The infancy of the Holy Prophet

Summary

According to the customs of the city-dwelling Arabs, the Holy Prophet was given in the care of a wet nurse by the name of Halimah Sadiyyah from his infancy until five years old in a place with culture and original literature in a tribal village.

Comparison between a city and a tribal village

During the Arab Era of Ignorance, most of the people would live in tribal villages and they would move from one place to another due to the geography of the province and the lack of water. Despite this, some people would live in cities and this was due to the presence of water and cultivatable lands, the presence of a house of worship or the proximity to the business routes. For example, Yathrib and Ta’if became cities due to the developments and Makkah became the Umm al-Qura of Hejaz due to the presence of the Kaabah and also proximity to the business routes. As different caravans would pass through the cities, it had different cultures and languages, in opposition to the tribal villages which, due to a lack of variety in population, it had a greater originality in regard to the Arab accent, culture, customs and also poetry and literature. Of course, even though the cities were more polluted in regard to culture, due to the relationship with other cities, the city-dwellers had a greater level of thinking than the village-dwellers and had greater information to various issues.

The Infancy of the Holy Prophet

After the birth of her son, Aminah gave him milk for a few days and then Thuwaybah, the freed slave of Abu Lahab, gave him milk for a while. Then, according to the Arab customs, they put him under the care of a wet nurse by the name of Halimah Sadiyyah from the tribe of Sad ibn Bakr who lived in a tribal village. Halimah fed him milk for two years and cared for him for five years and then returned him to his family. Giving a new-born child to a different family may sound strange, but entrusting a child to a wet nurse in those times was a custom of the Arabs and the historians have mentioned several motives for this custom:

1. Learning the Arabic language eloquently was easier among the tribes and due to the mixture of cultures in the city, the Arabic language was tampered with.
2. The clean air of the desert and to distance him from the danger of the disease of cholera in Makkah. ,

Also, the proof of this motive is shown in the words of the Holy Prophet,

“I am more eloquent than all of you as I am Qurayshi and I drank milk from the tribe of Bani Sad ibn Bakr.” ,

The method of choosing Halimah as the Holy Prophet’s wet nurse

In some sources, the method of choosing Halimah as the wet nurse is mentioned in the following manner, “As Muhammad was an orphan, no wet nurse was willing to accept him as the wet nurses preferred to choose a child who had a richer family so that they could earn financial support from the father of the child, but the Holy Prophet’s father had passed away and therefore, there was no possibility of support from the child’s father,” but this text cannot be accepted as: 1. According to the narrations in some sources, Abdullah passed away a few months after the birth of the Holy Prophet and when he was entrusted to the wet nurse, he wasn’t an orphan. 2. Due to the position of Abd al-Muttalib, the grandfather of the Holy Prophet, among the Quraysh and his wealth, the wet nurses should have been fighting to care for the Holy Prophet. In other words, the reputation of the Holy Prophet’s family and the high position of a carer such as Abd al-Muttalib who held complete control over the Quraysh would make the wet nurses overlook the fact of the father’s death. 3. In many historical sources, this story hasn’t been mentioned in this manner either. Therefore, it looks logical that the wet nurses wanted to care for him and rather, they fought to attain this honour.