Mahomet - Founder of Islam | Page 8

adds the chronicler
naively, in spite of this their cattle returned to them thin and yielding
little, while Hailima's waxed fat and fruitful. These legends are the
translation into poetic fact of the peace and love surrounding Mahomet
during the five years he spent with Hailima; for in all primitive
communities every experience must pass through transmutation into the
definite and tangible and be given a local habitation and a name.
When Mahomet was two years old and the time had come to restore
him to his mother, Hailima took him back to Mecca; but his mother
gave him to her again because he had thriven so well under desert skies,
and she feared the stifling air of Mecca for her only son. So Hailima
returned with him and brought him up as one of her children until he
was five, when the first signs of his nervous, highly-strung nature
showed themselves in a kind of epileptic fit. The Arabians, unskilled as
they were in any medical science, attributed manifestations of this kind
to evil spirits, and it is not surprising that we find Hailima bringing him
back to his grandfather in great alarm. So ended his fostering by the
desert and by Hailima.
Of these five years spent among the Beni Sa'ad chroniclers have spoken
in much detail, but their confused accounts are so interwoven with
legend that it is impossible to re-create events, and we can only obtain a
general idea of his life as a tiny child among the children of the tribe,
sharing their fortunes, playing and quarrelling with them, and at

moments, when the spirit seemed to advance beyond its dwelling-place,
gazing wide-eyed upon the limitless desert under the blaze of sun or
below the velvet dark, with swift, half-conscious questionings uttering
the universal why and how [31] of childhood. Legend regards even this
early time as one of preparation for his mission, and there are stories of
the coming of two men clothed in white and shining garments, who
ripped open his body, took out his heart, and having purged it of all
unrighteousness, returned it, symbolically cleansing him of sin that he
might forward the work of God. It was an imaginative rightness that
decreed that Mahomet's most impressionable years should be spent in
the great desert, whose twin influences of fierceness and fatalism he
felt throughout his life, and which finally became the key-notes of his
worship of Allah.
Hailima, convinced that her foster-son was possessed by evil spirits,
resolved to return him to Abd al Muttalib, but as she journeyed through
Upper Mecca, the child wandered away and was lost for a time.
Hailima hurried, much agitated, to his grandfather, who immediately
sent his sons to search, and after a short time they returned with the boy,
unharmed and unfrightened by his adventure. The legend--it is quite a
late accretion--is interesting, as showing an acquaintance with, and a
parallelism to, the story of the losing of Jesus among the Passover
crowds, and the search for Him by His kindred. Mahomet was at last
lodged with his mother, who indignantly explained to Hailima the real
meaning of his malady, and spoke of his future glory as manifested to
her by the light that enfolded her before his birth. Not long after,
Amina decided to visit her [32] husband's tomb at Medina, and thither
Mahomet accompanied her, travelling through the rocky, desolate
valleys and hills that separate the two, with just his mother and a slave
girl.
Mahomet was too young to remember much about the journey to
Medina, except that it was hot and that he was often tired, and since his
father was but a name to him, the visit to his tomb faded altogether
from his mind. But on the homeward journey a calamity overtook him
which he remembered all his life. Amina, weakened by journeying and
much sorrow, and perhaps feeling her desire for life forsake her after

the fulfillment of her pilgrimage, sickened and died at Abwa, and
Mahomet and the slave girl continued their mournful way alone.
Amina is drawn by tradition in very vague outline, and Mahomet's
memory of her as given in the Kuran does not throw so much light
upon the woman herself as upon her child's devotion and affectionate
memory of the mother he lost almost before he knew her. His grief for
her was very real; she remained continually in his thoughts, and in after
years he paid tribute at her tomb to her tenderness and love for him.
"This is the grave of my mother ... the Lord hath permitted me to visit
it.... I called my mother to remembrance, and the tender memory of her
overcame me and I wept."
The sensitive, over-nervous child, left thus solitary, away from all his
kindred,