The Woman Searching the Camp for a Child to Feed

2026-07-02 • Noorani Ilm

Umar ibn Al-Khattab once described a scene he witnessed alongside the Prophet ﷺ: a group of captives had been brought in, and among them was a woman whose breasts were full of milk, frantically searching the crowd. Whenever she found a baby among the captives, she would pick it up, hold it to her chest, and nurse it — desperate to find her own missing child. When she finally found him, she held him close, wrapped him against her body, and nursed him. The Prophet ﷺ turned to his Companions and asked: "Do you think this woman would ever throw her child into the fire?" They said, "No, not if she has any power to prevent it." He ﷺ said: "Allah is more merciful to His servants than this woman is to her child."

What Allah wrote before creation existed

This is the same reality Allah is reported to have recorded before He had even finished creating the world. In a hadith recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, narrated by Abu Huraira, the Prophet ﷺ said: "Lamma qadal-lahul-khalqa kataba 'indahu fawqa 'arshihi: inna rahmati sabaqat ghadabi" — "When Allah completed the creation, He wrote in a Book which is with Him, above His Throne: My mercy prevails over My wrath." This wasn't decided partway through history in response to how creation behaved. It was written down before any of it had even begun.

Ninety-nine parts held back

The scale of this mercy is described with a specific number. Abu Huraira narrated that Allah divided mercy into one hundred parts, sending down only a single part to be shared among the entirety of creation — every act of tenderness a mother shows her child, every kindness one stranger shows another, drawn from that one part alone. The remaining ninety-nine, according to this hadith, are held back for the Day of Judgment. Everything gentle that has ever happened on earth is described as a fragment of what's still being withheld.

"Do not despair"

The Quran addresses this directly to people who have genuinely wronged themselves, not people with minor slips. In Surah Az-Zumar: "Qul ya 'ibadiyal-ladhina asrafu 'ala anfusihim la taqnatu min rahmatillah, innallaha yaghfiru dhunuba jami'a" — "Say: O My servants who have transgressed against themselves, do not despair of the mercy of Allah. Indeed, Allah forgives all sins" (39:53). Not most sins. Not the smaller ones. All of them — with the only real condition being that the person doesn't give up and stop turning back.

A step met with a much larger one

The Prophet ﷺ described how disproportionately Allah responds to a person moving toward Him, in a hadith recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari, narrated by Anas ibn Malik: Allah says, "If My servant draws near to Me by a hand's span, I draw near to him by a cubit. If he draws near to Me by a cubit, I draw near to him by a fathom's length. And if he comes to Me walking, I go to him running." The math is deliberately lopsided — every small, hesitant movement toward Allah is met with a response many times larger, and the pace only accelerates the more sincerely a person moves.

Why the ratio matters

None of this is presented as license to sin without concern — the same hadiths that describe this mercy also describe genuine consequences for genuine wrongdoing. But the ratio itself, mercy that preceded wrath before the world existed, ninety-nine held-back parts against one released into all of creation, a hand's span answered with a cubit — is meant to answer a very specific fear: that Allah is waiting to catch people out, rather than waiting for them to turn back.