The Two Guardians

After Aminah's death, the orphan ﷺ passed into the care of his grandfather 'Abdul-Muttalib, the aged chief of Makkah, and the old man loved him with a love his own sons had not seen. A cushion was spread for 'Abdul-Muttalib in the shade of the Ka'bah where none of his sons dared sit, but when the small boy came and sat on it, and his uncles moved to pull him off, the grandfather said: leave my son be; by Allah, he has a great destiny.

The shelter lasted two years. When the Prophet ﷺ was eight, 'Abdul-Muttalib died, and the boy wept behind his bier. With his passing, the care of Muhammad ﷺ went, by the grandfather's own instruction, to his uncle Abu Talib, full brother of 'Abdullah.

Abu Talib was not wealthy, but what he had he shared, and he loved his nephew beyond his own sons: he would not sleep until the boy slept, took him wherever he went, and was heard to say that he had never known him to lie. For more than forty years, through everything that was coming, persecution, boycott, the rage of all Quraysh, Abu Talib's protection never once broke.

And so the orphan was never abandoned. From mother to Halimah, to Umm Ayman, to a grandfather, to an uncle, hands were arranged for him before he needed them. He ﷺ grew up knowing what it is to lose, and knowing, just as deeply, what it is to be carried by kindness. Both lessons are visible in every page of his later mercy.