Umm Ma'bad and the Miracle of the Dry Goat

Umm Maʿbad narrates this story herself, and she later became a Muslim.

She was an elderly Bedouin woman living with her husband in a tent at a place called Qudayd, on the coastal route between Makkah and Madinah, roughly where a sign on the modern highway reads "Qudayd." Her husband had gone out in search of food; she was alone, waiting. She heard the sound of travelers outside and called them in. She had no concern for security, she was old, and there was nothing worth stealing.

It was the Prophet ﷺ and Abū Bakr. She did not know who they were.

They asked if they could purchase food. She apologized, she had absolutely nothing. Not bread, not water, nothing. Her husband had gone out precisely because they had nothing. They asked: "Even milk?" Nothing.

The Prophet ﷺ noticed an old goat standing in the corner of the tent. He could see at a glance that the animal was past its productive years, no longer giving milk, no longer capable of pregnancy, simply waiting in the corner until the day it would be slaughtered for meat. He asked permission to try milking her anyway.

Umm Maʿbad suppressed a smile. That day was long gone. But she said: if you want to try, go ahead. What does it matter?

He said Bismillāh, made duʿāʾ, passed his hands gently under the udder. The udder filled with milk.

Abū Bakr milked it into a vessel. It filled to the brim. The Prophet ﷺ drank. Abū Bakr drank. They gave the first cup to Umm Maʿbad as the host. They drank again until they were satisfied, and left the rest of the milk for her.

When her husband returned and found the milk, he was astonished. "Where did this come from? From this goat? How?" She told him everything: two travelers came, one of them asked to milk the goat, and the goat gave milk.

And then she described the Prophet ﷺ to her husband, this is one of the famous physical descriptions that has been preserved. She described him as being:

Wasīm, handsome and well-featured, the kind of face that draws the eye without being imposing. His hair reached near his earlobes. He was neither short nor tall, he was rabaʿah, a word the Arabs used for the perfect middle height. His complexion was clear and bright. His companions seemed to gravitate toward him naturally. When he spoke, people fell silent. When he moved, they followed.

Her husband listened to the description and said: "Those are the two the Quraysh are looking for." The news of the search had spread. "Don't you know that one of them claims to be a Prophet?"

She said: "This is not a claim. He is a Prophet."

Both she and her husband accepted Islam.

It is also narrated that on this journey from Makkah to Madinah, the Prophet ﷺ met at least four or five other people and gave them Dawah, and they accepted Islam. We do not know all their names. It is a remarkable detail: that a man who was technically a fugitive with a price on his head, who had just spent three nights in a cave in the desert, still paused at every opportunity to call people to Allāh. No moment was wasted. No place was too insignificant for Dawah.