode had taken place, Amina, the mother of the Prophet of God, soon took him back to live with her at Mecca, when he was six years old. The Jews and the Christians, versed in the Scriptures, had already noticed the seal of prophecy in this very young child. His mother was unfortunately to die shortly afterwards, in the year 576, and was buried at the place called al-Abwa’, between Medina and Mecca. The Prophet of God now found himself alone, deprived of all intimate earthly affection². Muhammad was then taken in once more by his grandfather ’Abd al-Muttalib the patriarch, who was to die around 578, his uncle Abu Talib, the new chief of the Hashim clan, taking over the rest of his upbringing and not failing to involve him, as soon as possible, in all his activities; thereby initiating him into commercial transactions and the harsh trials that beset expeditions through the desert. This uncommon child, as his uncle reports, brought joy to the whole family by his conduct.

Thus it was that when he was twelve, after insisting that his uncle take him along on a trading caravan he had organised between Mecca and Damascus, an event occurred which revealed and confirmed to his uncle the exceptional destiny of his nephew. As the caravan was approaching the hermitage of the monk Bahira, the usual resting place of caravans, the monk noticed a cloud whose protective shadow clung to the person of a young boy, Muhammad, and moved with him. Intrigued, he invited him to dine, even though the boy had been kept apart by his companions to watch over the resting animals. The monk then proceeded to question him and ascertained, gently lifting the collar of his tunic, the presence of the ‘seal of prophecy’, announced in the sacred Text: (LXI, 6) ‘Jesus, son of Mary, said: O sons of Israel! I am indeed the Prophet of God sent unto you to confirm that which of the Torah existed before me, and to bring you the good news of a Prophet who will come after me and whose name will be Ahmad’. He then advised Abu Talib to return to Mecca in order to watch over young Muhammad, to which the boy, who had grasped the gravity of the situation, replied: ‘O Bahira! It is not you who speak, but Allah.’

By Michel Abdallah Grimbert, disciple of the tariqa Qadiriya Boutchichiya.

Further reading

• The life of the Prophet Muhammad (1/11): the Hashemite lineage
• The life of the Prophet Muhammad (3/11): marriage and maturity

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