Genealogical
roots and early life
Both before the rise of Islam and
during the Islamic period, Arab tribes paid great attention to genealogy and guarded their knowledge of it with
meticulous care. In fact, during Islamic history a whole science of genealogy (ʿilm
al-anṣāb) developed that is of much
historical significance. In the pre-Islamic period, however, this knowledge
remained unwritten, and for that very reason it has not been taken seriously by
Western historians relying only on written records. For Muslims, however, the
genealogy of Muhammad has always been certain. They trace his ancestry to Ismāʿīl
(Ishmael) and hence to the prophet Abraham. This fact was accepted even by
medieval European opponents of Islam but has been questioned by modern
historians.
According to traditional Islamic
sources, Muhammad was born in Mecca in “the Year of the Elephant,” which
corresponds to the year ad 570, the date modern Western scholars cite as at
least his approximate birth date. A single event gave the Year of the Elephant
its name when Abrahah, the king of Abyssinia, sent an
overwhelming force to Mecca to destroy the Kaʿbah, the sanctuary Muslims believe to have
been built by Adam and reconstructed by Abraham and which Abrahah viewed as a
rival to his newly constructed temple in Sanaa in Yemen. According to
tradition, the elephant that marched at the head of Abrahah’s army knelt as it
approached Mecca, refusing to go farther. Soon the sky blackened with birds
that pelted the army with pebbles, driving them off in disarray. Thus, the
sanctuary that Muslims consider an earthly reflection of the celestial temple
was saved, though at the time it served Arab tribes who (with the exception of
the ḥanīfs, or
primordialists) disregarded Abrahamic monotheism.
Soon after this momentous event in
the history of Arabia, Muhammad was born in Mecca.
His father, ʿAbd Allāh, and his mother, Āminah, belonged to the family of the Banū Hāshim, a branch of the powerful Quraysh, the ruling tribe of Mecca, that also
guarded its most sacred shrine, the Kaʿbah. Because ʿAbd Allāh died before
Muhammad’s birth, Āminah placed all her hopes in the newborn child. Without a
father, Muhammad experienced many hardships even though his grandfather ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib was a leader in
the Meccan community. The emphasis in Islamic society on generosity to orphans
is related to the childhood experiences of Muhammad as well as to his subsequent
love for orphans and the Qurʾānic injunctions concerning their treatment.
In order for Muhammad to master
Arabic in its pure form and become well acquainted with Arab traditions, Āminah
sent him as a baby into the desert, as was the custom of all great Arab
families at that time. In the desert, it was believed, one learned the
qualities of self-discipline, nobility, and freedom. A sojourn in the desert
also offered escape from the domination of time and the corruption of the city.
Moreover, it provided the opportunity to become a better speaker through
exposure to the eloquent Arabic spoken by the Bedouin. In this way the bond
with the desert and its purity and sobriety was renewed for city dwellers in
every generation. Āminah chose a poor woman named Ḥalīmah from the tribe of Banū Saʿd, a branch of
the Hawāzin, to suckle and nurture her son. And so the young Muhammad spent
several years in the desert.
It was also at this time that,
according to tradition, two angels appeared to Muhammad in the guise of men,
opened his breast, and purified his heart with snow. This episode, which
exemplifies the Islamic belief that God purified his prophet and protected him
from sin, was also described by Muhammad: “There came unto me two men, clothed
in white, with a gold basin full of snow. Then they laid upon me, and,
splitting open my breast, they brought forth my heart. This likewise they split
open and took from it a black clot which they cast away. Then they washed my
heart and my breast with the snow” (Martin Lings, Muhammad: His Life, Based
on the Earliest Sources, 1991). Muhammad then repeated the verse, found in
the Hadith, “Satan toucheth every son of Adam the day his mother beareth him,
save only Mary and her son.” Amazed by this event and also noticing a mole on
Muhammad’s back (later identified in the traditional sources as the sign of
prophecy), Ḥalīmah
and her husband, Ḥārith,
took the boy back to Mecca.
Muhammad’s mother died when he was
six years old. Now completely orphaned, he was brought up by his grandfather ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, who also died
two years later. He was then placed in the care of Abū Ṭālib, Muhammad’s uncle
and the father of ʿAlī, Muhammad’s cousin. Later in life Muhammad would repay
this kindness by taking ʿAlī into his household and giving his daughter Fāṭimah to him in
marriage.
It is believed that Muhammad grew
into a young man of unusual physical beauty as well as generosity of character.
His sense of fairness and justice were so revered that the people of Mecca
often went to him for arbitration and knew him as al-Amīn, “the Trusted One.”
His striking appearance is the subject of countless poems in various Islamic
languages. Muhammad, according to ʿAlī,
was neither tall nor lanky nor short
and stocky, but of medium height. His hair was neither crispy curled nor
straight but moderately wavy. He was not overweight and his face was not plump.
He had a round face. His complexion was white tinged with redness. He had big
black eyes with long lashes. His brows were heavy and his shoulders broad. He
had soft skin, with fine hair covering the line from mid chest to navel. The
palms of his hands and the soles of his feet were firmly padded. He walked with
a firm gait, as if striding downhill. On his back between his shoulders lay the
Seal of Prophethood [a mole], for he was the last of the prophets. (Tosun
Bayrak al-Jerrahi al-Halveti, The Name & the Named: The Divine Attributes
of God, 2000)
Islamic sources indicate that others
recognized the mole as the sign of prophethood, including the Christian monk Baḥīrā, who met Muhammad when the
Prophet joined Abū Ṭālib
on a caravan trip to Syria.
When he was 25 years old, Muhammad
received a marriage proposal from a wealthy Meccan woman, Khadījah bint al-Khuwaylid, whose affairs he was
conducting. Despite the fact that she was 15 years older than he, Muhammad accepted
the proposal, and he did not take another wife until after her death (though
polygyny was permitted and common). She bore him two sons, both of whom died
young. It is from the first son, Qāsim, that one of the names of the Prophet,
Abūʾ al-Qāsim (“the Father of Qāsim”), derives. She also bore him four
daughters, Zaynab, Ruqayyah, Umm Kulthūm, and Fāṭimah. The youngest, Fāṭimah, who is called the second Mary,
had the greatest impact on history of all his children. Shīʿite imams and
sayyids or sharifs are thought to be descendants of Muhammad, from the lineage
of Fāṭimah
and ʿAlī. Khadījah herself is considered one of the foremost female saints in
Islam and, along with Fāṭimah,
plays a very important role in Islamic piety and in eschatological events
connected with the souls of women.
By age 35, Muhammad had become a
very respected figure in Mecca and had taken ʿAlī into his household. When he
was asked, according to Islamic tradition, to arbitrate a dispute concerning
which tribe should place the holy black stone in the corner of the newly built Kaʿbah, Muhammad resolved the conflict by putting
his cloak on the ground with the stone in the middle and having a
representative of each tribe lift a corner of it until the stone reached the
appropriate height to be set in the wall. His reputation stemmed, in part, from
his deep religiosity and attention to prayer. He often would leave the city and
retire to the desert for prayer and meditation. Moreover, before the advent of
his prophecy, he received visions that he described as being like “the breaking
of the light of dawn.” It was during one of these periods of retreat, when he
was 40 years old and meditating in a cave called al-Ḥirāʾ in the Mountain of Light (Jabal
al-Nūr) near Mecca, that Muhammad experienced the presence of the archangel Gabriel and the process of the Qurʾānic
revelation began.
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