Boreal

FAREWELL POSTINGS

Fourteen to One

December 9, 2024

Monday evening is when I usually dine at Harmon’s Steakhouse. I have my favourite table next to a large window that allows me to gaze upon the apartment building where Lucette and her parents lived during the seven years Lucette and I dated. Then it was The Bonaventure Apartments, today it's The Business Inn. A photograph of Lucette and I taken at the Bonaventure:

Muhammad and I both married women that were older than us: his first and my first and last. 

 WIVES OF MUHAMMAD

and more of the revelations they inspired

(Abbreviated From Merchant to Messenger, Boreal Books)

No story of Muhammad would be complete without a word about his collection of wives and concubines. A readable account—except for the lack of references for the quoted hadiths—that is very much a believer’s homage to the man and the women he sequestered in his household, is that of Tamam Kahn. Unless otherwise indicated, materials within double quotes in this section are from her book Untold - A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad, Monkfish Book Publishing, 2010.

KHADIJAH

Muhammad owed his success as a merchant to an older woman who hired the good-looking, allegedly illiterate young man to lead her caravans. Later she asked him to marry. For twenty-three years Muhammad was married to Khadijah and only Khadijah. It was her third marriage, his first. He was twenty-five, she was forty when they tied the knot.

It was this same successful businesswoman, now his wife, who reassured her husband when he began having visions, that it was an angel sent by God, not Satan or some other godless creature. When whatever it was, that only he could see, followed him home, she told him to get undressed. She did the same and they embraced. Do you still see him, she asked? No, said Muhammad! Then it must have been an angel, she said, because an angel would not have remained to stare at a naked couple embracing.

Khadijah gave birth to two, maybe three, sons (depending on who you read), and four girls. All the couple’s sons would die in infancy. The youngest daughter, Fatima, was the only offspring to have descendants. She was married to Ali, the fourth caliph (the fourth successor to the Prophet). Khadijah died destitute and penniless in a makeshift habitat in a ravine on the outskirts of Mecca. After discovering Islam some fifteen years after they were married, the now forty-something Muhammad would spend all of his and his wife’s wealth on the promotion of his new religion.

The bold, erudite, self-sufficient Khadijah would not live long enough to witness her husband triumph over his enemies, a triumph that would not have been possible without her wealth and unquestioning support. She could not have foreseen that, after Islam, the independence and freedom she, and other women, enjoyed would be severely curtailed.

SAWDA

After the death of Khadijah in the year 619, Muhammad—after waiting a respectable amount of time, and after being persuaded by close friends that he needed a wife to help him raise his two unmarried daughters—wed the widow Sawda (also spelled Sauda). Middle-aged Sawda was the only woman he married who, it is reported, was neither young nor beautiful. “Sawda lived twenty-two years after the death of the Prophet.”

AISHA

Aisha was the first child born to parents who were believers. The founder of Islam would marry the first child born a Muslim (a child born to Muslim parents is born a Muslim) when she was six years old and consummate the marriage when she was nine.

Aisha may have been responsible for awakening in her husband a preference for young women and girls.

Narrated Jabir bin Abdullah:

While we were returning from a Ghazwa (Holy Battle) with the Prophet, I started driving my camel fast, as it was a lazy camel A rider came behind me and pricked my camel with a spear he had with him, and then my camel started running as fast as the best camel you may see. Behold! The rider was the Prophet himself.

He said, "What makes you in such a hurry?"

I replied, "I am newly married."

He said, "Did you marry a virgin or a matron?"

I replied, "A matron."

He said, "Why didn't you marry a young girl so that you may play with her and she with you?"

When we were about to enter (Medina), the Prophet said, "Wait so that you may enter (Medina) at night so that the lady of unkempt hair may comb her hair and the one whose husband has been absent may shave her pubic region.

Bukhari 62.16

Aisha “died July 13, 678 at age sixty-four. She asked to be buried with the other wives in the Baqi` cemetery of Medina, not in her apartment with her husband.”

Aisha’s quarters were a kind of cemetery. This seems the strangest part of her story. Muhammad was buried there as well as Abu Bakr (her father and first caliph i.e. leader of the faithful) and Umar the second caliph. She created a partition between her bed and the burial area, in a small room.

Tamam Khan

Al-Baqi cemetery in Medina was founded by Muhammad. Its size and number of graves are a state secret. To avoid people making pilgrimages to the cemetery where most of Muhammad’s wives are buried, the Saudis bulldozed all grave markers.

HAFSA

Hafsa was the daughter of another close collaborator of Muhammad, Umar, who would follow Abu Bakr as caliph. The Prophet married the nineteen-year-old Hafsa after her husband was killed at the famous battle of Badr (see Chapter “Battle of Badr,” Jihad in the Koran, Boreal Books), which ignited a war against unbelievers that continues to this day in one form or another.

Hafsa is probably most famous for being the custodian of the first copy of the Koran which she kept under her bed. Hafsa died in 665 or 666, almost thirty-four years after her husband the Prophet.

ZAYNAB B. KHUZAYMA

Zaynab b. Khuzayma was another widow of Badr whom Muhammad made part of his household. Little is known about her as she died only eight months later and was buried in Baqi cemetery.

UMM SALAMA

Umm Salama was thirty when she accepted an offer of marriage from Muhammad, after her husband died from wounds sustained in the battle of Uhud (see Chapter “Battle of Uhud,” Jihad in the Koran, Boreal Books). It is reported that it was her who asked Muhammad about the “revelations’ lack of reference to women,” which prompted God’s Messenger to deliver the first revelation in which women are mentioned.

33:35 Men and women who have submitted, believed, obeyed, are truthful, steadfast, reverend, giving in charity, fasting, guarding their private parts and remembering Allah often, Allah has prepared for them forgiveness and a great reward.

“[Umm Salama] died at the age of eighty-six.”

ZAYNAB B. JAHSH

Muhammad walked in on his daughter-in-law Zaynab, who was then married to his adopted son Zayd (also spelled Zaid), when she was nearly naked and “was troubled by her beauty”, or in the words of Tamam Khan, “something happened between them.” Zaynab was a cousin of Muhammad, the daughter of his paternal aunt Omayma. It was the Prophet himself who insisted she be given in marriage to Zayd.

Barnaby Rogerson, author of The Prophet Muhammad – A Biography, writes that “Zayd soon divined that Muhammad had become entranced by Zaynab’s beauty and at once offered to divorce his wife… Zayd would do anything to please his adopted father whom he revered above all else on earth.”

Marrying your son’s former wife was taboo. It did not matter if he was adopted; the same ethical and moral restrictions applied as to a natural-born son. Zayd’s father-in-law refused his offer until he received Revelation 33:5 which changed the status of adopted sons.

33:4 Allah did not create two hearts within the breast of any man; and He did not make your wives, whom you compare to your mothers’ backs; and He did not make your [adopted] sons your sons in fact. That is your own claim, by your words of mouth. Allah speaks the truth and He guides to the Right Path.

33:5 Assign them to their own fathers. That is more equitable in the sight of Allah; but if you do not know their real fathers, then they are your brothers in religion, your adopted fellow Muslims. You are not at fault if you err therein; but only in what your hearts intend. Allah is ever All-Forgiving, All-Merciful.

Before Revelation 33:5, Arab fathers made no distinction between adopted sons and those they had fathered. The revelation changing the relationship between adopted sons and their surrogate parent, so that Muhammad could add his cousin and former daughter-in-law to his collection of wives, concubines, and slave-girls, has been interpreted to mean that Islam is against Western style adoption, resulting in an untold number of children in the Islamic world who have no one living they can call father.

God followed up these revelations with one in which He commands Muhammad to marry Zaynab (underlining mine):

33:37 Then, when Zayd had satisfied his desire for her, We gave her to you in marriage; so that the believers should not be at fault, regarding the wives of their adopted sons, once they have satisfied their desire for them. For Allah’s Command must be accomplished.

Orphaned boys were almost unknown in the Arab world until God changed their status.

Demoting adopted sons to the equivalent of acquaintances for whom you provided free room and board not only made their wives, upon divorce, eligible to be taken in marriage by their “adoptive” father, but also disinherited them.

Narrated Aisha:

Abu Hudhaifa, one of those who fought the battle of Badr with Allah's Apostle, adopted Salim as his son and married his niece Hind bint Al-Wahd bin Utba to him and Salim was a freed slave of an Ansari woman.

Allah's Apostle also adopted Zaid as his son. In the Pre-Islamic period of ignorance the custom was that, if one adopted a son, the people would call him by the name of the adopted-father [from] whom he would inherit as well, till Allah revealed: "Call them (adopted sons) By (the names of) their fathers." (33:5)

Bukhari 59.335

God may have regretted creating orphan boys, whereas before there were only sons, so that His spokesman could satisfy his lust for his cousin and daughter-in-law, to subsequently send more than a handful of revelations about looking after their welfare.

Zaid died in one of the innumerable bloody, pitiless battles waged to convert the people of the Peninsula and beyond. Muhammad ordered that the women mourning his passing a little too loudly be silenced. That proved impossible.

Narrated Aisha:

When the news of the martyrdom of Zaid bin Haritha, Ja'far and Abdullah bin Rawaha came, the Prophet sat down looking sad, and I was looking through the chink of the door. A man came and said, "O Allah's Apostle! The women of Ja'far," and then he mentioned their crying.

The Prophet (p.b.u.h) ordered him to stop them from crying.

The man went and came back and said, "I tried to stop them but they disobeyed."

The Prophet (p.b.u.h) ordered him for the second time to forbid them.

He went again and came back and said, "They did not listen to me."

Aisha added: The Prophet said, "Put dust in their mouths."

I said (to that man), "May Allah stick your nose in the dust (i.e. humiliate you). By Allah, you could not (stop the women from crying) to fulfill the order, besides you did not relieve Allah's Apostle from fatigue."

Bukhari 23.392

Zaynab b. Jahsh died in 642, ten years after Muhammad’s passing.

JUWAYRIYYAH

Juwayriyyah (born Barra) was another prize of war. She was a woman of means, as many Arab women were before Islam, and sought to buy 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 Muhammad had just defeated she demanded and received an audience with the victor. “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 Muhammad who made good on his promise to free the men and women in his custody.

Narrated Aisha, Ummul Mu'minin:

Juwayriyyah, daughter of al-Harith ibn al-mustaliq, fell to the lot of Thabit ibn Qays ibn Shammas, or to her cousin. She entered into an agreement to purchase her freedom. She was a very beautiful woman, most attractive to the eye.

Aisha said: She then came to the Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him) asking him for the purchase of her freedom. When she was standing at the door, I looked at her with disapproval. I realised that the Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him) would look at her in the same way that I had looked.

She said: Apostle of Allah, I am Juwayriyyah, daughter of al-Harith, and something has happened to me, which is not hidden from you. I have fallen to the lot of Thabit ibn Qays ibn Shammas, and I have entered into an agreement to purchase my freedom. I have come to you to seek assistance for the purchase of my freedom.

The Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him) said: Are you inclined to that which is better?

She asked: What is that, Apostle of Allah?

He replied: I shall pay the price of your freedom on your behalf, and I shall marry you.

She said: I shall do this.

She (Aisha) said: The people then heard that the Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him) had married Juwayriyyah. They released the captives in their possession and set them free, and said: They are the relatives of the Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him) by marriage. We did not see any woman greater than Juwayriyyah who brought blessings to her people. One hundred families of Banu al-mustaliq were set free on account of her.

Abu Dawud 29.3920

 Juwayriyyah lived for another forty-five years after her latest husband’s passing.

RAYHANAH (ALSO SPELT RAYHANA)

Tamam Kahn admits that Rayhanah is “not usually listed as a wife.” Virgil Gheorghiu author of La vie de Mahomet writes that Rayhanah only agreed to become Muhammad’s concubine, seeing it as unseemly to accept his marriage proposal after he had just ordered the beheading of all the men and boys (males with traces of pubic hair) of her tribe, including both her husband and her father.

After the battle of the Trench [Rayhanah was] marched into the courtyard with the several hundred other women and their children to be claimed as a reward by the Muslim soldiers, while the Qurayzah men were led away to be executed.

Tamam Kahn

Rayhanah was more than just a beautiful young woman. “Rayhanah’s name means ‘extremely fragrant’ and Muhammad loved perfumes,” making her even more irresistible. Perfume was one of the three things God’s spokesman loved the most.

The Holy Prophet said: "From the things of the world, I regard women and perfume highly, but prayer is the light of my eyes."

Al-Khisal

You might call it an obsession:

The Most Noble Messenger was so fond of applying perfume that he would skip his supper so as to procure his needed perfume. If perfume was not at his disposal, he would soak the perfumed scarf of his wife and rub his face with it so as to be perfumed. Likewise, before going out he would always look at himself in the mirror or water, and groom himself to such an extent as to always be an embodiment of adornment and dressing well.

He would apply so much perfume that his beard had turned white as a result.

An-Nisa’i

Rayhanah’s life with the Prophet was short and tumultuous: some say she converted to Islam, others that she died as a slave, and others that she was allowed to rejoin her Jewish community. This is somewhat unlikely as she is buried, along with other wives of Muhammad in Baqi. She died a short two years after the massacre of the men and boys of her tribe.

Her age and how she died remain a mystery. All we know is that the beautiful, tragic Rayhanah died young. I would not exclude suicide. It must have been difficult to be intimate with the man who was responsible for the death of your father, your husband—all the men of your tribe and the enslavement of their widows and daughters.

UMM HABIDA

Umm Habida (born Ramla), Muhammad married by proxy. Umm Habida and her husband were two of the Muslims who fled to Ethiopia, i.e., Abyssinia, on the Prophet’s orders after the Meccans had become hostile to the Muslims. During their time in Abyssinia, her husband, Ubaydullah, converted to Christianity and drank so much wine that he died.

“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 Muhammad. Six years later, the now thirty-five-year-old bride joined her sexagenarian husband in Medina.

She died in the year 666. She, too, is buried in Baqi cemetery.

SAFIYYA B. HUYAYY

Safiyya was the second Jewish woman after Rayhanah to join Muhammad’s collection of wives, concubines, and slave-girls. Muhammad “married the small, lovely-looking girl” on his way back from Khaybar after having selected her as his share of the booty. Technically she was his slave, but on the way back from Khaibar he married her. To avoid having to pay the obligatory dowry, he declared that his manumitting her, i.e., setting her free before marrying her, was the equivalent.

Narrated Anas bin Malik:

Allah’s Apostle (p.b.u.h) offered the Fajr prayer when it was still dark, then he rode and said, “Allah Akbar! Khaibar is ruined. When we approach near to a nation, the most unfortunate is the morning of those who have been warned.”

The people came out into the streets saying, “Muhammad and his army.”

Allah’s Apostle vanquished them by force and their warriors were killed; the children and women were taken as captives. Safiya was taken by Dihya Al-Kalbi and later she belonged to Allah’s Apostle who married her and her Mahr (dowry) was her manumission.

Bukhari 14.68

Safiyya outlived her husband by perhaps 40 years. She died in 670 or 672 and was buried with the other wives at Baqi cemetery.

MARIYA (ALSO SPELT MARIA)

Once the Muslim conquest of the Peninsula was assured, Muhammad sent a letter to the various rulers of the kingdoms that bordered Arabia inviting them and their subjects to become Muslims or else!

From Muhammad the servant and Prophet of Allah, to Muqawqis, the leader of the Coptic tribe. There is safety and security for those believers who follow the correct path. Therefore I invite you to accept Islam. If you accept it, you shall find security, save your throne, and gain twice as much reward for having introduced Islam to your followers. If you refuse this invitation, let the sin of calamity which awaits your followers be upon you. You too are People of the Book; therefore let us come to a word common between us that we worship none but Allah and shall equalise anything with him. Let us not abandon Allah and take others for lords other than him. If you do not consent to this invitation, bear witness that we are Muslims.

Muqawqis (also known as Cyrus of Alexandria), the de-facto governor of Egypt and head of the Coptic Church, upon receiving the letter, and as a sign of respect for whom he took to be a prophet of God, sent a tribute to Muhammad that included two sisters, Sirin (also spelt Shirin) and Mariya.

From Muqawqis I read your letter and understood what you have written. I know that the coming of a Prophet is still due. But I thought, he would be born in Syria – I have treated your messenger with respect and honor. I am sending two maids (Maria al-Qibtiyya and her sister Sirin) for you as presents. These maids belong to a very respectable family amongst us. In addition I send for you clothes and a Duldul (steed) for riding. May God bestow security on you.

“When the caravan reached Medina, Muhammad chose Mariya and presented her sister Shirin to Hasan b. Thabit, his ‘official poet’.” Mariya was provided with her own house. The Prophet spent a lot time with Mariya, which made his other wives jealous.

Tamam writes:

Relations between Mariya and the wives reached a theatrical pitch as we see from the following hadith. Hadith tells us: “The Messenger of Allah was alone with his slave girl Mariya in Hafsa’s room. The Prophet came out and she (Hafsa) was sitting at the door.

She said: ‘Messenger of Allah! In my room and on my day!’

She said: ‘I will not accept it without you swearing an oath to me.”

So he said, ‘By Allah I will never touch her.’

God promptly sent a revelation, Verse 66:2, nullifying the promise Muhammad had made to Hafsa.

66:1 O Prophet, why do you prohibit what Allah has made lawful to you, seeking thereby the good pleasure of your wives? Allah is All-Forgiving, Merciful.

66:2 Allah has prescribed to you the absolution of your oaths. Allah is your Master and He is the All-Knowing, the Wise.

Until Mariya, and God’s assurance that he could have sex with whom he wanted when he wanted, Muhammad observed a strict schedule of servicing each of his wives in turn, except for Sauda, his oldest, who gave up her up her turn knowing that her husband preferred sex with someone younger and thereby reduced the possibility of him divorcing her to get her out of the rotation.

Mariya, the Christian Copt, would give Muhammad his second son, Ibrahim. He, too, would die in infancy at eighteen months, two months before his father. Mariya died five years later.

MAYMUNA

Maymuna (also born Barra) was given to Muhammad by his uncle Abbas. She was thirty years old when she joined the Prophet’s household. She was the last of his wives to pass away. She died in 681 at the age of 81. Unlike the other wives, she is buried in Sarif, a town near the southern tip of the Peninsula.

ASMA

Asma b. an-Nu`man could be considered the half-married wife of Muhammad. Her impending marriage was part of a negotiated alliance with her tribe. She would have been the Prophet’s last wife, with her husband passing away the following year.

Asma was a naïve young girl frequently pranked by Aisha and Hafsa, who convinced her that repeating the formula for divorce when she was with Muhammad “would make the Prophet love her more. He, of course, heard the formula as powerful repudiation and sent her away.”

Is it conceivable that anyone, even the densest of girls, would mistake a formula for divorce as a turn-on for her husband, unless the story about Asma being pranked is simply someone’s way of preserving Muhammad’s perfect, if somewhat contrived marriage record? God’s spokesman may have sent her away, but the people considered her still married.

Allah, in Revelation 33:53, decreed that “You should never hurt the Messenger of Allah, nor take his wives in marriage after him. That is truly abominable in the sight of Allah.” This revelation may explain why some sources claim that “No one sought to marry her, and she was not seen by anyone except relatives until her death… she died desolate.”

In the end, Muhammad’s controlling ways condemned all his still-young widows to never again knowing the joy of being intimate with another man, or having a husband to look after them, the fate of the young Asma being the most pathetic.