The Blessed Birth

He ﷺ was born in Makkah in the Year of the Elephant, on a Monday in the month of Rabi' al-Awwal, in the house of his uncle's clan, Banu Hashim. Asked years later about fasting on Mondays, he ﷺ said simply: that is the day I was born, and the day revelation first came down to me.

His mother Aminah sent word to 'Abdul-Muttalib, and the old man came running with joy. He took his grandson in his arms, carried him into the Ka'bah, and thanked Allah. He named him Muhammad, the praised one, a name almost unknown among the Arabs. When asked why he had chosen a name none of his ancestors bore, he answered: I wished that he be praised in the heavens and on the earth.

He was born an orphan, his father 'Abdullah already resting in Yathrib, the city that would one day receive the son as its own and be renamed by his presence: al-Madinah. His nursing began with his mother, then with Thuwaybah, the freedwoman of his uncle Abu Lahab, until a wet nurse from the desert tribes came to take him, as was the custom of noble Makkan families.

The sirah books relate signs surrounding that birth, and scholars sift them carefully. But the surest sign needed no marvel: within sixty-three years, the baby born that Monday would, without army or treasury at the start, replace idols with tawhid from Yemen to Syria, and his name, exactly as his grandfather hoped, would be praised in every land on earth, joined to Allah's name in every adhan: wa ashhadu anna Muhammadan rasulullah.