Excerpts from "The Sealed Nectar"
It was the general custom of the Arabs living in towns to send and their children away to bedouin wet nurses so that they might grow up in the free and healthy surroundings of the desert. Thereby they would develop a strong body and acquire the pure speech and manners of the bedouins, who were noted both for chastity of their language and for being free from the vices which usually develop in inactive societies.
The prophet was later entrusted to Halimah 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 Sallallahu sallam 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 take care of the Prophet, 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, Thuwaibah and As-Sa'diyah, who suckled the prophet.
There are delightful traditions relating how Halimah and her entire household were favoured by successive strokes of good fortune while Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam lived under her care as an infant. Ibn Ishaq states that Halimah narrated that she, along with her husband and a suckling infant, set out from her village in the company of some women from Banu Sa'd bin Bakr 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 mule. We also had with us an old she-camel. By Allah, 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 because 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 women among us accepted when Allah's Messenger Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was 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 were his grandfather and mother likely to do? So we refuse to accept him because of that.
Every woman who came with me got a suckling infant and when we were about to depart, I said to my husband: "By Allah, I do not like to go back along with the other women without any infant. I should go to that orphan and I must take him." He said, "There is no harm in doing so and perhaps Allah might bless us fruit him." so I went and took him because there was simply no 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 to sleep the previous night. My husband then went to the she-camel to milk it and, to his astonishment, he found plenty of milk in it. He milked it and we drink to our fill, and enjoyed a sound sleep during the night. The next morning, my husband said: "By Allah! O Halimah, you must understand that you have got a blessed child." And I replied: "By the grace of Allah, I hope so."
The second part of this section will be posted soon In Sha Allah...