MUHAMMAD'S BIRTH AND FORTY YEARS PRIOR TO PROPHETHOOD
HIS BIRTH:
Muhammad (Peace be upon him), 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 (Peace be upon him) 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(Peace be upon him) 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 (Peace be upon him) 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 (Peace be upon him).
Traditions delightfully relate how Haleemah and the whole of her household were favoured by  successive strokes of good fortune while the baby Muhammad (Peace be upon him) lived under her  care. Ibn Ishaq states that Haleemah narrated that she along with her husband and a suckling babe,  set out from her village in the company of some women of her clan in quest of children to suckle. She  said:
It was a year of drought and famine and we had nothing to eat. I rode on a brown she-ass. We also  had  with us an old she-camel. By Allâh we could not get even a drop of milk. We could not have a wink of  sleep during the night for the child kept crying on account of hunger. There was not enough milk in  my  breast and even the she-camel had nothing to feed him. We used to constantly pray for rain and  immediate relief. At length we reached Makkah looking for children to suckle. Not even a single  woman  amongst us accepted the Messenger of Allâh (Peace be upon him) offered to her. As soon as they  were  told that he was an orphan, they refused him. We had fixed our eyes on the reward that we would get  from the child’s father. An orphan! What are his grandfather and mother likely to do? So we spurned  him because of that. Every woman who came with me got a suckling and when we were about to  depart, I said to my husband: “By Allâh, I do not like to go back along with the other women without  any baby. I should go to that orphan and I must take him.” He said, “There is no harm in doing so and  perhaps Allâh might bless us through him.” So I went and took him because there was simply no other  alternative left for me but to take him. When I lifted him in my arms and returned to my place I put  him on my breast and to my great surprise, I found enough milk in it. He drank to his heart’s content,  and so did his foster brother and then both of them went to sleep although my baby had not been able