Banu Zuhrah

Abdul Muttalib, the grandfather of the Prophet ﷺ, had once vowed to sacrifice his son Abdullah, and Abdullah was spared. Straight afterwards, Abdul Muttalib decided to find his son a bride. He chose Aminah bint Wahab, the daughter of the chief of Banu Zuhrah, one of the clans of the Quraysh. Shortly before the caravan season, Abdul Muttalib proposed to Aminah on his son's behalf. Her father Wahab agreed, and Abdullah married Aminah. There is a story that Abdullah had a special brightness, called nadarah, on his face before the marriage, and that it left him afterwards, passing on to his child. This report is not authentically narrated. Sheikh Yasir Qadhi mentions it only because there is no harm in relating it.

The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was born in Makkah in the Year of the Elephant, on a Monday. Only one report gives the time of day. Sa'id ibn al-Musayyib, a scholar of the generation after the Companions, said he had been told that the birth was at high noon, without naming who told him. Others born around the same time later dated their own births by his. Qays ibn Makhramah said that he and the Prophet ﷺ were both born in the Year of the Elephant. Qubath ibn Ashyam RA said he was born before him, in a report found in al-Tirmidhi. Suwayd ibn Ghafala is reported to have said that he too was born in the Year of the Elephant, though another report has him say he was two years younger. According to Ibn Ishaq, on the seventh day his grandfather Abdul Muttalib held a feast for him and named him Muhammad ﷺ. Al-Bayhaqi relates a similar report, without a sound chain, that Abdul Muttalib slaughtered an animal for him. The Quraysh asked about the name, because no one in his family had been called it before. His uncle Abu Lahab freed his slave girl Thuwaybah, who later nursed the baby. It is narrated that he freed her because she brought him the good news of the birth, though not every source includes this detail.

Noble families of the Quraysh had a custom of sending their newborns away from Makkah to be nursed and raised by women of the desert. There were several reasons for this. The desert protected children from the diseases of crowded towns, hardened them for a difficult life, and kept them from being spoiled by relatives. Above all, certain desert tribes were famous for speaking the purest and most fluent Arabic, free of the borrowed words of the city. The most famous of these tribes was Banu Sa'd ibn Bakr, and it was they who fostered the Prophet ﷺ. Every year, the women of Banu Sa'd came to Makkah to take in infants of the Quraysh in return for payment. Halimah al-Sa'diyah and her husband were very poor. She had just had a baby son of her own, so she had milk to nurse another child. That year she came to Makkah hoping to find a newborn to nurse for two or three years. Every other woman in her group found a child to foster, but Halimah did not. The only child left was the orphan whose father had died. The other women had passed him over, because they expected little payment from a family with no father. With nobody else left, Halimah agreed to take him. At once, her household saw blessings. An old goat that had long stopped giving milk began to give milk again, and their old riding animal became the fastest of the whole group. Fostering usually lasted two years, but Halimah saw so many blessings that she wanted to keep him longer. The Prophet ﷺ's mother, Aminah bint Wahab, agreed, even though she could not pay as much as the other families were paying.

As a small child, the Prophet ﷺ was raised in the desert by his foster mother, Halimah al-Sa'diyah. When he was four years old, he was playing with the other children when the angel Jibril came to him. The other children ran away in fear, but he stood his ground. Jibril overpowered him and laid him on the ground. He opened his chest and took out his heart. He removed a black portion from it and threw it away, saying that this was shaytan's portion in him. He then washed the heart in a golden cup of Zamzam water, put it back and sealed the chest. Halimah's young son and her daughter Shayma ran to her screaming that their brother had been killed. Halimah rushed out and found him sitting with a pale face. He was frightened, but he was not screaming or crying. A line remained on his chest ﷺ where it had been opened, and it could still be seen late in his life. The incident worried Halimah, and she decided then and there to return him to his mother, Aminah.

When the Prophet ﷺ was around six years old, his mother Aminah took him to Yathrib, accompanied only by her servant Ummi Ayman. It was the only city he ever visited as a child, and the only one where he had relatives before the Hijrah. They stayed a few months, and on the return journey, at the small settlement of al-Abwa', Aminah fell ill and died. Ummi Ayman had her buried there by the people of the village.