– Syed Azharuddin
The story of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ begins with loss. Before he ever spoke the words of revelation, before he walked the streets of Madinah as a leader, he was a child who knew what it meant to have no father’s embrace and no mother’s comfort. His father, Abdullah, passed away before his birth. At six years old, on a lonely journey back from visiting relatives in Madinah, his mother Aminah died, leaving him in the care of his grandfather Abd al-Muttalib. Two years later, that beloved guardian also left this world. By the age of eight, Muhammad ﷺ was an orphan in every sense – without father, mother, or grandfather, his life entrusted to the protection of an uncle, Abu Talib, who himself struggled with poverty.
As recorded by Ibn Kathir in al-Bidayah wa-al-Nihayah, “Allah was preparing him to depend on none but Him.” The Qur’an later reminded him: “Did He not find you an orphan and give you shelter?” (The Qur’an 93:6). This verse is both consolation and reminder: his orphanhood was not abandonment, but divine preparation for guardianship of the world.
But this orphan, Muhammad ﷺ, deprived of parental affection, did not grow hardened. Instead, he turned his own deprivation into a lifelong philosophy of care. He became the orphan who would adopt the world. Every child without parents, every captive without protectors, every poor person silenced by the rich – he embraced them not as projects but as family. His biography is not simply the record of a prophet, but of a man who taught humanity that to heal the pain of orphans is to heal the fractures of society itself.
Adopting with Love: The Orphan and the Captive
One of the most moving episodes is the story of Zayd ibn Harithah. Captured as a child and sold into slavery, Zayd was brought into Muhammad’s ﷺ household long before prophethood. Instead of treating him as a servant, Muhammad ﷺ raised him with the affection of a father. When Zayd’s real father eventually discovered his whereabouts and came to reclaim him, Muhammad ﷺ gave Zayd the choice to go home freely. But Zayd chose to stay, declaring he would rather remain with Muhammad ﷺ than return to his own tribe.
This was unprecedented in Arabia: a captive choosing to remain in the house of his master, not out of fear, but out of love. Muhammad ﷺ then adopted him publicly, announcing before the Quraysh: “Bear witness, he is my son” From then on, people called him “Zayd ibn Muhammad” (Ibn Sa’d, Tabaqat al-Kubra). This was not the act of a man fulfilling social duty; it was an orphan offering fatherhood to another soul. This act, revolutionary in pre-Islamic Arabia, redefined kinship on the basis of compassion and not blood. Later the Qur’an forbade legal adoption that altered lineage (Qur’an 33:4–5), the Muhammad’s ﷺ spiritual and emotional bond with Zayd persisted.
The Eid Story: Fatherhood for the Forgotten
On another occasion, the streets of Madinah were filled with celebration during Eid. Children wore new clothes and played joyfully. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ noticed a young boy sitting alone, crying. When he asked why, the boy replied that his father had died in battle and he had no one to give him gifts or celebrate with him. Tears filled Muhammad’s ﷺ eyes. He held the boy close and said: “Would you not like that I should be your father and Aishah your mother?” The boy’s sadness turned into joy, and he joined the Prophet Muhammad’s ﷺ household that day. This story embodies the Qur’an 76:8-9: “And they give food, in spite of love for it, to the needy, the orphan, and the captive, [saying], ‘We feed you only for the sake of Allah; we desire from you neither reward nor thanks.’”
Muhammad ﷺ converted emotion into action, turning each Eid, each gathering, into an occasion of inclusion. This was not an isolated gesture. Time and again, Prophet Muhammad ﷺ turned personal homes into shelters, teaching by action that an orphan’s place is not at the margins of society, but at its very heart.
Hilf al-Fudul: The First NGO of Justice
In his youth, distressed by Makkan injustice, Muhammad ﷺ participated in Hilf al-Fudul (“The League of the Virtuous”), a pact formed at the house of Abd Allah ibn Judān to uphold fairness for the oppressed. Ibn Hisham and al-Bayhaqi both record that it was signed after a Yemeni merchant was cheated by a Qurayshite noble. The young Muhammad stood for justice though he was of a weaker clan. Later as a Prophet ﷺ, he said: “I witnessed a pact in the house of Ibn Judān; if I were called to it in Islam, I would respond.” (Musnad Ahmad).
Later in life, the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ would recall that pact and say: “I would not trade my part in it for a herd of red camels. And if I were called to it in Islam, I would answer.” In modern terms, Hilf al-Fudul was the world’s first civil rights NGO, created by a young orphan-turned-merchant who could not bear to see injustice ignored. His personal wound of being without protection became the engine of his public service.
Caring Even in Hardship
What makes his story more extraordinary is that Muhammad ﷺ cared for others even while he himself endured poverty and deprivation. He would go hungry so that others could eat, tie stones to his stomach when food was scarce, and insist that what little was in his house be shared.
Once a companion entered his home and found nothing but water. Muhammad ﷺ smiled and still offered hospitality with warmth. In another instance, when captives were taken at Badr, Muhammad ﷺ instructed the companions: “Treat the captives well.” (Sahih al-Bukhari) The captives later testified that the Muslims gave prisoners bread, precious and rare, while they themselves survived on dates. That was the ethic of an orphan who had known hunger: others must never feel the abandonment he had felt.
A Living Philosophy of Adoption
To Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, adoption was not paperwork; it was lived presence. He did not establish “orphanages” or create institutions to isolate the vulnerable. He took them into his home, into his family, into his heart. Whether it was Zayd the captive, the crying boy on Eid, or the countless children of companions who played on his shoulders in prayer, he normalised parenting as a human act.
The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ demonstrated adoption as lived empathy. Zayd ibn Harithah, Ali ibn Abi Talib (raised during Makkah’s famine), and Umm Ayman (Barakah), his family servant whom he treated as a mother figure, all illustrate this household of love. When Jafar ibn Abi Talib died at Mutah, the Prophet personally visited his home, hugged his children, and wept (reported in Musnad Ahmad). He said, “Prepare food for the family of Jafar, for they are preoccupied.” Every orphan he touched became not a statistic but a story of dignity.
The Orphan Who Adopted the World
By the time he passed away, Muhammad ﷺ had transformed Arabia – not by building orphanages, but by building families and communities that embraced the orphan, the captive, the poor, and the voiceless as their own. His philosophy was simple yet world-changing: the orphan belongs at the centre of society.
Madinah, once a city fractured by tribal conflict, became a model of compassion and justice because its leader, an orphan boy from Makkah, taught his people that true civilization is measured not by wealth or monuments, but by how it treats its most vulnerable.
He began life without a father, and lost his mother at six, his grandfather at eight. Yet this very pain forged in him an empathy so vast that he became a father to the fatherless, a guardian to the captive, a brother to the poor.
Muhammad ﷺ did not merely adopt children, he adopted humanity, and he adopted the world. His life remains a timeless reminder that leadership begins with care, and that the orphan’s embrace can heal the world. By the end of his life, the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ had transformed society’s moral compass and his early pain became the “mercy to mankind” (Rahmatan lil-Alamin).
