The Opening of the Chest

While he ﷺ was still a boy among the children of Banu Sa'd, playing near the tents, something happened that sent Halimah's son running home in terror: two men in white had taken his Qurayshi brother, laid him down, and opened his chest.

The Prophet ﷺ himself described it in the authentic narration: Jibril came to him, took him, opened his chest, and brought out his heart. From it he removed a dark clot and said: this was Shaytan's portion of you. Then he washed the heart in a basin of gold with water of Zamzam, restored it, and returned him whole. The boys ran to Halimah crying that Muhammad had been killed, and they met him walking back, alive, his face changed.

Anas (ra), who narrated the event, said: I used to see the mark of that stitching in his chest. Halimah and her husband, shaken, returned him to his mother in Makkah soon after, fearful for the child though they had seen no harm in him.

The scholars pause here with care: this was a real event, not a vision, a purification of the vessel that would one day carry revelation. It would happen again on the night of the Isra, before he ﷺ was raised through the heavens. The heart that would bear the weight of the Qur'an was washed, by Allah's command, with the water of the well his ancestor's thirst had brought out of the sand.