Boreal

From Merchant to Messenger

Wives of the Messenger

and revelations they inspired

Juwayriya (8)

Juwayriya (born Barra) was another prize of war. Fortunately she was a woman of means as many of her sex were before Islam, the most famous being the Prophet’s own wife Khadijah, and bought her freedom from the man who claimed her as his share of the booty after “her people were defeated at the well of al-Muraysi.“

As daughter of the chief of the tribe God’s Messenger had just defeated and taken into captivity, she demanded and got an audience with the Prophet. “Muhammad was taken with her … He offered to ransom, rename and marry her [and] release the people of her tribe, the Banu al-Mustaliq from captivity.”

The twenty year old married the nearly sixty year old Messenger, and the Prophet made good on his promise to free the men and women in his custody. She lived for another forty-five years after her marriage to God’s Messenger.

The day "the Prophet got Juwayriya":

Narrated Ibn Aun:

I wrote a letter to Nafi and Nafi wrote in reply to my letter that the Prophet had suddenly attacked Bani Mustaliq without warning while they were heedless and their cattle were being watered at the places of water.

Their fighting men were killed and their women and children were taken as captives; the Prophet got Juwairiya on that day.

Nafi said that Ibn 'Umar had told him the above narration and that Ibn 'Umar was in that army.

Bukhari 46.717

Umm Habida (10)

Umm Habida, (born Ramla) was the only wife of the Prophet whom he married by proxy. Umm Habida and her husband were two of the Muslims who fled to Ethiopia i.e. Abyssinia, on orders from God’s Messenger after the Meccans had become hostile to the Muslims and their insistence that they would join their ancestors in Hell, if they did not submit to the Will of Allah forthwith, and obey His Messenger.

During their time in Abyssinia Umm Habida's husband, Ubaydullah, converted to Christianity and drank so much wine that he died, or so it is written. 

“ … four months or so after her husband’s death in 628, when she had been in Abyssinia for twelve long years, a servant from the Negus came with a message: ‘The King says to you that the Messenger of Allah has written to him to marry you to him.’”

The king obliged and Umm Habida was married to God’s Messenger by proxy. Six years later, the now thirthy-five year old bride, joined her sixty year old husband in Medina. She died in the year 666. She too is buried in Baqi cemetery.