Muhammad’s Birth and Forty Years prior to Prophethood

His Birth

Muhammad [pbuh], the Master of Prophets, was born in Bani Hashim lane in Makkah on Monday morning, the ninth of Rabi‘ Al-Awwal, the same year of the Elephant Event, and forty years of the reign of Kisra (Khosru Nushirwan), i.e. the twentieth or twenty-second of April, 571 A.D., according to the scholar Muhammad Sulaimân Al-Mansourpuri, and the astrologer Mahmûd Pasha. [Muhadarat Tareekh Al-Umam Al-Islamiyah 1/62; Rahmat-ul-lil'alameen 1/38,39]

Ibn Sa‘d reported that Muhammad’s mother said: "When he was born, there was a light that issued out of my pudendum and lit the palaces of Syria." Ahmad reported on the authority of ‘Arbadh bin Sariya something similar to this. [Mukhtasar Seerat-ur-Rasool, p.12; Tabaqat Ibn Sa'd 1/63]

It was but controversially reported that significant precursors accompanied his birth: fourteen galleries of Kisra’s palace cracked and rolled down, the Magians’ sacred fire died down and some churches on Lake Sawa sank down and collapsed. [Reported by Al-Baihaqi, but Al-Ghazali didn't approve it - see Fiqh-us-Seerah p.46]

His mother immediately sent someone to inform his grandfather ‘Abdul-Muttalib of the happy event. Happily he came to her, carried him to Al-Ka‘bah, prayed to Allâh and thanked Him. ‘Abdul-Muttalib called the baby Muhammad, a name not then common among the Arabs. He circumcised him on his seventh day as was the custom of the Arabs. [Ibn Hisham 1/159,160; Zad Al-Ma'ad 1/18; Muhadarat Tareekh Al-Umam Al-Islamiyah 1/62]

The first woman who suckled him after his mother was Thuyebah, the concubine of Abu Lahab, with her son, Masrouh. She had suckled Hamzah bin ‘Abdul-Muttalib before and later Abu Salamah bin ‘Abd Al-Asad Al-Makhzumi. [Talqeeh Furoom Ahl-al-Athar p.4; Mukhtasar Seerat-ur-Rasool p.13]

Babyhood It was the general custom of the Arabs living in towns to send their children away to bedouin wet nurses so that they might grow up in the free and healthy surroundings of the desert whereby they would develop a robust frame and acquire the pure speech and manners of the bedouins, who were noted both for chastity of their language and for being free from those vices which usually develop in sedentary societies. The Prophet [pbuh] was later entrusted to Haleemah bint Abi Dhuaib from Bani Sa‘d bin Bakr. Her husband was Al-Harith bin ‘Abdul ‘Uzza called Abi Kabshah, from the same tribe. Muhammad [pbuh] had several foster brothers and sisters, ‘Abdullah bin Al-Harith, Aneesah bint Al-Harith, Hudhafah or Judhamah bint Al-Harith (known as Ash-Shayma’), and she used to nurse the Prophet [pbuh] and Abu Sufyan bin Al-Harith bin ‘Abdul-Muttalib, the Prophet’s cousin. Hamzah bin ‘Abdul-Muttalib, the Prophet’s uncle, was suckled by the same two wet nurses, Thuyeba and Haleemah As-Sa‘diyah, who suckled the Prophet [pbuh]. [Za'd Al-Ma'ad 1/19]