a mercantile expedition to Syria, from which he never returned, being overtaken with a fatal illness and dying at Medina.
Mohammed was born shortly after his father's death and this concatenation was probably one of the most important events in the career of the prophet, since it must have influenced the lines along which his Edipus-complex developed.
Either as the result of the ill-health of his mother, Amina,[1] or because it was customary among the better class Arab families of those times,[2] Mohammed was put out to nurse, and he was first suckled by a slave-woman of his uncle Lahab, his father's brother. This woman had recently suckled Lahab's youngest brother, Hamza, so Mohammed thus became foster-brother to his own uncle—an event which in all probability contributed later to the development of his chief phantasy.
Later Mohammed was given another wet-nurse, Halima, and she took him away with her to her tribe, the Bani Sad, so that for two years, until she weaned him, Mohammed did not see his mother. Halima then brought Mohammed to this mother, and the sight of so sturdy a child delighted Amina so much that she begged Halima to take the child back again with her to the desert, which, accordingly, Halima did, and for another two years the young Mohammed remained among the Bani Sad.
When about four years of age Mohammed suffered, for the first time, from one of those paroxysmal attacks to which allusion has already been made. In spite of a good deal of uneasy apprehension which the onset of these seizures aroused in the mind of Halima, she continued, at the earnest entreaty of Amina, to keep Mohammed with her for yet one more year, after which she restored the child to his mother.
In the sixth year of his life Mohammed was taken by his mother to visit her relatives in Medina and she alighted from her camel at the house where her husband had died and was buried.
This visit to Medina was vividly recalled by Mohammed in after years, when, at the age of fifty-three he once more gazed upon the house. "Here", he said, "it was my mother lodged with me; in this place is the tomb of my father."
On the return journey to Mecca, Amina fell ill and died. The little orphan was carried back to Mecca by Omm Ayman, his
