Considered the ‘last living Sahabi (Companion)’, the tree was rediscovered by Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad and the Jordanian authorities, who found references to it in texts found in the Royal Archives. Several well-known scholars travelled to the area, including Shaykh Ahmad Hassoun, Grand Mufti of Syria, who later related to Prince Ghazi that he had had a dream in which the authenticity of the tree as being the one under which the Prophet (pbuh) rested, was confirmed to him.

Sitting under the tree, I could not help but think that even if its authenticity hadn’t been accepted, when one considers its age and the environment in which it has thrived for over a millennia, one way or another, it is still undoubtedly a blessed tree. We live in a world that is constantly changing, and during a period of time in which Divine Truths and Realities that were taken for granted by those who lived before us are forever being called into question.

Bahira had read an old manuscript in which the arrival of a new prophet was announced and he had the clear intuition that he would meet him during his lifetime. Those little miracles were just confirming that the arrival of the Prophet was coming soon. Then he prepared the food supplies he had and invited the Quraish caravan to share them with him, meeting all the “young and old, slaves and free people”. When the caravan approached to him, he examined their faces one by one, and he could not detect any of the signals announced in the manuscript, so he asked if anybody had stayed under the tree.

A little boy stayed and his name is Muhammad, they told him. They immediately invited him to share the lunch with the Christian monk. When he looked at Muhammad, he recognized the prophecy sign in his face, asked him some questions in order to confirm its intuition and finally reached to see on his back the seal of the Prophethood mentioned in the manuscrypt. He was astonished and advised Abu Talib about his nephew: big things but also big troubles were waiting for him.

Today, 1400 years later, the blessed tree is still alone, without any other tree around.