Zaynab bint Muhammad

ProfileZaynab bint Muhammad

Zaynab (may Allah be pleased with her) was the eldest daughter of the Prophet ﷺ and Khadijah. According to the early biographies, she was married before the revelation to her cousin Abu al-As ibn ar-Rabi, who asked for her hand, and the Prophet ﷺ said that he must ask her first, and she accepted. The Prophet ﷺ said, in a sermon, that he had married one of his daughters to Abu al-As ibn ar-Rabi before Islam, and that whatever he said to him was the truth (Sahih al-Bukhari). According to the early biographies, they had two children, a son, Ali, and a daughter, Umamah.

According to the early biographies, when the Prophet ﷺ received the revelation, Zaynab accepted Islam soon after her mother, and when she told her husband he was displeased that she had not told him first, but said that he did not accuse her father of anything and would not be the one to give up the religion of his people to please his wife. According to the early biographies, the Quraysh told him to divorce her and offered him any woman he wanted, and he refused, saying that he did not want another woman. According to the early biographies, the Prophet ﷺ did not force her to leave him, and when the Prophet ﷺ migrated she stayed in Makkah with her husband and children.

Aishah told that when the people of Makkah sent to ransom their prisoners after Badr, Zaynab sent some property to ransom Abu al-As, and among it a necklace that Khadijah had given her when she married him. When the Messenger of Allah ﷺ saw it, he felt great tenderness, and said that if they saw fit to free her prisoner for her and return to her what was hers, it would be well. They said yes. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ made an agreement with him that he would let Zaynab come to him, and sent Zayd ibn Harithah and a man of the Ansar to wait in the valley of Yajij until she passed, and to bring her back (Sunan Abi Dawud, graded hasan).

According to the early biographies, when Kinanah, her husband's brother, was taking her out of Makkah in plain view of Quraysh, who took it as a humiliation, a man of Quraysh struck her camel, and she fell and lost her unborn child. According to the early biographies, the man was Habbar ibn al-Aswad. According to the early biographies, she reached Madinah, and did not fully recover from the injury.

According to the early biographies, some years later Abu al-As was travelling with a caravan when a party of Muslims seized it, and he escaped and came to Zaynab's house before dawn and asked for her protection. She asked him whether he had accepted Islam, and he said that he had not, that he had come only as a fugitive, and she told him he was welcome, the father of her children. According to the early biographies, after the dawn prayer a voice was heard at the back of the mosque saying that she had given protection to Abu al-As, and the Prophet ﷺ said that he had heard what they had heard, and that they gave protection to whoever she had protected. He had the caravan returned to Abu al-As, and told Zaynab that he was not lawful for her as long as he was not a Muslim. According to the early biographies, Abu al-As went back to Makkah, gave everyone what was theirs, and said that he bore witness that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is His Messenger. He came back to Madinah, and the Prophet ﷺ gave Zaynab back to him.

According to the early biographies, Zaynab died in Madinah in 8 AH. Umm Atiyyah told that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ came to them when his daughter died, and told them to wash her three times or five or more, with water and lote leaves, with camphor in the last washing, and to tell him when they had finished. When they told him, he gave them his waist-wrapper and told them to shroud her in it (Sahih al-Bukhari; Sahih Muslim). The commentators say that this was Zaynab. According to the early biographies, Abu al-As wept for her, and the Prophet ﷺ himself wept as he did.

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