Ṭalḥah ibn ʿAmr narrated on the authority of ʿAṭāʾ, from Ibn ʿAbbās—one report having become interwoven with another—that Āminah bint Wahb said:
“I conceived him—meaning the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him—and I experienced no hardship with him until I gave birth. When he parted from me a light went forth with him, illuminating everything between the east and the west. He then settled upon the ground, resting on his hands, took a handful of earth, clasped it, and raised his head toward the sky.
Some have said that he came down kneeling on his knees, his head lifted toward heaven (1), and that a light accompanied him which lit up the palaces and markets of Syria, so that I could see the necks of the camels in Buṣrā.
Al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū Bakr al-Bayhaqī (2) said: Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥāfiẓ narrated to us; Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl narrated to us; Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq (3) narrated to us; Abū Bishr (4) Mubashshir ibn al-Ḥasan narrated to us; Yaʿqūb ibn Muḥammad al-Zuhrī narrated to us; ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿImrān narrated to us; ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUthmān ibn Abī Sulaymān ibn Jubayr ibn Muṭʿim narrated to us from his father, from Ibn Abī Suwayd al-Thaqafī, from ʿUthmān ibn Abī al-ʿĀṣ, who said:
“My mother told me that she was present when Āminah bint Wahb gave birth to the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, on the very night he was born. She said, ‘Nothing in the house that I looked at but shone with light, and I saw the stars drawing so near that I feared they would fall upon me.’ ”
Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ (5) relates from al-Shifāʾ (6), the mother of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf, that she acted as midwife. When the newborn came to rest in her hands and cried, she heard a voice saying, “May Allah have mercy on you,” and a light burst from him by which she saw the palaces of Byzantium (7).
Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq (8) said: “When she had delivered him, she sent her maidservant to ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib—his father had died while she was still pregnant. (Some say ʿAbd Allāh died when the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, was twenty-eight months old; Allah knows best which account is correct.) She said, ‘A child has been born…’ ”