She dashed past women carrying cloth-covered dough, as the aroma of freshly baking barley bread blended with the fragrance of acacia wood crackling in Mecca’s ovens. Zigzagging through narrow alleyways, Thuwaibah dodged pecking hens and young shepherds and their sheep on their way to grazing grounds outside the city. Thuwaibah, known for her speed and agility, sprinted out of her master’s courtyard with the date platter. ‘Abdul-‘Uzza grabbed the package from the horseman and quickly poured its contents onto the plate. Thuwaibah, a young enslaved Greek woman, stood by the door with an earthen clay platter. Then, a veiled horseman emerged, galloping through Mecca’s southern pass to deliver his emergency package: twenty succulent dates known as rutab (luscious). As dawn broke, a cloud of dust arose in the distance.
Pacing in the courtyard doorway, he anxiously surveyed the horizon. The next hour would determine whether mother and child would survive the precarious delivery. Now ‘Abdul-‘Uzza was frantic, as the birth could come at any moment. The midwives of Mecca relied on an elixir of fresh unrefined date juice to stimulate uterine contractions, helping to push the baby through the birth canal quickly and protect the mother from excessive bleeding.
The dates had to be picked at once to maintain the potency of their juicy nectar. Without fresh dates the woman in labor could bleed to death.Īs soon as ‘Abdul-‘Uzza received word after midnight that his sister-in-law was in labor, he had sent a horseman rushing to the nearby town of Ta`if to fetch fresh dates from the local groves.
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