After this should be performed the other ceremony above alluded to, which is this:--It is a sunneh ordinance, incumbent on the father, to shave or cause to be shaved the head of the child, and to give in alms to the poor the weight of the hair in gold or silver. This should also be done for a proselyte.[220] On the subsequent occasions of shaving the head of a male child (for the head of the male is frequently shaven), a tuft of hair is generally left on the crown, and commonly for several years another also over the forehead.
Circumcision is most approved if performed on the same day;[221] but the observance of this rite is generally delayed until the child has attained the age of five or six years, and sometimes several years later. (See p. 200).
The Muslims regard a child as a trust committed by God to its parents, who, they hold, are responsible for the manner in which they bring it up, and will be examined on this subject on the day of judgment. But they further venture to say, that "the first who will lay hold of a man on the day of judgment will be his wife and children, who [if he have been deficient in his duty to them] will present themselves before God, and say, 'O our Lord, take for us our due from him; for he taught us not that of which we were ignorant, and he fed us with forbidden food, and we knew not:' and their due will be taken from him."[222] By this is meant, that a certain proportion of the good works which the man may have done, and his children and wife neglected, will be set down to their account: or that a similar proportion of their evil works will be transferred to _his_ account.
The mother is enjoined by the law to give suck to her child two full years, unless she have her husband's consent to shorten the period, or to employ another nurse. "For suckling the child, a virtuous woman, who eateth only what is lawful, should be chosen; for the unlawful [food] will manifest its evil in the child; as the Prophet ... said, 'Giving suck altereth the tempers.' But it is recommended by the Sunneh that the mother herself suckle the child; for it is said in a tradition, 'There is nothing better for a child than its mother's milk.' 'If thou wouldst try,' it is added, 'whether the child be of an ingenuous disposition in its infancy or not, order a woman who is not its mother to suckle it after its mother has done so: and if it drink of the milk of the woman who is not its mother, it is not of an ingenuous disposition.'"[223]