Zayd

On the day of his marriage to Khadija,

Muhammad set free Barakah,

the faithful slave he had inherited from his father,

and on the same day

Khadija made him a gift of one of her own slaves,

a fifteen year old young man named Zayd,

who had been given to her by her nephew Hakim.

Zayd was proud of his family roots,

his father Harithah came from the great northern tribe of Kalb,

and his mother was from another famous tribe called Tayy.

But when Zayd was just a small child his mother took him to visit her family,

and the village where they stayed was raided by some horsemen of the Bani Qayn tribe

who carried off the boy Zayd and sold him into slavery.

For years Harithah tried to find news of where his son might be, to no avail,

but some months after he had become Muhammad's slave

Zayd saw some people from the tribe of Kalb visiting the Ka'aba,

and asked them to take a message back to his family.

The message was a poem saying

At the Holy House I live,

so set aside your sorrows,

and no longer weary your camels

searching the earth for me,

for Praise be to God

I am in the best of noble families.

When Harithah got this message

he set off with his brother Ka'b for Makkah straight away,

and going to Muhammad they begged him to let them ransom Zayd

for any amount of money that he wanted.

But Muhammad said

"Let him choose,

and if he chooses you he is yours without ransom".

But when he asked Zayd what he wanted to do,

he answered straight away

"I would not choose any man in preference to you.

You are to me as my father and mother".

When Harithah and Ka'b heard this they were shocked

and said

"Would you choose slavery over freedom,

and above your father and uncle and your family?",

and Zayd said

"Even so,

for I have seen from this man such things

that I could never choose another above him".

With this, Muhammad asked them to come with him to the Ka'aba,

and there in a loud voice he asked all that were present to bear witness

that from that moment Zayd was to be treated as his son,

and from then on he was known as

Zayd ibn Muhammad.

When Harithah and Ka'b realised that Zayd was free

and established with honour in such a noble family,

with a high standing amongst the people of the Sanctuary,

and witnessed the great love and respect shared between Zayd and Muhammad,

they accepted that this was his choice

and they went back to their homeland without bitterness.

Meanwhile, Zayd remained a part of his new family,

and later when Muhammad encountered the angel Jibril

and accepted that he was now to be God's Messenger,

Zayd was one of the very first to hear of what happened

and to accept the truth of Muhammad's Message,

and to follow the Messenger's example

in his way of worshipping the One and only God,

Allah.