The foster years of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, were approaching their close when the heavens came down to the tents of Banu Sa'd. He was then, by the reckoning of the received account, four or five years old, some months into the extended stay which his mother Aminah (may Allah be pleased with her) had granted to Halimah (may Allah be pleased with her) after his weaning; and the days were the ordinary days of the desert childhood, the days of which his own later testimony speaks: my wet-nurse was of the Banu Sa'd ibn Bakr, he said, and one day a son of hers and I went off with our flock without taking any food with us. On the day of the event, the boy was out behind the dwellings with one of his foster-brothers, among the young animals of the household, in the open country where the children of the tents kept the lambs and kids from straying. The sun was up, the camp was quiet, and no eye in the world expected what the sky was about to contain.
The household learned of it from the cry of the boys. Ibn Ishaq's account, transmitted through Halimah herself, tells it: suddenly that foster-brother came in greatly agitated and said: that Qurayshi brother of mine; two men dressed in white came to him, laid him down, and split open his abdomen. And she and her husband al-Harith ibn Abd al-Uzza (may Allah be pleased with him) rushed out toward him, and they found him standing, his color pale. His foster-father drew him to himself and asked: what is wrong, son; and the boy answered with the words the Ummah has carried ever since: two men dressed in white came to me; they laid me down and opened my abdomen; then they drew something from inside it and threw it away; after that they put my abdomen back as before. The words of a small child, plain and unadorned, stand at the head of the whole literature of the signs of prophethood; and the believing parent who has heard a child tell of a dream or a wonder knows the register of the telling, matter-of-fact and wide-eyed at once, which the great transmitters saw fit to record.
What the searchers found when they examined him is itself part of the sign. Lings, following the earliest sources, sets down what the household saw: there was no sign of the two men, nor any blood, nor any wound to bear out what the boys had said; and no amount of questioning would make the boys take back their words or modify them in any respect. Yet there was not even the trace of a scar on the breast of their foster-child, nor any blemish upon his perfect little body. The only unusual feature was in the middle of his back, between his shoulders: a small but distinct oval mark, where the flesh was slightly raised, as though from the impress of a cupping glass; and that, the reports add, had been there from his birth. The reader of the Seerah recognizes the mark at once: it is the seal of prophethood, the khatm which the monk Bahira would examine on his back among the Syrian trade roads seven years later, and which Salman al-Farisi would travel seeking; the sign which Allah had printed upon His Messenger ﷺ before the world knew his name, here noticed for the first time in the received record, on the very day when heaven touched him.
The core of the event, however, rests upon firmer ground even than the beloved account of Halimah, for it is established in the rigorously authenticated hadith of the Sahih of Muslim. Ibn Kathir introduces it with the words: and it is established in the Sahih collection of Muslim, through Hammad ibn Salamah, from Thabit, from Anas ibn Malik (may Allah be pleased with him), that Jibril, on whom be peace, came to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ while he was a boy playing with the other boys; and Jibril took him, laid him down, split open his chest, took the heart out, and extracted from it a black clot, saying: this is Satan's portion of you; then he washed it in a golden basin with the water of Zamzam, then he mended it and restored it to its place. And the other boys raced off to his mother, meaning his nurse, crying that Muhammad had been killed; and when they met him, he was pale. And Anas said: I used to see the mark of the stitching upon his chest. This last witness carries the event out of the tents of Banu Sa'd into the streets of Madinah: Anas, who served the Messenger of Allah ﷺ from his boyhood, saw the trace of that childhood sewing with his own eyes for the rest of the Prophet's ﷺ blessed life upon earth, and his testimony is the mortar between the sign of the desert and the certainty of the Sahih.
The meaning of the extracted clot is taught by the Prophet ﷺ himself, in the hadith which al-Bukhari carries and which Lings cites at this very place: Satan touches every son of Adam on the day his mother gives birth to him, except Maryam and her son. Every child of Adam inherits, by the nature of this fallen world, a portion of Satan's whispering which clings to the heart from birth, against which the servants of Allah struggle all their lives, seeking refuge in their Lord and prevailing by His help. But the child whom Allah had chosen to be His final Messenger was not left to carry even that portion through his prophethood: it was drawn out of his innocent heart by the hand of Jibril (peace be upon him) while he was still a boy among the lambs, cast away from him forever, and the heart washed pure with the water of the well which Allah had sprung for Hajar and her son Ismail (peace be upon him). The scholars of the Ummah have always joined this hadith to this event when they teach the protection of the prophets, the ismah which Allah grants them; and the believer receives the lesson kneeling: the Lord of the worlds purifies His beloved ones before the trial, not after it, and He prepared the heart of His Prophet ﷺ for the weight of revelation as a vessel is scoured before the wine is poured, years before the first verse came down upon him in the cave of Hira.
Of the washing, the Prophet's ﷺ own fullest description has come by a line which Ibn Kathir calls fine and strong. Thawr ibn Yazid related, from Khalid ibn Ma'dan, from the Companions of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, that when they asked him about himself, he said: I am the one called for by my father Ibrahim, and the glad tidings foreseen by Isa (peace be upon them both); when she bore me my mother saw that a light came from inside her that illuminated the castles of Syria; I was suckled by the tribe of Sa'd ibn Bakr; and while I was among our animals, two men dressed in white came, carrying a golden basin filled with ice. They laid me down, cut open my abdomen, and took out my heart; this they split open and extracted from it a black clot, which they threw away; then they washed my heart and my insides with that ice until clean, and put it back as before. Then, the account continues, one of them said to the other: weigh him against ten of his nation; and he did, and the boy outweighed them. He said: weigh him against a hundred of his nation; and he outweighed them. He said: weigh him against a thousand; and he outweighed them; and the first said: leave him now, for even if you weighed him against his entire nation, he would outweigh them. What believer's heart can read the weighing without awe: the scale of the Worthshippers held the worth of one small boy heavier than the whole of his people to come, the scale of his merit set by heaven itself before he had spoken a prophetic word, an answer written in the sky against every age which would presume to weigh him lightly.
There is a further line which Ibn Ishaq transmitted on the authority of Utbah ibn Abd Allah, and which Ibn Kathir carries with its full chain through Baqiyyah ibn al-Walid, from Buhayr ibn Sa'id, from Khalid ibn Ma'dan, from Abd al-Rahman ibn Amr al-Sulami; and Ahmad related it in his Musnad, and Ibn Asakir through Abu Dawud al-Tayalisi. In this telling, the men are described as two white birds like eagles, and the boy asked his foster-brother to fetch food from their mother's house, and while he was alone with the flock they came down and laid him on his back, split his abdomen, extracted his heart and cut it open, and took from it two black clots; and the one said: bring me ice-water, and with it they cleaned his insides; and then: bring me cold water, and with that they washed his heart; and then: bring me the sakinah, the tranquility, and they sprinkled it into his heart; and then: sew it up; and they placed upon his heart the seal of prophethood; and then: place him in one scale of the balance and a thousand of his people in the other; and he looked up and saw the thousand above him and feared they would tumble down upon him; and the voice said: if his whole nation were balanced against him, he would still outweigh them. And the boy, tremendously afraid, raced to his foster-mother and told her what had happened, and she cried out: may Allah protect you, and she made an ass of hers ready for travel and set him upon it, and rode behind him until they reached his mother, and said: I have fulfilled my pact and my agreement; and she told Aminah what had happened, and it did not shock her, and Aminah answered with the words set down in her own account.
Beside these lines stand two more which Ibn Kathir transmits for the completeness of the record. Ibn Asakir relates, through a chain reaching Urwah ibn al-Zubayr, from Abu Dharr al-Ghifari (may Allah be pleased with him), that he asked the Messenger of Allah ﷺ: how were you informed that you were a prophet, and when did you become certain of it; and he answered: O Abu Dharr, two angels came to me when I was in one of the valleys of Makkah; one of them dropped down to the ground while the other remained suspended between heaven and earth; and one said to the other: is that he; and the reply came: yes, it is he; and the one said: weigh him against another man; and he did, and I outweighed him; and so the account ran to its end, recounting how his chest was opened and sewn up and the seal placed between his shoulders, until they turned away from him at last, their work fully done. And Ibn Asakir gives the like from Ubayy ibn Ka'b, and a simpler form of it from Shaddad ibn Aws (may Allah be pleased with them all). And then the record closes a door which the friends of invention had opened: Abu Nu'aym the hafiz transmitted, in his Dala'il, a much-lengthened version of the story by way of Umar ibn Subh, from Thawr ibn Yazid, from Shaddad; and Ibn Kathir rules upon the man without hesitation: this Umar ibn Subh is to be ignored, for he was a liar who was accused of invention; and for this reason, Ibn Kathir says, we shall not mention the text of the tradition, for it gives no pleasure. The believer thanks Allah for such verdicts: the biography of the best of creation was guarded by the critics with the same rigor as the law itself, and the forger found no room in the house of the honest.
Within the household, the sign became a fear. The account of Halimah tells how the foster-father said to her: Halimah, I am afraid my foster-son has become afflicted; let us hurry and give him back to his family before what we fear develops. And they took counsel of their love and resolved to return him; and this journey, and the parting of the milk, are the subject of the following event of the Seerah, for the fosterage which the entrusting had opened was closed by this hour of awe. Lings records the resolution of the household: Harith feared that their foster-son had been possessed by an evil spirit or smitten by some spell, and he told his wife to take him with all speed to his mother before the harm he had suffered became apparent in him; and Ibn Kathir's text has the same fear in the plainer idiom of the desert. The irony which the believer perceives with tenderness is this: the two men dressed in white were not harm but its removal, and the fear of the foster-parents was the shadow of their love; and Allah accepted even their fear as the occasion of His Prophet's ﷺ return, so that the boy came home to his mother's house in the season which the Lord of the worlds had appointed.
The scene of the return belongs to Aminah (may Allah be pleased with her) more than to any other soul in it. When Halimah and al-Harith brought the boy back, his mother was surprised, for she knew how they had wanted him; and when they gave over the child with the excuse that they feared some harm might befall him, she pressed them: what is going on with you both; tell me truthfully what is worrying you; and she would not leave them alone until they told her what had happened. Then she answered them, and her answer is the first human defense of the sanctity of the Prophet ﷺ in the record of the world: are you afraid for him from Satan; absolutely not; Satan shall not get to him. By Allah, this son of mine has a great future before him. And she told them what she had seen: when I was pregnant with him, he was the lightest child I ever bore, and I saw in my sleep a light emanating so bright that it lit up the castles of Syria; and when he was born he came out in a manner that babies never do, drawing himself up on his arms and lifting his head toward heaven; so leave him, and do not worry. The mother who had carried the light did not need the boys' tale to be explained; she had carried its explanation under her heart; and Lings closes the scene with her words: great things are in store for my little son.
Now the scholarly clarity which the Seerah demands must be given its full weight, for the opening of the blessed chest of the Prophet ﷺ is not one event but two in the transmitted record, and the mixing of them is the error of the careless. The same Sahih collections which carry the hadith of Anas on the childhood opening carry also, in the account of the night journey and ascension, the opening of his chest at the House on the night of the Isra, and its washing with Zamzam, before he was taken up through the seven heavens. Ibn Kathir names the lines: in the two Sahihs the account is given through Sharik ibn Abi Nimr from Anas, and from al-Zuhri from Anas, and from Abu Dharr and Qatadah from Anas, and from Malik ibn Sa'sa'ah from the Prophet ﷺ in the recounting of the ascension, as the story of the opening of his chest on that night and its washing with Zamzam; and then he rules: there is no denying the probability of that occurring twice, once when he was young, and once on the night of the ascension, in preparation for his going to join the heavenly assemblage of the angels, and of conferring with and appearing before the Lord, the Almighty, the Glorious, the Blessed, the Exalted. This event, therefore, the childhood opening in the pastures of Banu Sa'd at the age of four or five, is a distinct occurrence from the opening at the Kaaba before the ascension, which belongs to the later events of the Seerah; and Ibn Kathir further carries, from Ibn Wahb's lines from Anas, reports of a taking to Zamzam and a filling of the chest with wisdom and faith which the scholars connect with the later occasions of the Prophet's ﷺ maturity in Madinah. The believer holds the distinctions without difficulty, for the Lord who opened the heart of his Prophet in childhood could open it again in maturity; and the scholars' care to keep the occasions apart is not doubt but custody, the guarding of a trust of transmission which the Ummah received ungarbled.
The Qur'an itself seals the meaning of the event in the opening of Surah Ash-Sharh: Have We not expanded for you your breast, and removed from you your burden, which almost broke your back, and raised high for you your renown. The mufassirun have read the expansion of the breast, the sharh as-sadr which Allah names here as His own first gift to His Messenger ﷺ, together with the transmitted accounts of the literal opening of his chest, finding in them the sign in the flesh of the grace in the spirit: the heart which revelation would fill was first emptied of every shadow, the breast which would carry the burden of the message was first made wide. And the verse names the exchange which the event enacted in childhood as the pattern of the whole prophethood: with the hardship comes the ease, for Allah joined the awesome opening to the washing of mercy, the fear of the boys to the calm of the mother, and the loss of the desert to the restoration of the town.
The legacy of the event is written upon the body of the Prophet ﷺ and upon the memory of the Ummah together. Upon his body, in the mark of the stitching which Anas saw upon his chest to the end, and in the seal between his shoulders which the seeking ones found and the monk of Busra would verify; and upon the memory of the Ummah, in the story which Muslim mothers and fathers have told their children for fourteen hundred years, that the best of creation was purified as a boy in the desert, and that the water of Zamzam, which pilgrims drink to this day, was made the washing of his heart before any of them drank it. The children of the believers learn from it that their Prophet ﷺ was guarded from before his knowing, that the whisperer has no portion in him, and that the heart which was washed for revelation is the same heart to which every seeking soul turns; and the scholars learn from the critics of the chains the deeper lesson, that the truth of the beloved Prophet ﷺ never needed the inventions of the forgers, because it was carried, whole and exact, from the tents of Banu Sa'd to the horizons of the world by the mercy of Allah, Glorified and Exalted be He, who purifies whom He loves before the world knows them.