Mahomet was too young to remember much about the journey to Medina,
except that it was hot and that he was often tired, and since his father
was but a name to him, the visit to his tomb faded altogether from his
mind. But on the homeward journey a calamity overtook him which he
remembered all his life. Amina, weakened by journeying and much
sorrow, and perhaps feeling her desire for life forsake her after the
fulfillment of her pilgrimage, sickened and died at Abwa, and Mahomet
and the slave girl continued their mournful way alone.

Amina is drawn by tradition in very vague outline, and Mahomet's memory
of her as given in the Kuran does not throw so much light upon the woman
herself as upon her child's devotion and affectionate memory of the
mother he lost almost before he knew her. His grief for her was very
real; she remained continually in his thoughts, and in after years
he paid tribute at her tomb to her tenderness and love for him.

"This is the grave of my mother ... the Lord hath permitted me to visit
it.... I called my mother to remembrance, and the tender memory of her
overcame me and I wept."

The sensitive, over-nervous child, left thus solitary, away from all his
kindred, must have brought back with him to Mecca confused but vivid
impressions of the long journey and of the catastrophe which lay at the
end of it. The uncertainty of his future, and the joys of gaining at
last a foster-father in Abd al Muttalib, finds reflection in the Kuran
in one little burst of praise to God: "Did He not find thee an orphan,
and furnish thee with a refuge?"

Life for two years as the foster-child of Abd al Muttalib, the venerable,
much honoured chief of the house of Hashim, passed very pleasantly for