Halima Sadiyah

Her full name was Halima bint Abi Dhu'ayb, and she was born in the late 6th century, a member of the Banu Sa'd. The Banu Sa'd was a royal Arabian tribe of nomads. The tribe's travels took them regularly to Mecca, where mothers would offer their newborns to women of the Banu Sa'd to take away and wet nurse them. This was done to ensure the children would be exposed to only Arabic and avoid some of the diseases that could travel through a city.

One season, as the Banu Sa'd reached Mecca, one women with an eight-day-old baby was having difficulty finding a wet nurse. This was Aminah bint Wahb, whose husband Abdullah had died young, leaving Aminah pregnant. The Banu Sa'd women were reluctant to take on a charge when the father's death meant they might not get paid.

Halima felt sorry for the mother, and also did not want to be the only woman who did not have a child to nurse, so she took on the child Muhammad. (She did have a child of her own, but wet nursing was an occupation that brought in money.) Muhammad was with her and the Banu Sa'd tribe until the age of five, when she returned Muhammad to his mother and grandfather.

Later in life, Halima went to the now grown and married Muhammad to complain about the hardships she was going through. Muhammad mentioned her concerns to his wife, Khadija, who gave Halima some sheep and camels.

Halima and her husband converted to the new religion promoted by her fostered child in the aftermath of the conquest of Mecca. The takeover of Mecca by Muhammad and Muhammad's followers will be the next topic.

Milk Kinship

The Koran is the only text of the Abrahamic religions (Islam, Christianity, Judaism) that mentions anything related to mothers and the feeding of children. It is not explicit, but mentions the relationship with:

We have enjoined man to be kind to his parents. His mother has carried him in travail, and bore him in travail, and his gestation and weaning take thirty months. [46: 15]

The mother's role clearly extended past birth to breastfeeding until the child was on to solid foods. Muslim philosophers went further: "No milk is more blessed than mother's milk for the infant." and "There is no better milk for an infant than mother's milk." are some of the statements found that expanded on the Koran's verse.

There is also:

And if you wish to have your children nursed by a substitute, there is no blame upon you as long as you give payment according to what is acceptable. [2:233]

Because of the practice of employing a wet nurse—a woman other than the baby's biological mother to breastfeed the baby—another discussion arose: if kinship is established by the action of breastfeeding, what does that mean for the future of the child?

In Western Europe, "milk siblings"—children linked by different mothers but by the same wet nurse—could be raised together, the wet nurse's child receiving some of the same benefits as the employer's child. Alexander Neckham, born on the same day as the future King Richard I of England, was raised alongside him in his early years, since Neckham's mother, Hodierna, was employed to live in the palace and nurse both babies. (It was believed that only a woman who had just given birth could lactate, so to find a wet nurse you would seek a woman who had just had her own child.)

In Islamic law, however, "milk kinship" (rida'a) presented an issue that was apparently not a concern in Europe. Because of the bond created between mother and child, children nursed by the same woman experience "milk kinship" which is a bond strong enough that marriage between them would be considered incestuous. Families must be known to each other to prevent inappropriate marriages.

This is an issue in modern times, because:

Prohibited to you [for marriage] are…your milk mothers who nursed you and your sisters through nursing…[Nisa 4:23]

There are HMBs (Human Milk Banks) for infants in hospitals. These are usually from donor mothers, and the milk is mixed. There is no way to know whence comes the milk fed to a baby that needs it. Therefore, when the baby is old enough to consider marriage, it is impossible to know whether he/she has any "milk kinship" with a potential mate.

Of course, the Koran comes from the sayings and experiences of Muhammad. What we have been talking about is no different. Muhammad had a wet nurse, and tomorrow we'll see a brief biography of Halima bint Abi Dhu'ayb.

Slavery and Wet Nursing

Yesterday I talked about philosopher Ramon Lull and his thoughts on the role of human milk in the proper raising of children. He was born in 1232 in Majorca City (now called Palma), which had been recaptured from Muslims in 1229. In his lifetime, Majorca City had a population of up to 30% Muslim slaves from the Christian reconquista.

There is plenty of evidence that women slaves were preferred to men because of their role in household tasks, and especially as wet nurses. Especially in the Iberian Peninsula as opposed to elsewhere in the Mediterranean, wet nurses were often slaves.

Because of Ramon Llull's ideas—and of course the tendency of human populations to despise those who are different—these Muslim slaves were often forced to become baptizata, "the baptized" (converts from Islam), so that they would be proper wet nurses and caregivers for the children.

This relationship could be beneficial to the wet nurse, besides the opportunity to be treated well while they had primary "control" over the newborn. In 1266, a Barcelonan patrician named Romeu Durfort left his baptizata wet nurse a legacy of 40 sous and charged his heir with maintaining her for life. In 1280, a burgess freed her baptizata, Esclarmonda, and all Esclarmonda's children in gratitude for Esclarmonda's wet nursing.

This is not to say that life was wonderful for the Muslim-born mother:

In this society elite Christian mothers were to bear legitimate children and enslaved Muslim women who bore children were urged to convert, watch their masters send their infants to be nursed by someone else, and then serve as wet nurses to the heirs of their masters and mistresses. [link, p.169]

Llull's work on raising children also shows a distrust of "immoral servant women" and warns that mothers should not leave their daughters at home with the servants when the mothers go out. Llull assumes hostility between the wife and her household servants.

For the Muslim-born population, whether they were servants are free, breastfeeding the child of another created a situation referred to as "milk siblings" or "milk kinship." We will take a closer look at the Koran's views on wet nursing tomorrow.

Raising Moral Children

Ramon Llull was a 13th century Catalan mystic and theologian whose controversial writings made him many enemies. One of his more interesting metaphors that perhaps was not so controversial was about raising moral children.

His Doctrina pueril ("Instruction for children") was a guide to moral living addressed to his son Domènec (then between eight and 12 years old). It was important for him to write it out not only as an idea to leave to posterity, but also because he had left his wife and family several years earlier (to become a Franciscan) and therefore was not raising Domènec personally.

Among his pieces of advice for raising children properly, he includes 

...not to expose their children to romances, songs or musical instruments that encourage them to be lustful. To preserve their children’s budding intellects and overall bodily health fathers should ensure that spicy food never be served, as it could overheat their humours and damage their developing brains, and nor should rich food, which would lead them into ill health, gluttony and lust later in life. [link]

Llull does not discuss breastfeeding or wet nurses, but he does emphasize the "health benefits and moral properties" of human milk in the raising of children. Solid food should not be introduced to the child's diet too early, lest the child become "mean and stingy." Llull associates the feeding of children with breast milk with charity, generosity, good upbringing, and the development of moral character. His idea that breast milk contributed to the development of morality was picked up by later philosophers, especially in the Iberian peninsula. The illustration comes from a later published copy of Llull's Doctrina and represents the tree of morality, the choices one makes as one grows that could lead to either joy or punishment.

This was not a strictly religious view in that there is no reference in the Bible to breastfeeding, nor in early Jewish writings. In fact, only the Koran among the Abrahamic religions mentioned the topic. Verse 46:15 mentions a bond between the baby and the source of breast milk that last until the child is about two years old. This was an interesting wrinkle on the subject of wet nurses, since in parts of the Iberian Peninsula, wet nurses were commonly Muslim slaves. Tomorrow, let's talk about wet nursing, slavery, and a little about "milk siblings."

Care and Feeding of Princes

Since "infant formula" was not invented until the 20th century, breastfeeding was the standard way to get nourishment into a baby. If for some reason a mother could not breastfeed (death in childbirth, illness, disinterest), a wet nurse was found: a lactating woman willing to breastfeed the newborn. There might be another reason a mother could not nurse, especially if she were a high-ranking royal: the desire not to infect the breastmilk.

If you look at family trees of kings and queens, you will see many, many members in each generation. This did not necessarily spring from a deep and abiding sexual attraction between husband and wife. The greatest need of a king/queen was to produce an heir.

The need was for several heirs, in fact. Not only was there a concern about infant mortality, or a grown son dying in battle or by accident before he had a chance to inherit the throne. There was also a political desire to marry children to nobles of your own or other countries in order to create allies through family ties.

How did this need preclude breastfeeding? According to an article from the National Library of Medicine:

There was even a belief that the milk would be contaminated by sexual intercourse, which contraindicated marital relations during the period of lactation, a situation that the queens could not afford. [link]

Since a queen was "ideally" made pregnant as soon as she was able after the birth of a child, her milk was not suitable for the newborn, and so a wet nurse was employed for that vital purpose. Choosing a wet nurse was the province of the queen herself. The wet nurse was not likely to be a woman off the street, but a member of a royal family who was lactating. The wages for a royal wet nurse were very high compared to other professions available to females in the Middle Ages.

There's a lot more medieval discussion about breast milk than one might think. The philosopher and theologian Ramon Llull had advice for raising children that focused on human milk. I'll share that next time.

The Career of the Wet Nurse

A "wet nurse" is a woman hired to breastfeed a baby when the baby's own mother is unable or unwilling to do so. The mother may have died in childbirth, or the mother may be a wealthy woman who does not want to be bothered with the act of breastfeeding. Disease could also prevent a mother from lactating sufficiently.

The illustration is from the 15th century Danse macabre des femmes ("Dance of death for women"). This shows death threatening a wet nurse that the baby she holds will die. She replies that she would like to go dancing but cannot because of the swelling she feels that must be dealt with by feeding the child and that "sudden death would be a pity."

Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all agreed that breastfeeding was important and demanding work. If a Jewish mother did not want to breastfeed, it was her husband's obligation to find an appropriate substitute. Medieval Islamic law considered nursing and raising the youngest children as a job worthy of a salary if a mother had to do the work after the death of the child's father. Contracts for wet nurses could last from one to nine months.

The practice began long before the Middle Ages. In Rome a wet nurse was a nutrix, "nurturer," and wet nurse was a profession. Rome had a landmark called the Columna Lactaria ("Milk Column") where (the Roman grammarian Festus wrote) people could bring babies to be nursed. It was either a place where wet nurses could be hired, or a public charity where lactating women shared their milk, or perhaps both.

Breast milk was understood to be vital to the proper development and health of a baby, and so medieval parents would choose their wet nurse carefully, researching the health and moral standing of the candidate.  The wet nurse could be the major influence on the child for its first couple years at least—and might be employed as a nanny later, as with the mother of Alexander Neckham, Hodierna, who was wet nurse to Richard I.

After the Black Death of the mid-14th century, as prices for goods and services rose because of the scarcity of laborers, wet nurses were increasingly slaves put into the role whether they wished it or not.

The breast feeding of royal children, however, was a different case. Let's talk about the care and feeding of princes tomorrow.