Aminah's Journey to Yathrib with Young Muhammad

Around 577 CE, Aminah bint Wahb undertook a journey from Mecca to Yathrib (Medina)—approximately 280 miles (450 km)—with her six-year-old son Muhammad and his caretaker Umm Ayman (Baraka). The purpose was to visit the grave of Aminah’s late husband Abdullah, who had died in Yathrib before Muhammad’s birth, and to visit Aminah’s maternal relatives, the Banu Najjar clan. They stayed in Yathrib for one month, during which young Muhammad met his maternal relatives for the first time—a connection that would prove prophetically significant decades later when Yathrib (renamed Medina) would become the city that welcomed Muhammad during the Hijra in 622 CE, with the Banu Najjar among his earliest supporters. The journey would end in tragedy on the return trip when Aminah fell ill and died at Abwa, leaving Muhammad doubly orphaned at age six. This brief journey gave Muhammad his only extended exposure to the city that would become his refuge and the capital of early Islam.