The Birth Date and the History of the Mawlid

We are told the Prophet ﷺ was born on the twelfth of Rabiʿ al-Awwal, and this is the date most widely known. Yet the earliest books preserve no single agreed day. Two things are certain from sound report: that he was born on a Monday, for when asked why he fasted on Mondays, he said:

ذَاكَ يَوْمٌ وُلِدْتُ فِيهِ، وَيَوْمٌ بُعِثْتُ, أَوْ أُنْزِلَ عَلَيَّ فِيهِ

"That is the day I was born, and the day I was sent, or revelation came to me", and that he was born in the Year of the Elephant, about 570 CE, confirmed by companions such as Qubath ibn Ashyam and Suwayd ibn Ghaflah, who were born that same year.

But the day of the month was disputed. Ibn Saʿd records that some said the tenth of Rabiʿ al-Awwal and some the second; others, citing early authorities and descendants of the Prophet ﷺ such as Jaʿfar al-Sadiq, held the second, the eighth, or the tenth; and a few placed the birth in Ramadan altogether. The famous twelfth rests on the report of Ibn Ishaq alone, written two centuries later, without a chain of narration, which is why, judged by the standards of hadith, it carries less weight than the second, the eighth, and the tenth.

Why then did the twelfth become so firmly fixed in people's minds? For two reasons. First, because most who write the sirah simply follow Ibn Ishaq. Second, because of the Mawlid. The public celebration of the Prophet's ﷺ birthday is a late custom, unknown to the first generations; the earliest recorded instance is by the Fatimids of Egypt around 517 AH, a dynasty famed for its many festivals, and it was held on the twelfth. A Sunni governor near Mosul later adopted it, in the seventh century AH, and from there it spread and grew into a grand festival as rulers vied to outdo one another. Because that first celebration fell on the twelfth, the date settled in the public memory, though it is, historically, the weakest of the opinions.

And the surest way to honour his birth, as he himself showed, is not one festival a year but to fast every Monday, the day he was born.