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Shall we remember him? Shall we recall our primary knowledge about him?
Shall we remind ourselves of his good manners and etiquettes?
What do we know about him? Where shall we start?
In order to remember his life again and learn our lessons from his blessed life, let’s start with the following question…Who is He? And then go along with his birth for now.
He is Muhammad, son of Abdullah, son of Abdulmuttalib, son of Hashim, son of Abdmanaf, son of Qusay, son of Kilab, son of Murrah, son of Ka’ab, son of Lo’ay, son of Ghaleb, son of Fihr, son of Malek, son of Nadr, son of Kinanah, son of Khozaima, son of Mudrika, son of Ilyas, son of Mudar, son of Nizar, son of Ma’ad, son of Adnan.
In other words, he is Prophet Muhammad – Peace and Blessings be Upon Him
His great great fathers descent upto Adnan and Adnan roots back to Prophet Ismail and his father Prophet Ibrahim. Prophet Muhammad was born into the most noble and most honoured family in the Quraish, the most dominant tribe in the city of Mecca. Neither his father and father’s ancestors nor his mother and mother’s ancestors followed the jahiliyya[1] traditions (like drinking alcohol, committing adultery etc). His great grandmothers and great grandfathers were all pure and preserved from bad habits of jahiliyya.
His father, Abdullah was a trader. Marrying with Amina, he went through Damascus and Gaza for trading and he got sick while coming back home Mecca. He stayed in Medina with his uncles’ house around a month and the saddening news reached Mecca. Abdullah deceased at the age of twenty five. Amina was pregnant with Muhammad and he couldn’t see his beloved son.
Prophet Muhammad was born in 571, 12th of Rabiulawwal (hijri calendar) or 20th of April (Gregorian calendar) on Monday. There were some important incidents in the night of his birth.
One of them was the appearance of a star. It was narrated from Aisha (RA) that one Jewish trader in Mecca saw that star and asked to the people:
-O the people of Quraish! Is there a new-born baby tonight? No, replied the crowd. He went on:
-O the people of Quraish! Remember what I say now. Tonight the Prophet of the Akhirzaman has been born. There is a reddish hairy spot between his two shoulder blades.
Going back home some of them in the crowd learnt that a new baby boy was born whose name was Muhammad, the son of Abdullah bin Abdulmuttalib. The following day, they went to the Jewish trader and informed him about the baby boy. They took the trader to the house of Amina. When she brought the baby and showed the spot at his back between two shoulder blades, the Jewish trader got fainted. When he woke up, he added:
“I swear by God, the prophethood is not with the sons of Israel from now on, neither the book. The scholars of sons of Israel will not have their honour and this is the time that Jewish scholars lose their dignity. Arabs will be honoured by such a great glory and excellence. O People of the Quraish, enjoy your time. I swear by God that you will be strengthened with power and ability to spread through from the east to the west.
The famous poet from Medina, Hassan b Sabit quotes: I was around seven with a quite tall body and mature enough to remember what I heard. One day in Yasrib (Medina), a Jewish went upto a pavilion and yelled:
– O the Jewish community!
They asked what he wanted from them. And he added: The star, which was going to rise on the night of Ahmad’s birth, has been raised tonight.
This extraordinary event was marked by the people of the book. They confirmed that the Last Prophet was born. This was not the only event occurred at the time of his birth. There are some others to cover in the next article.
[1] Jahiliyya is an Islamic concept of “the state of ignorance of the guidance from God” or “Days of Ignorance” referring to the conditions of people found themselves in pre-Islamic Arabia, i.e. prior to the revelation of the Qur’an to Prophet Muhammad. By extension it means the state of anyone not following Islam and the Qur’an.