Durrah bint Abi Lahab

ProfileDurrah bint Abi Lahab

Durrah (may Allah be pleased with her) was the daughter of Abu Lahab and Umm Jamil, and the sister of Utbah, Utaybah and Mu'attib. According to the early biographies, she was engaged to Zayd ibn Harithah, who was then called Zayd ibn Muhammad, the Prophet's ﷺ freed slave and adopted son, and Abu Lahab broke it off, as he broke the betrothals of his sons to the Prophet's ﷺ daughters. According to the early biographies, she was married afterwards to al-Harith ibn Nawfal, and had children with him.

A woman, whom the commentators name as her mother, once told the Prophet ﷺ, when he had been ill and had not prayed at night, that his devil had left him (Sahih al-Bukhari). According to the early biographies, when the news of Badr came to Makkah, and others burned for revenge, Durrah said that she had known he was a prophet. She left Makkah alone with her children, and came to Madinah, and went to the Prophet ﷺ and said the testimony of faith.

According to the early biographies, she stayed among the Ansar, and some of the women, of the Banu Zurayq, spoke to her sharply. They asked her whether she was the daughter of Abu Lahab, of whom Allah had said that his hands would perish, and what good her emigration was to her. She went to the Prophet ﷺ and told him that people were hurting her. He got up angry, with his face red, prayed with the people, and then stood on the pulpit. According to the early biographies, he said that he did not know what was wrong with people who hurt him through his family, that his intercession would reach his family as long as they believed, and that no living person should be hurt on account of someone who was dead. He told her to sit and wait so she would hear it. She was welcomed into the community, and the people of Madinah came to know her as one of the emigrants.

According to the early biographies, the Prophet ﷺ married her to Dihyah al-Kalbi. Umm Salamah told that Gabriel once came to the Prophet ﷺ while she was with him, and she took him for Dihyah, and did not know until she heard the Prophet ﷺ speak of it in his sermon (Sahih al-Bukhari). It was Dihyah who carried the Prophet's ﷺ letter to the governor of Busra, to be sent on to Heraclius (Sahih al-Bukhari). So the woman who had told the Prophet ﷺ that his devil had left him had a daughter who married the man whom Umm Salamah took Gabriel to be.

According to the early biographies, her sisters Khalidah and Izzah accepted Islam too, though little is known about them. Durrah had to leave her family and her home to come, and the Prophet ﷺ stood up for her in front of everyone.

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