Halīma bint Abī Dhuʾaib

Representation of Halīma with Mohammed from an Ottoman Siyer-i Nebi work , 1594.

Halīma bint Abī Dhuʾaib ( Arabic حليمة بنت ابي ذؤيب, DMG Ḥalīma bint Abī Ḏuʾaib ) was a wet nurse from the Arab tribe of the Banū Saʿd ibn Bakr, with whom the Prophet Mohammed spent part of his childhood. There are some legends in Islamic tradition about his stay with their tribe, who lived nomadically .

The Arab sources report that Mohammed Halīma was handed over shortly after his birth and stayed with her until the end of the second year of life. The custom of leaving children to breastfeed women who lived in the desert is said to have been very common among wealthy families in Mecca . The wet nurses received payment for this. The breastfeeding relationship established a milk relationship with the wet nurse and her family, which was similar to the usual blood relationship. Mohammed is said to have referred to Halīma as his mother as long as she lived. When she was old, he was said to be her with the help of the fortune that he had acquired through his wife, Hadidja bint Chuwailidhad acquired, supported. Even their tribe, which belonged to the Hawāzin tribal association, felt a lifelong bond with Mohammed, although the latter temporarily made pacts with his opponents. When many Hawāzin were captured after the Battle of Hunain in 630, Halīma's daughter Shaimāʾ, who was one of the prisoners, was able to prove that she was Mohammed's milk sister and was subsequently released. Men of the Sand ibn Bakr also played an important role in the subsequent negotiations that led to the submission of the Hawāzin to Muhammad's authority and their acceptance of Islam.

There are some legends about Muhammad's stay with Halīma in the desert. In Ibn Ishaaq is said that before the transfer of Mohammed to Halima there was a great drought in the nomadic Arabs of the desert and gave neither the animals nor women's breasts milk. However, after Mohammed came into their care, the breasts and udders in their tribe overflowed with milk, so that people and animals were saved from dying of thirst. Because of the prosperity that Mohammed brought to the Saakad ibn Bakr tribe through his baraka , Halīma asked his mother, after she had weaned the boy, to keep him with her. After much urging from Halīma, Muhammad's mother finally granted her this request. A month later, however, an incident occurred that prompted them to quickly bring the boy back to his mother. While one day Mohammed and her son were tending sheep behind their tents, two men dressed in white came and took Mohammed with them, opened his stomach and looked for something in it. Since Halīma's husband feared that evil forces had taken hold of the boy, she quickly brought him back to his mother. This explained to Halīma that no evil forces could take possession of Mohammed because he had been chosen by God before he was born. In a second version of the story, which Ibn Ishāq immediately follows up on the first, Mohammed explains that the two men who opened his stomach took this opportunity to clean his inside with snow, split his heart and remove a dark clot of blood from it. This narrative is the starting point for the legend about Muhammad's split breast.

The Halīma story apparently also had the function of showing Muhammad's mediating function between the settled and the nomadic Arabs. As Ibn Ishāq reports, Mohammed is said to have said to his companions: "I am the most Arabic of all of you, for I belong to the Quraysh myself, but I was brought to breastfeed by the Banū Saʿd ibn Bakr." ( anā aʿrabu-kum: anā Qurašīyun wa-sturḍiʿtu fī Banī Saʿd b.Bakr ).

The Halīma legend is further developed in later Arabic works on the Prophet. For example, in his book on "Proof of Prophethood", al-Baihaqī said that Halīma was advised to consult a fortune teller after the incident with the two white-clad men. She initially refused to do this, but finally agreed. When the fortune-teller heard her story, he told the men around to kill the child immediately because it would bring harm to the Arabs and destroy their religion. Halīma quickly grabbed the child and brought it back to Mecca. There the child mysteriously disappeared, but Halima received help from a mysterious voice ( hātif ) and was thus able to find the child and bring it back to its mother.

literature

Arabic sources

• Ibn Hischām: Kitāb Sīrat Rasūl Allāh From d. Hs. On Berlin, Leipzig, Gotha a. Leyden ed. by Ferdinand Wüstenfeld. 2 vol. Göttingen 1858–59. Pp. 103-105. Digitized

Secondary literature

• Avner Gilʻadi: Infants, Parents and Wet Nurses: Medieval Islamic Views on Breastfeeding and their social implication. Suffering u. a .: Brill 1999. pp. 34-38.
• Marion Holmes Katz: The birth of the prophet Muhammad: devotional piety in Sunni Islam. London 2009. pp. 41-49.
• W. Montgomery Watt: Art. "Ḥalīma bint Abī Dhuʾayb" in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition Vol. III, p. 94.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Watt in EI² III 94.
2. ↑ Cf. Gil'adi 37f.
3. ^ Cf. W. Montgomery Watt: Muhammad at Medina. Oxford 1956. pp. 100f.
4. ↑ Cf. the translation in Ibn Ishāq : The Life of the Prophet . Translated by Gernot Rotter . Stuttgart: Goldmann 1982. pp. 28-31.
5. ↑ Cf. Ibn Ishāq 31-32.
6. ↑ See Harris Birkeland : The Legend of the Opening of Muhammed's Breast . Oslo 1955. pp. 6-12.
7. ↑ See Gil'adi 35.
8. ↑ See Katz 45.