![]() ![]() Muhammad was orphaned at the age of six when his mother died, and went to live with his grandfather Abd-Al-Muttalib, who was in charge of providing the water of the Zam-Zam to pilgrims. Many stories surround his childhood and birth, which was announced in a tale similar to the Christian story of Mary: Muhammad’s mother, a widow named Amina, one day heard a voice say to her: “You carry in your womb the lord of this people, and when he is born, say: ‘I place him beneath the protection of the One, from the evil of every envious person’, then name him Muhammad.” ![]() Muhammad was a Quraysh from the clan of Hashim. But just as it was about to be attacked, the sky went dark as a flock of birds, each carrying a stone in its beak, rained down on the invading army which was forced to retreat. The terrified Quraysh had never seen an elephant, much less a whole herd, so they ran to the mountains to escape, leaving the Ka’ba with no defense. Abraha’s goal was to destroy the Ka’ba and make the Christian church at Sana’ the new religious center of the Arab world. Tradition tells that Abraha, the Abyssinian Christian ruler of Yemen, attacked Mecca with a herd of elephants imported from Africa. Not much is known about his early childhood, but according to tradition Muhammad was born in Mecca in 570, the year known as the Year of the Elephant, in which Mecca was miraculously saved. What is important is what these stories say about our prophets, our messiahs, our kings: that theirs is a holy and eternal vocation, established by God from the moment of creation.” They answer the questions: What does it mean to be a prophet? … It is not important whether the stories describing the childhood of Muhammad, Jesus or David are true. Like the infancy narratives in the Gospels, these stories are not intended to relate historical events, but to elucidate the mystery of the prophetic experience. According to Reza Aslan in No god but God, The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam they “ function as prophetic topos : a conventional literacy theme that can be found in most mythologies. As we have noted with the stories surrounding the Axial Sages, the Old Testament and the Gospels, such accounts are not to be taken literally. Nevertheless we need to keep in mind that the stories of Muhammad’s life were written to satisfy contemporary norms and included miraculous and legendary stories that might be misinterpreted today. These scholars reconstructed their narrative from oral traditions and early documents, and through their effort we know more about Muhammad than we do of any other Prophet. Less than one hundred years after Muhammad’s death in 632 the first Muslim historians began to write about his life. ![]()
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