MOHAMMED’S LIFE

[1Sidenote: [570-595 A.D.]]

2Mohammed (properly Muhammad, “the much praised”; and not Mahomet), was born in Mecca five years after the death of Justinian. The small inheritance which his father left him consisted of five camels and a faithful female slave. The biographers inform us that according to the custom which prevailed among the upper classes in Mecca, his mother Amina put the child out to nurse in the country. Halima, the wife of a herdsman, was his foster-mother and nurse till his third year, and the sacred legend tells us of many wonders with which the divine favour surrounded Mohammed’s childhood. Halima’s flocks and herds increased tenfold; her fields bore a superabundant harvest; angels cleansed the child’s heart from all sins and filled it with faith, knowledge and prophetic gifts. As, however, the child suffered from fits of convulsions, at the end of two years Halima brought him back to his mother. With her he remained till his sixth year. She then went with him to Yathreb (Medina), to visit her relatives, but died on the way back in the town of Abwa.

3Mohammed now entered the house of his grandfather, Abdul-Muttalib, and when two years later the latter also died, his uncle Abu Talib took him into his family and watched over him with paternal affection. The story that in his twelfth year he accompanied his foster-father on a caravan journey to Syria, and that on this occasion a Christian monk foretold the boy’s future greatness, appears, like many other details of his life, to be a later legend. As he grew older, after having spent some time in guarding the flocks, Mohammed took his share in the business and manner of life of his relatives.

4He accompanied several of his uncles on warlike and commercial expeditions, in which he learned to know his country and his nation, and beheld the desert with its terrors and its poetry, where he heard the legends and traditions of the wandering tribes and gathered information concerning the teachings of the beliefs of Jew and Christian. He did not himself understand the language of writing, but Mecca as the pilgrim city of the East was one of the world’s centres, a school of culture containing much instruction for a thoughtful youth.

5The Christian religion, indeed, appears to have been known to him only by a few legends and distorted doctrines; but on the other hand the Jewish sect of the Hanifs, who lived scattered over the oases of the desert, had preserved and handed down Judaism in its original purity and simplicity, together with the belief in divine revelations at the mouth of inspired prophets.