the grandfather would do as well for them as the boy’s own father.
Each one of them managed to get a child to nurse, except Ḥalīmah bint Abī Dhu’ayb. She later reported what she did that day:
I travelled with my husband and our young boy along with a number of women from our tribe, Saʿd ibn Bakr, to seek babies to nurse. It was a bad year in our area of the desert. We had nothing to survive on. I was riding a mule and we had with us an old she-camel which gave us not a drop of milk. We spent many a sleepless night because our little boy was always crying of hunger. I did not have enough milk to satisfy him. Our camel was hopeless, but we still hoped for rain and better days.
Because my mule was also weak, I kept falling behind my companions. I gave them so much trouble because of our weakness. When we arrived in Makkah every woman of us was offered Muhammad to nurse. When she learnt that he was an orphan, she declined. We simply hoped for gifts and presents from the baby’s father. Hence, we always replied when we were offered him: “An orphan! What could his mother or grandfather do for us!”
Every woman in the party was able to obtain a child to nurse except me. When we were about to set out on our journey back home, I said to my husband: “I hate to be the only one to go back empty-handed. I am going to take that orphan.” He said: “It is a good idea. He may bring us some blessings.” I went back and brought him. As soon as I put him to my breast, I felt that both my breasts were full of milk. He had his fill, and so did his brother, my own son. Both went to sleep immediately afterwards: we had not had much sleep in the preceding nights because of our boy’s crying.6
It is also reported that in those days the Prophet always sucked the same breast: he never accepted the other one. It is as if he was made to feel that he had a partner and he left him his share.7
Ḥalīmah said: “My husband thought that it was worth trying to milk our old camel. He soon discovered that she had full breasts. He milked enough for both of us to have our fill. It was our best night for a long while. My husband said to me in the morning: ‘You know, Ḥalīmah, you have taken a blessed child.’ I said: ‘I sincerely hope so.’”
We started our journey that morning and I rode the same mule and carried Muhammad with me. She was now moving fast, ahead of all my friends. They were amazed, and asked me whether it was the same mule I was riding on the way to Makkah. When I affirmed that it was, they were very surprised.
When we arrived at our quarters, it was hit by severe drought. Nevertheless, my sheep were always full of milk. We had more than we needed, while no one else had enough. Most of their sheep had no milk at all. People would tell their shepherds to keep their sheep alongside mine, hoping to have some milk. It was only my sheep which had their breasts bursting with milk every evening. We continued to have this Divine blessing until he was two years of age, when I weaned him. He was growing like no other child did. When he was two he was very strong for his age. I took him back to his mother, forming in my mind the best argument I could muster to persuade her to allow me to keep him for a while longer. I said to her: “I wish you would leave my child with me for a little longer until he gets stronger. I fear that he may catch an infection of some sort or another in Makkah.” I tried hard until she was persuaded to send him back with me.8
A Very Strange Event
Muhammad stayed with Ḥalīmah, his suckling mother, in the desert for nearly four years altogether. Nothing eventful normally happens to a child at such an early age; hence nothing much is recorded by historians. An event which happened at the end of that period, however, caused Ḥalīmah to be so disturbed that she preferred to go back to Makkah and return the young child to Āminah, his mother.
While Muhammad was playing with other children, the Angel Gabriel came and took him by the hand. He laid Muhammad down and opened his chest and abdomen, took out his heart and removed from it a black clot, which he threw away. As he did so, he said: “This is what Satan has in you.” He then washed Muhammad’s heart in a gold bowl full of iced water before putting it back in its place. He then sealed the incision and left him.
His suckling brother, Ḥalīmah’s son, ran to his mother to report that Muhammad was dead. She rushed to see him. She found him standing up but pale-faced. She asked him what had happened and he related what had been done to him by “two unknown men wearing white dresses”.
This incident disturbed Ḥalīmah a great deal. She sat several nights thinking about Muhammad and what had happened to him. Some reports suggest that she took him to a fortune-teller to find out the significance of what had happened. The authenticity of these reports is not beyond question. What is certain, however, is that Ḥalīmah felt that the safest course for her was to return the child to his mother. It was her husband who suggested this, expressing his fear that the boy might have been attacked by an evil spirit. “It is wiser to return him to his people now, before any bad consequences appear.”
Āminah was surprised to see Ḥalīmah bringing Muhammad back. She asked why, pointing out that Ḥalīmah had been so keen to keep him. Ḥalīmah said: “There is nothing wrong with him or us. We have discharged our task to the best of our ability. We thought he would be better off with you lest something should happen to him.” Āminah said that was not the full story, there must be something else. She kept pressing Ḥalīmah until the latter told her the story. Āminah said to her: “Do not fear Satan for this boy, for he is protected against him. This boy of mine will have a renowned future. I tell you that my pregnancy was the easiest ever experienced by any woman. One night when I was pregnant it seemed in my dream as if a light came out of me to light up the palaces of Syria. When I gave birth, he lifted his head to heaven. Leave him with me and go back to your people.”9
An authentic tradition points out that the same thing happened to the Prophet when he was fifty years old, one night while he was half-asleep. The angel made a long incision from the top of his chest right down to the end of his abdomen. He took out his heart and washed it in a gold bowl ‘full of faith’. He then put his heart back in its place.10
It is not easy to explain these two events in ordinary terms – the event itself was extraordinary. Moreover, the question of good and evil has nothing to do with the function of any part of the human body. It is clear that a spiritual interpretation of this question is much more relevant. Its understanding is beyond human ability.
A contemporary scholar, Shaykh Muhammad al-Ghazālī, suggests that Divine care would not leave a person like Muhammad to experience the petty temptations to which all human beings are liable. If we suppose that there are ‘waves’ of evil all around us and that the hearts of certain people pick up these waves very easily and are influenced by them, the hearts of Prophets, who are favoured with God’s care, do not receive these waves and are therefore not influenced by them. Hence, Prophets do not have to resist any downward tendency to sink into evil; they try to strengthen an upward tendency to purify themselves and their nations of evil.
In support of his argument, al-Ghazālī relates two authentic ḥadīths said by the Prophet on two different occasions, with more or less the same import. One ḥadīth was related by ʿĀ’ishah: the Prophet told her after she admitted that she was jealous of the Prophet’s other wives: “Your evil spirit has influenced you.” When she asked whether an evil spirit was always with her, the Prophet said: “Every human being has an evil spirit.” She asked whether this applied to him also. He said: “Yes, but God has helped me against him and he has accepted Islam.” That is, the evil spirit within the Prophet became an obedient one, and could not suggest any evil thought.11
It seems that the whole incident of opening the chest of the Prophet in his early childhood and again when he was fifty years old is indicative of the immunity God gave His chosen servant to keep him away from worldly temptations ever since he was a young boy.
A New Tragedy
Muhammad lived with his mother, who doted on him and looked after him as the most loving mother could look after the dearest of her children. It is worth noting that Āminah did not marry another man after her young husband died. This was quite unusual in Makkan society, where marriage to widows and divorcees