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Recognizing the fact that she and her husband did not have enough means to feed another mouth, Amina always forced her man to ejaculate his semen outside her vagina. This practice helped her to avoid pregnancy for sometime, but one night Abdullah failed to control himself, and she ended up being a pregnant woman.
Amina was angry. She tried her best to destroy the pregnancy, but failed. Unable to do anything else with her conception, she resigned to her fate and decided to carry her pregnancy to its full term. Abdullah, her husband, felt for her discomforts and sought to help by providing her with the services of a slave-girl, named Barakat.
But as misfortune would have it, Amina’s husband died when she was about six months into her pregnancy. This tragedy increased her hatred towards the child she was carrying in her belly. She considered it to be the harbinger of a bad luck. She feared that many more mishaps would befall her after she delivered her jinxed baby.
At the time of his death, Abdullah is believed to have owned five camels, a few sheep, and a female slave of Ethiopian origin, named Barakat.
Not being able to do anything else to alleviate her fear, she carried the fetus until it was ready to take birth as a baby boy. When the time finally arrived, she delivered him without a hitch.
Amina called the boy Kothan, but his grandfather changed it to Muhammad at a later date.[1]
Contrary to general belief, Muhammad is not a Muslim name; rather, it is an Arabian pagan name that was in use even before the birth of Islam’s founder.
Genealogically, it is claimed that Muhammad was a descendent of Ismail who, as the Bible implies, was an illegitimate son of Abraham, born of Hagar, an Egyptian handmaid of his wedded wife, Sarah.[2] It was this son, the majority of Muslims believe, whom Abraham attempted to sacrifice upon God’s command in a dream, and who, as a consequence, earned the heavenly title of “Zabi-Ullah,” i.e. “the one to be sacrificed in the name of God” - - - not his legitimate son Isaac, as claimed by the Book of Genesis.
The actual date of Muhammad’s birth is not known, nor can it be ascertained now. The scholarly hypothesis on this issue is at some variance. Philip K. Hitti says that he was born in or around 571 A.D.[3] Abdullah Yusuf Ali maintains, “The year usually given for the Prophet’s birth is 570 A.D, though the date must be taken as only approximate, being the middle figure between 569 and 571, the extreme possible limits.”[4]
[1] R. V. C. Bodley, The Messenger, p. 5
[2] Genesis, 16:1-15
[3] Philip K. Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 111
[4] The Holy Quran, vol.2, p. 1071.