10A BirthIn his seminal book on the tife of the Prophet Muhammad, Ibn Hisham
informs us that Ibn Ishaq has clearly and precisely established the Prophet's
birth date: "The Messenger (God's peace and blessings be upon him) was
born on a Monday, on the twelfth night of Rabi al~Awwal, in the year of
the elephant.,,4 Other accounts mention other months of the year, but
throughout history there has been broad acceptance of that date among
scholars and within Muslim communities. The Muslim calendar being a
lunar one, it is difficult to determine exactly the solar month of his birth,
but the "year of the elephant" to which Ibn Ishag refers corresponds to
570 CEo
The Last Prophet was born in one of Mecca's noble families, Banu
H ashim, which enjoyed g reat respect among all the clans in and around
Mecca.s T his noble descent combined with a particularly painful and
debilitating personal history. His mother, Aminah, was only two months
pregnant when his father, Abdullah, died during a trip to Yathrib, north
of Mecca. Fatherless at birth, young Muhammad was to live with the ten-
sion of the dual starns implied in Mecca by a respectable descent, on one
hand, and the precariousness of having no father. on the other.
Ibn Ishaq reports that the name Muhammad, quite unknown at the time
in the Arabian Peninsula, came to his mother in a vision while she was still
pregnant.^6 This same vision is also said to have announced to her the birth
of the "master of this people" (sayyid hadhihi al-ummah); according to the
vision, when he was born she was to say the words "I place him under the
protection of the One tal-Wahia] against the treachery of the envious.,, 7
lorn between her grief at her husband's death and the joy of welcoming
her child, Aminah said repeatedly that strange signs had accompanied the
gestation, then the extraordinarily easy birth of her child.
The Desert
Aminah soon became aware that she was the mother of an exceptional
child. This feeling was shared by Muhammad's grandfather, Abd al-
Muttalib, who took responsibility for him after his birth. In Mecca, it was
customary to entrust infants to wet nurses belonging to the nomadic