Bilal

[NaSra]

<b>Bilal tells about the early life of Muhammad</b>


It is now time to tell you about the early life of Muhammad, the Apostle of God, up to the time he married Khadija.


Even in His Apostle’s birth, God tried him, choosing that he be born poor and an orphan. Muhammad’s father, Abdullah, never held his great son. He died when Muhammad was still in the womb, leaving him a legacy of only five lean camels and a few sheep.


Muhammad was born- as tradition and the need to name a day has established- on 20 August, in the year 570 of the Christian era. No one knows for sure. But then was not Christ born, as it were, before himself, before his own calendar, in 4 B.C?


They say there was a festival in Heaven the night Muhammad was born and men heard the angels singing and saw torches in the sky.


They say the Eternal Flame which had burned in Persia for a thousand years went out.


They say that a dove with a jewelled beak flew down from Heaven and stroked its wings on the belly of Amina, the Prophet’s mother, so that the pains of childbirth left her.


They say this, and they say that.


They say a star led three kings to the crib of the infant Christ. They say there was a forth, a queen called Befana, who lost the star in the cloud and came late. But who can tell?


They say that two angels dressed in gleaming white took the heart out of Muhammad’s side when he was a child of four, washed it clean of Adam’s sin, and put it back, without pain. The miracle, they say, was seen by another child who was playing with the Prophet.


All this and more was said because sometimes people want more than they need. But we already have all that we need, the Holy Qur’an, which is a sure guide.


When he was 6, Muhammad’s mother died and he was left twice an orphan. His uncle Abu Talib took him in, loving him as his own, so the boy was never at a loss for a home. Abu Talib even brought him up to Syria with the caravan, schooling him in te occupations of Mecca, trade and transportation. Those merchants of Mecca counted well, but they couldn’t read or write. Muhammad was never taught.


God chose to reveal His Word to an illiterate man, as if He needed a man, who had neither guile nor sin in the written word, an untempted man, who could not fall into the traps of a little knowledge.


Surely I, Bilal, who have drunk ink know how badly, sometimes ink combines with midnight oil. Did Christ read and write? I’ve never known. Even when he wrote with his finger on the ground, it may have been a trick to distract attention- certainly Christ did not leave one written word.


Still stories of the signs and miracles attend Muhammad’s childhood.


On the journey to Syria, it is said that a cloud followed the caravan giving it shade. It is said that a Christian monk examined the boy and saw the seal of prophecy, a mark the size of a large coin, between his shoulder blades. Again, I can only tell you what I have heard, though, I confess that I’ve heard more of these miracles in the ten years since the Prophet died that I did in all the twenty-two years I was with him in his life.


Perhaps these miracles did happen. But as the Qur’an tells us, it is those without knowledge who have the biggest stomach for miracles. If I live long enough I may find some pattern in miracles- perhaps what is a miracle to one is only a parable to another.


Muhammad himself told me that he had been a shepherd and had led out the sheep in the morning, foraging for the black fruit of the arak thorn on the mountains of Mecca.


‘All the prophet’s,’ he said, ‘have been shepherd of sheep.’


Certainly, it is those who were alone in their occupation who became witnesses to the throngs of men; whether in Jerusalem or Damascus.


I’ve often wondered why the sixteen miracles of Moses did not immediately change the world, being witnessed by thousands. But God knows best, perhaps when he gave them the Qur’an, He departed from miracles, having no more need of them.


When he was fourteen, Muhammad was called away from his sheep to become a soldier. He was present at the Battle of the Breach, a vicious one-day war, remembered for the grief of the poetry it inspired.


He was too young for a sword. His duty was to run out and scoop up the spent arrows lying on the ground, then to run back with an armful to his uncle. When he had re-loaded his uncle’s quiver, he would run out again, ducking between the legs of camels, horses and fighting men in search of the terrible sticks.


He never liked to remember that day, saying he wished it have never dawned. The cause of the war, a tribal dance in blood, was the slaying of a sleeping man by a drunken man. It was called the Wicked War.


If we could remove Muhammad’s childhood from its sign’s and wonders, its following clouds and falling stars- which I am not sure we should- we might find it uneventful. In time and place, it might even be called ordinary. He began to trade in a small way, as his father had done, before him, although I’ve never known what goods he sold- fruit or fowl, salt or pepper, scent or silk? Yet, as always, even in his ordinary occupation, Muhammad was not an ordinary man.


In a town of merchants, dealers, money-changers, short-changers and other jugglers, he was known as a man who would sell nothing on its shine. He turned the whole apple over in a buyer’s hand. He could never, as the saying goes, wash a goat by moonlight.


The reputation for fair-trading was so much the talk of the town that other merchants, three times his age, would call on him to settle their disputes. Some of his judgements would do credit to Solomon.


Take that time when they were repairing the wall of the Kaa’ba and the day came to restore the jewel of the house, the Stone given by Gabriel to Abraham at the beginning of religion. You would think they would have lifted it up to its niche in triumph and with joy to everyone. But that was not to be. Four factions, each wanting the honour for itself alone, stood over the Holy Stone. Blood was rising. The young men were running home for their swords. No faction would give way and no one dared touch the stone without losing his hand to one of the other three.


It was then they turned to Muhammad. His solution was simple. He swept off his cloak and laid it on the ground. He put the Black Stone in the middle of the cloak and told a man of each faction to take a corner. Together all four lifted the cloak and carried the Stone to its place in the corner of the wall. With his own hand Muhammad set the Stone.