Since this subject has come up, I thought I would share a passage from the
book 'Muhammad-his life based on the earliest sources' by Martin Lings.  I
have paraphrased it a little to shorten the length.

It was the custom of all great families of Arab towns to send their sons,
soon after their birth into the desert, to be suckled and weaned and spend
part of their childhood amongst one of the Bedouin tribes.  Epidemics were
not infrequent and the rate of infant mortality was high.  Also the desert
was considered a palace of nobility and freedom and the towns were places of
corruption.  Bedouin language was also considered more pure.

So the bond with the desert had to be renewed in every generation- fresh air
for the breast, pure Arabic for the tongue, freedom for the soul; and many
of the sons of Quraysh, the tribe of Muhammad, were kept as long as eight
years in the desert, so that it might make a lasting impression upon them,
though a lesser number of years was enough for that.

Some of the tribes had a high reputation for nursing and rearing children,
and amongst these were the Bani Sa'd ibn Bakr.  Aminah, the mother of
Muhammad was in favor of entrusting her son to the care of a woman of this
tribe.  They came periodically to Mecca for nurselings.  Halimah, who was
accompanied by her husband, Harith, and a recently born son of their own
whom she was nursing.  "It was a year of drought," she said,  "and we had
nothing left.  We were kept awake all night by our son who was wailing for
hunger, for I had not enough in my breasts to feed him."

They reached Mecca and set about looking for nurselings, and Aminah offered
her son first to one and then to another until finally she had tried them
all and they had all refused.  "That", said Halimah, "was because we hoped
for some favour from the boy's father. 'An orphan!' we said. 'What will his
mother and grandfather be able to do for us?"  Not that they would have
wanted direct payment for their services, since it was considered
dishonourable for a woman to take a fee for suckling a child.  The recompense
they hoped for was, though less direct and less immediate, was of a far
wider scope.  This interchange of benefits between townsman and nomad was
the nature of things, for each was poor where the other was rich, and rich
where they other was poor.  The advantage for the Bedouin was to make an
enduring link with one of the great families.  The foster-mother gained a
new son who would look on her as a second mother and feel a filial duty to
her for the rest of his life.  He would also feel himself a brother to her
own children.  Nor was the relationship merely a nominal one.  The Arabs
hold that the breast is one of the channels of heredity and that a suckling
drinks qualities into his nature from the nurse who suckles him.  But little
or nothing could be expected from the foster-child himself until he grew up,
and meantime his father could normally be relied on to fulfil the duties of
his son.  A grandfather was too remote.  Muhammad's father had died and his
mother, Aminah, was poor.

On the other side, though the foster-parents were not expected to be rich,
they must not be too poverty-stricken, and it was evident that Halimah and
her husband were poorer than any of their companions.  Whenever the choice
lay between her and another, the other was preferred and chosen; and it was
not long before every one of the Bani Sa'd women except Halimah had been
entrusted with a babe.  Only the poorest nurse was without a nurseling; and
only the poorest nurseling was without a nurse.

"When we decided to leave Mecca," said Halimah, "I told my husband: 'I hate
to return in the company of my friends without having taken a babe to
suckle.  I shall go to that orphan and take him.'  As thou wilt,' he said.
'It may be that God will bless us in him.'  So I went and took him, for no
reason save that I could find none but him.  I carried him back to where our
mounts were stationed, and no sooner had I put him in my bosom than my
breasts overflowed with milk for him.  He drank his fill, and with him his
foster-brother drank likewise his fill.  Then they both slept."


Lisa Haider