3. MUSLIM CONTRIBUTION TO SCIENCE

~ 142 ~ path of enlightenment, eliminating the differences between men on an intellectual plane. He held as baseless all those suppositions and superstitions which had been responsible for creating and perpetuating the slave-master mentality. Towards the end of the Prophet Muhammad’s life, Maria Qibtiya bore him a beautiful and vivacious son in Medina. The Prophet named him Ibrahim, after the Prophet Abraham (May peace be upon him). Ibrahim was just one and a half years old when, in the tenth year of Hijrah (January 632 A.D.), he died. It so happened that the death of Ibrahim coincided with a solar eclipse. From ancient times, one of the many prevailing superstitions was that the solar and lunar eclipses were caused by the death of some king or other important personage. They were meant to show, they thought, that the heavens mourned the death of the exalted in station. At that time the Prophet Muhammad, may peace be upon him, was King of Arabia. For this reason, certain of the Medinans began attributing the eclipse to the death of the Prophet’s son. As soon as the Prophet heard of this, he refuted it. There are several accounts of this incident in the