Nearly Ramadan

We have come across a couple of interesting stories from the history of Islam today. The first came up in our continued reading of the seerah of the Prophet (saw). We have reached the time of the digging of the trench around Medina. At that time there was near famine in Medina and many of the sahabah were very hungry. They used to tie stones to their bellies to reduce the hunger pains. (Lets just hold that thought for the coming month).
One day, during work on digging the trench, Jubair ibn Abdullah (ra) noticed the Prophet (saw) had two stones tied to his stomach. Thinking of how hungry he must be Jabir asked to be excused, went home to his wife and asked her what food she had. She had only a small goat and a little barley, but she set about cooking, while Jabir went back to invite the Prophet (saw). The Prophet (saw) asked Jabir about how much food he had, and said it was plenty, so he asked all the other sahabah from the dig to join the meal. Jabir was so worried that he did not have enough food for so many, but when the Prophet (saw) dished up the food there was plenty, even enough to distribute to other people outside. Allah had blessed this meal and made it plentiful.
This story was noted in the history by Ibn Hisham.
The boys loved this story, and wrote it up, (which was the day’s English exercise).
The second story they liked was linked to the ayat we studied today, as part of our Ramadan preparation, “And eat and drink, until the white thread of dawn appear to you distinct from its black thread…”2:187 When this was first revealed, “of dawn” was not revealed, and some people were confused and tied to their legs or placed under their pillow, two threads, one white and one black, and went on eating until they could differentiate between the two. There is also a hadith about someone asking the Prophet (saw) about this, and so it was explained, and “at dawn” was revealed as well.
We read about this in the Tafseer of Ibn Kathir.
Those were our Islamic studies for the day. They have also been sitting in the garden, reading about dinosaurs. If I ask them to choose their own topic it is usually castles or dinosaurs.