Birth of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)

The morning which the whole of creation had awaited, the hour foretold in the prayer of Ibrahim at the station of Ismail, glimpsed in the tidings of Isa to his people, and framed by the destruction of the army of the elephant, broke upon Makkah on a Monday in the month of Rabi al-Awwal of the Year of the Elephant. Aminah bint Wahb, the widow of Abdullah, was delivered of her son in the home of her uncle, as Lings relates; the fuller topography of the house is preserved in the account transmitted from al-Zubayr ibn Bakkar, which Ibn Kathir cites: the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was born in Makkah in the house known afterwards as that of Muhammad ibn Yusuf, the brother of al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, a dwelling in the quarter of Banu Hashim which in later centuries the mother of the Caliph Harun al-Rashid, al-Khayzuran, converted into a mosque when she performed the pilgrimage, so that it was known by her name, and the birthplace of the Prophet became a place of prostration. How fitting that the place where the best of creation entered the world became a place where foreheads are lowered to the ground in worship: the mercy had arrived, and the earth itself was drawn to bow in welcome. The master date of the Ummah, kept in this event's title, is the twelfth of Rabi al-Awwal, which the reckoners of the Christian calendar have placed at about the twentieth of April of the year 571; and before the details of the day are examined, the ground of each element of that date should be laid open, as the scholars of the Seerah have laid it open for fourteen centuries.

The day of the week is the surest of all. Ibn Kathir opens his chapter on the birth with the statement that he was born on a Monday, and he grounds it upon the rigorously authenticated hadith of Sahih Muslim, transmitted by Imam Muslim from Ghaylan ibn Jarir, from Abd Allah ibn Maqil al-Zumani, from Abu Qatadah (RA), that a man asked the Messenger of Allah ﷺ about fasting on Mondays, and he replied: that is the day on which I was born, and the day on which I was sent, or: upon which it was sent down upon me. Ibn Kathir declares this a matter without dispute, and dismisses as unlikely, indeed in error, the view of those who said that he was born on a Friday the seventeenth of Rabi al-Awwal, a claim which Ibn Dihyah had transmitted from certain writings of the Shia and then himself proceeded to denounce, for it contradicts the authentic tradition. The Monday of the birth is thus one of the fixed points of the Seerah, corroborated by a second line: Ibn Kathir cites the tradition, related by Ahmad in his Musnad, that Ibn Abbas (RA) said: the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was born on a Monday, received the prophethood on a Monday, left Makkah as an emigrant on a Monday, arrived at Madinah on a Monday, died on a Monday, and raised up the Black Stone on a Monday. The critics have observed that this second report's chain runs through Abd Allah ibn Lahi'ah, whose memory was weakened in the later science of men, and they weigh it accordingly; but the Monday of the birth itself rests on the Sahih of Muslim and on the agreement of the Seerah corpus, and on it no scholar of the Ummah has ever differed.

The month is nearly as firm. Ibn Kathir states that most people believe the birth occurred in the month of Rabi al-Awwal, and it is said on the second day thereof, a dating which Ibn Abd al-Barr recorded in his exhaustive study and which al-Waqidi related from Abu Mashar Najih ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Madani. Against the second day, others said the eighth: al-Humaydi related it thus from Ibn Hazm, and Malik, Uqayl, and Yunus ibn Yazid related it from al-Zuhri, from Muhammad ibn Jubayr ibn Mutim, and Ibn Abd al-Barr recounted that the historians had verified it, and the great Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi so determined it, and the hafiz Abu al-Khattab ibn Dihyah considered it likely in his book of enlightenment on the birth of the Warner. And it is said, in an account transmitted by Ibn Dihyah, that it occurred on the tenth of the month, which Ibn Asakir related from Abu Jafar al-Baqir, as Mujahid related it from al-Shabi. And the birth is also said to have come on the twelfth of the month: Ibn Ishaq states this, and Ibn Abi Shaybah relates it in his compilation, on the authority of Affan, from Said ibn Mansur, from Jabir and Ibn Abbas, who said: the Messenger of Allah was born in the Year of the Elephant, on Monday the twelfth of Rabi al-Awwal; and this, Ibn Kathir reports, is what is widely known to most people. There is, finally, the claim that he was born in Ramadan, which Ibn Abd al-Barr transmitted from al-Zubayr ibn Bakkar, and which Ibn Kathir calls a very strange statement, whose basis was the certain fact that revelation came to him in Ramadan at the beginning of his fortieth year. The believer who surveys this range does not find confusion but exactness: the transmitters carried every opinion with its name attached, the critics weighed them, and the community settled upon the twelfth of Rabi al-Awwal as the date universally remembered, while holding the weekday, the month, and the year as beyond doubt. This is the believer's way with the reports of the Messenger ﷺ: exactness in transmission is itself an act of love, for no detail touching him was ever too small for this Ummah to preserve.

The year is the anchor of the whole chronology. Ibn Ishaq said plainly that his birth occurred in the Year of the Elephant, and this is what is well known to the people at large; Ibrahim ibn al-Mundhir al-Hizami said that this is something about which our scholars have no doubt, that he was born in the year of the elephant and received his mission at the beginning of the fortieth year after the attack; and Khalifah ibn Khayyat transmits the consensus that he ﷺ was born in the year of the elephants' attack. The companion-generation itself sealed the matter with living voices: Qays ibn Makhramah said that the Messenger of Allah and he were born in the same year, the year of the elephant attack; the aged Qubath ibn Ashyam, asked by Uthman (RA) which of them was greater, answered that the Messenger of Allah was greater than he, but that he had seen the elephants' droppings still green and changing, and Ibn Kathir notes that al-Tirmidhi and al-Hakim related this report; and Suwayd ibn Ghafalah said: I am contemporary in birth with the Messenger of Allah, I was born in the year of the elephant attack. Within the year, the computations vary in the manner already weighed in the account of the elephant: some said the birth followed the attack by a month, others by forty days, and yet others by fifty days, which Ibn Kathir calls the most favoured date, while Abu Jafar al-Baqir said the elephants arrived in mid-Muharram and the birth came fifty-five days thereafter. When the reckoners of the later centuries converted the Year of the Elephant into the Christian calendar they placed it at the year 571, and al-Suhayli had already given the birthday as the twentieth of Nisan, which is April; Ibn Kathir transmits the further astronomical details recorded by Ibn Dihyah from the almanacs, and remarks upon them only: but God knows best. The historian of a later age, John William Draper, would write from outside the faith: four years after the death of Justinian, in the year 569, there was born at Mecca, in Arabia, the man who, of all men, has exercised the greatest influence upon the human race; and the difference of a year or two between the non-Muslim reckonings and the Muslim computation of 571 is itself part of the honest record, for the reports agree in everything except the arithmetic of calendars, and the Year of the Elephant stands as the native marker of the age.

The delivery itself was attended by the signs which the mother had been promised. The fullest account is Aminah's own, transmitted through the lines already set out in the account of the conception: she said, I became pregnant with him, and he caused me no difficulties until I gave birth to him; when he was separated from me, a light emerged along with him that lit all that is between east and west; and in the wordings of some of the chains, there emerged with him a light by which were illuminated the castles and the marketplaces of Syria, so that even the necks of the camels at Busra could be seen. And she said: he dropped to the ground, resting upon his hands, and took up a handful of earth which he gripped tight, raising his head towards heaven. The gesture has been read by the scholars as a portent written in the body of the newborn: his first motion in the world was to grasp its dust in his fist, as if in token of the dominion over the earth which his community would be granted, while his face turned upward to the heaven from which his revelation would descend; and Ibn Kathir records that the reports speak of him with his eyes wide open, gazing upward. The women who attended Aminah carried the memory out of the birth-chamber: Ibn Kathir cites al-Bayhaqi's chain, from Uthman ibn Abi al-As (RA), whose mother said: I witnessed the birth of Aminah, and all I could see in the house was light; as I looked, I saw the stars coming so close that I said they were going to fall upon me. And the Qadi Iyad transmits from al-Shaffa, the mother of Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf (RA), who was his midwife, that when he dropped into her hands and made his first sound, she heard a voice say: may God have mercy on you, and a light shone from him by which the castles of Byzantium could be seen.

The night of the birth, the reports of the signs multiplied, and the scholars have weighed each of them. Ibn Kathir transmits, from al-Bayhaqi, the chain running from al-Abbas ibn Abdul-Muttalib (RA), that the Messenger of Allah was born circumcised and with his umbilical cord severed, which amazed his grandfather, who said: this son of mine is sure to be of importance; and he notes that some claimed for this the rank of consecutive testimony, while others disputed its veracity, and Ibn Kathir himself rules the claim of consecutive transmission debatable. There is the report, cited by Ibn Kathir from Muhammad ibn Sad and his sources, that the women of Quraysh placed an upside-down vessel over the newborn after the custom of the town, and found in the morning that the vessel had split in two, fallen away from him, and that he lay with his eyes wide open gazing at heaven, so that they said: we never saw a newborn child like him. Al-Suhayli related, from the Qur'an commentary of Baqi ibn Makhlid, that Satan let out four cries, at his cursing, at his being sent down from heaven, at the birth of the Messenger of Allah, and at the revelation of the opening chapter of the Qur'an. And the night was marked in the knowledge of the People of the Book, as the following testimony will show.

For the most haunting confirmation of that night comes from the Jews, both of Makkah and of Yathrib. Ibn Ishaq relates, from Hisham ibn Urwah, from his father, from Aisha (RA), that there was a Jew who resided in Makkah and did business there, and on the night when the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was born he addressed a gathering of Quraysh: O Quraysh, has a birth occurred among you this night? When they said they did not know, he cried: God is very great; if this has passed you by, then look, and remember what I tell you: this night a prophet has been born to this last nation; between his shoulders there is a mark of successive lines of hair like a horse's mane; he will not suckle for two nights, for a spirit will have placed its finger in his mouth. The gathering broke up in amazement, and when they returned to their homes, each household had the news: a child had been born to Abdullah son of Abdul-Muttalib, a boy whom they had named Muhammad. They hurried to the Jew and brought him to Aminah, saying: bring out your son for us; she did so, they uncovered his back, and there was the mark, and the Jew fell down in a faint, and when he came to himself he said: by God, prophethood has left the children of Israel; are you glad of it, O Quraysh? By God, he will overcome you with a might whose news will spread east and west. And Ibn Ishaq transmits from Yahya ibn Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Sad ibn Zurarah the testimony of Hassan ibn Thabit (RA), the poet of the Prophet who would be: I was a mature lad of seven or eight, capable of understanding all that I saw and heard, when one morning a Jew in Yathrib began shouting for the attention of his people; when they gathered about him, I heard him myself, and he said: the star has risen beneath which Ahmad will be born this night. Abu Nuaym adds the reports of the Jews of the clans, that they had long discussed the description of the coming prophet, and that when the red star arose they said: it rises only at the emergence of a prophet, and the only prophet remaining is Ahmad, and this will be the place to which he will migrate. The newborn of Makkah was thus awaited by name in the alleys of Yathrib, and the learned of the rejected communities bore unwilling witness to the event which their own scriptures had promised them.

When Aminah had been delivered, she sent word to Abdul-Muttalib, his father having died while she was pregnant, saying: a boy has been born to you, so look to him. The old chief came, and Aminah related to him what she had seen when she bore him, what she had been told about him, and what she had been ordered to name him. Lings renders the scene which followed: Abdul-Muttalib took the boy in his arms and carried him to the Sanctuary and into the Holy House, where he prayed a prayer of thanksgiving to God for this gift; then he brought him once more to his mother, and on the way he showed him to his own household, and he himself was shortly to have another son; at the moment his youngest son was the three-year-old al-Abbas, who now met him at the door of his house, and Abdul-Muttalib said: this is thy brother; kiss him, and the child al-Abbas kissed the newborn Messenger of Allah, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him. Ibn Kathir preserves the verses which Abdul-Muttalib recited in the Kaaba: praise be to God who gave me this fine, wonderful boy, who already in the cradle leads all boys; I entrust his safety to the pillared House, until he becomes the epitome of young men and I see him fully grown; I seek his protection from all who hate, and from the envious and the unstable; you are he who was named in the ancient books whose meanings are well established.

The naming of the child sealed the whole. On the seventh day, Abdul-Muttalib made sacrifice for him and invited Quraysh to the feast, and when they had eaten, they asked: O Abdul-Muttalib, what have you decided to name this son of yours whom you have honoured? He answered: I have named him Muhammad. They said: why have you preferred him not to have one of the names of his kinsfolk? He replied: because I wanted God to praise him in heaven and His creatures to praise him on earth. The language scholars, Ibn Kathir notes, say that all which invites the qualities of good is named Muhammad, and he transmits the verse of Abu Talib, which some also attributed to Hassan: God took a part of His own name to honour him, for He of the Throne is named Mahmud, the praised, while he is Muhammad, the praised one. The name itself had been kept by divine wisdom as an unspent honour: Ibn Kathir records that when word had spread shortly before the birth that a prophet would be sent whose name would be Muhammad, a small number of Arabs had given their sons that name in hope, and he lists them: Muhammad ibn Uhayhah ibn al-Julah of the Aws, Muhammad ibn Maslamah of the Ansar, Muhammad ibn Burah of Bakr, Muhammad ibn Sufyan ibn Mujashi, Muhammad ibn Humran of Jufi, and Muhammad ibn Khuzai of Sulaym, and no seventh person bore it; and the Qadi Iyad remarks that God protected those so named from any false claim to the prophethood, and preserved the name in its fullness for the one for whom it was reserved, as the verse of the Qur'an would later join the praise of heaven and earth to his person: Allah knows best where to place His message.

The Ummah has kept the memory of this birth with a gratitude which no other event in human history has received. The twelfth of Rabi al-Awwal has been marked century upon century with recitation of the Qur'an, with the relating of his virtues, and with charity to the poor; the birth-house became a mosque; and the calendars of the earth, whatever their disagreements, have all been compelled to reckon with the year of his birth, the year in which the sky sent birds against an army and the earth received the best of Adam's children. The Prophet himself, in the rigorously authenticated hadith of Sahl ibn Sa'd in the Sahih of al-Bukhari, described the significance of his mission's timing with two fingers of his blessed hand: I and the Hour have been sent like these two; the birth which opened that Monday morning in Rabi al-Awwal was the sunrise of the last age of the world. And the Qur'an fixed his purpose in a single verse revealed over that newborn child decades later: and We have not sent you except as a mercy to the worlds. Every mercy which has entered the world since that morning has entered by his road: the Book recited at dawn, the prayer of the night, the poor due, the freeing of slaves, the honouring of women and of the weak, the end of the burying of daughters, the teaching of the pen to nations that had not known it. Praise belongs to Allah, who answered the prayer of Ibrahim and the glad tidings of Isa (peace be upon them both), and sent His final mercy into the world wrapped in the smallness of a newborn child.

He was born an orphan, in a town of idolaters, to a mother sustained by visions, in the very year in which his future qiblah had been defended by the birds of his Lord against the mightiest army of the age; and the believers of every generation since have found in the conjunction of these facts a summary of his whole mission: utter dependence upon Allah, unshakable attachment to the Ancient House, and the certainty that the Light which shone from the castles of Busra in his mother's womb would, within fifty-three years, be carried by him to the horizons of the world. From the day of the birth the events of the Seerah now take their course in the full light of history: the nursing of Halimah in the desert, the return to his mother, the orphanhood completed at al-Abwa, and the long road toward the cave of Hira, where the greatest light of all was waiting.