THEDATEPALM 23 



" The pains of childbirth came upon her near the 

 trunk of a palm tree. She said: 'Would to God I had 

 died before this, and become a thing forgotten, and 

 lost in oblivion!' And he who was beneath her called 

 to her, saying: 'Be not grieved; now hath God 

 provided a rivulet under thee, and do thou shake the 

 body of the palm tree, and it shall let fall ripe dates 

 upon thee, ready gathered. And eat, drink and calm 

 thy mind.' " 



The commentators,* intent on making the most 

 of this Muslim miracle, assert that the palm was 

 merely a withered trunk, without any crown of 

 leaves, and that this happened in the winter season, 

 when dates could not ripen naturally. An early 

 tradition puts the birth in Egypt, near the town of 

 Ahnas; Sa'ab al Akhbar declares he saw the identical 

 palm there, and MakrizI bears witness to the same 

 effect, but Ibn Batiitah, one of the greatest and most 

 accurate of Arab travelers, saysf he saw "traces" of 

 it in the church at Bayt Lahm (Bethlehem). On the 

 basis of this story, Muhammad advised all mothers 

 to nourish themselves with dates, in order that they 

 might have good and abundant milk. 



But the final stamp of perfection was put on the 

 date by the prophet's own use of it. During his years 

 of poverty at Madina, his food for days at a time con- 

 sisted of nothing but dates, washed down with water — 

 a diet which is still forced upon thousands of nomads 

 each year. J When his circumstances became easier, 

 he developed into a real gourmand, and among his 



* e.g., Al Baydawi, Yahya, .\1 Zamakh. 



tTravels, I, p. 120, Paris, 1853. 



JTold by his wife Ayisheh and set down by the secretary of Al 

 Waqidi. 



