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Updated: May 19, 2025
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.
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.
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.
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.
Those of rich parents were eagerly spoken for, but no one would care for the little fatherless child. And it happened that Hailima also was unsuccessful in her search, and was like to have returned to her people disconsolate, but when she saw Mahomet she bethought herself and said to her husband: "By the God of my fathers, I will not go back to my companions without foster-child.
No more beautiful and tender legends cluster round Mahomet than those which grace his life in the desert under the loving care of his foster-mother Hailima. She was a woman of the tribe of Beni Sa'ad, who for generations had roamed the desert, tent-dwellers, who visited cities but rarely, and kept about them the remoteness and freedom of their adventurous life beneath the sun and stars.
I will take this orphan." And her husband replied: "It cannot harm thee to do this, and if thou takest him it may be that through him God will bless us." So Hailima took him, and she relates how good fortune attended her from that day.
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.
Among these was Hailima, who, according to tradition, has left behind her the narrative of that dreadful journey across the desert with her husband and her child, and with only an ass and a she-camel for transport.
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.
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