Umm Kulthum bint Muhammad

Umm Kulthum bint Muhammad was a daughter of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) and Khadijah bint Khuwaylid. Her life is the least eventful of the four daughters' in the sense the chronicles usually record — she fought no battles and made no migrations across the sea — and the most domestic. She spent the Meccan years in her mother's house, and it was she and Fatimah, the two youngest, who looked after their parents through the years of the boycott and through Khadijah's final illness.

She is also the reason Uthman ibn Affan is known as Dhu al-Nurayn, the possessor of two lights: after her sister Ruqayyah died, the Prophet gave him Umm Kulthum in marriage.

Birth and Name

Golden Stories of Sayyida Khadijah places her birth at Mecca six years before her father was called to prophethood. The name her father gave her carries a description: Kulthum in Arabic denotes a full, round face, and she was known by it thereafter.

She and Ruqayyah were born close together, and Golden Stories records that the two sisters were particularly close. Her other sisters were Zaynab, the eldest, and Fatimah, the youngest; her brothers al-Qasim and Abdullah died in childhood. The family as a whole is treated in the article on the children of the Prophet.

The Betrothal to Utaybah

Before either girl reached puberty, a delegation of Banu Hashim came to the Prophet with a proposal that Ruqayyah and Umm Kulthum should marry the two sons of Abu Lahab. The parents accepted after some hesitation, and Umm Kulthum was betrothed to Utaybah while Ruqayyah was betrothed to Utbah.

Neither marriage was consummated, Golden Stories notes, most likely because the girls were still minors. Khadijah's reluctance had turned on the character of the woman who would become their mother-in-law — Umm Jamil, the wife of Abu Lahab, whose reputation at Mecca was for a sharp tongue and for setting people against one another, and who is named in the Qur'an, in the sura denouncing her husband, as hammalat al-hatab, the carrier of firewood.

When Surah al-Masad was revealed, the connection was broken and the two engagements ended. The circumstances are set out in the article on Ruqayyah.

The Meccan Years

Umm Kulthum accepted Islam along with her mother, and Golden Stories records that she remained in Khadijah's care for a long time. Her two elder sisters were living with their husbands — Ruqayyah crossed to Abyssinia twice — so the household came to rest on the two youngest. Fatimah stayed at home with her.

This is the part of her life the sources treat as significant, and it belongs to the hardest years of the Meccan period. During the boycott of Banu Hashim, when the clan was confined in Shi'b Abi Talib, the two younger daughters were with their parents. Golden Stories records that they had little in the way of material resources and learned to bear the difficulty patiently, and that Khadijah, by then old, was looked after by her two youngest daughters.

By the time the boycott was lifted Khadijah had grown very weak. She died in Ramadan of the tenth year of her husband's mission and was buried in the cemetery of Hujun at Mecca. Umm Kulthum was still young when she lost her.

The Hijra

When the Prophet migrated to Medina, Umm Kulthum did not travel with him. She remained at Mecca along with Fatimah and Sawdah, their stepmother.

Once he had arrived, he sent Zayd ibn Harithah and Abu Rafi to bring them, and Golden Stories records that he had made arrangements for their accommodation before they reached the city. It was with their arrival that the Prophet and Abu Bakr were rejoined by their immediate families at Medina.

Marriage to Uthman ibn Affan

Ruqayyah died shortly after Badr in 2 AH, and the family — Uthman among them — was grieved by it. Golden Stories is warm about him: a loyal husband to Ruqayyah and a son-in-law with whom the Prophet was well pleased, wealthy and generous, and a man who had undertaken three migrations for the sake of God.

How the marriage came about

The circumstances are unusual, and they are documented in Umar's own words as well as in the biographical literature.

At about the time Ruqayyah died, Hafsah bint Umar was widowed. Her husband had been Khunays ibn Hudhafah al-Sahmi, who died at Medina. Umar ibn al-Khattab, concerned that his daughter should remarry, went to Uthman — recently bereaved himself — and offered her to him. Uthman said he would think about it. Some days later Umar asked again, and Uthman told him he was not minded to marry. Umar then went to Abu Bakr, who said nothing at all, and Umar was more hurt by Abu Bakr's silence than by Uthman's refusal. Not long afterwards the Prophet proposed to Hafsah himself, and married her.

Abu Bakr afterwards explained his silence: he had known the Prophet's intention, kept it to himself rather than disclose it, and would have married Hafsah had the Prophet not done so. Golden Stories cites this sequence from Sahih al-Bukhari, from Umar himself; Uthman's silence is understood the same way, as the discretion of a man who had learned what the Prophet intended.

Having married Hafsah, the Prophet then offered Uthman his own daughter Umm Kulthum. Golden Stories cites al-Hakim's al-Mustadrak for this. The result, as it observes, settled two households at once.

The reports of divine instruction

Golden Stories records reports that this marriage, like Ruqayyah's, was made on instruction rather than on the Prophet's own initiative. In one, the Prophet said that he married Umm Kulthum to Uthman upon receiving revelation. In another he told Uthman that Jibril had conveyed God's instruction that Umm Kulthum be married to him, that the same mahr be fixed as had been fixed for Ruqayyah, and that his conduct towards her be as it had been towards her sister. These are cited to al-Hakim's al-Mustadrak, with a similar report transmitted from Abu Hurayrah recorded by al-Salihi.

The contract is placed in Rabi' al-Awwal of 3 AH and the marriage consummated in Jumada al-Ukhra of the same year.

The wedding, and after

Two domestic details survive, both from Aisha. The Prophet asked Umm Ayman to prepare his daughter and take her to Uthman's house, and to play the duff — the hand drum then common in Arabia — for her. And three days after the marriage he came to visit Umm Kulthum, to ask how she found her husband.

Golden Stories cites these from al-Suyuti's Jami' al-Ahadith and al-Muttaqi al-Hindi's Kanz al-Ummal.

The marriage produced no children.

Death and Burial

Umm Kulthum died in Sha'ban of 9 AH, after an illness of some duration. Golden Stories cites Ibn Sa'd for the date.

Her father led the funeral prayer. Golden Stories records that he was deeply grieved and sat beside her grave for a long time, and it preserves the scene from Anas ibn Malik's narration in Sahih al-Bukhari: the Prophet was sitting at the grave with tears in his eyes, and asked whether there was any man present who had not gone to his wife that night. Abu Talhah said that he had not, and the Prophet told him to go down into the grave — so it was Abu Talhah who helped to place her in it.

Layla bint Qanif al-Thaqafiyyah was among the women who washed her body.

With her death the Prophet had outlived three of his four daughters. Only Fatimah survived him.

Assessment

Umm Kulthum's life does not turn on a single dramatic episode, and that is worth stating plainly rather than compensating for. She was betrothed as a child and released from it by a revelation about someone else; she kept her mother's house through the boycott years; she came to Medina when she was sent for; she married her dead sister's husband on her father's arrangement; she had no children; and she died before her father, at Medina, of an illness the sources do not name.

What the record does preserve is a particular kind of service. During the confinement in Shi'b Abi Talib, when the clan was cut off and resources were short, the two youngest daughters were the ones looking after their parents, and Khadijah in her last weakness was cared for by them. That is the substance of Umm Kulthum's biography, and the sources treat it as such rather than as background to something else.

Her marriage also had a consequence beyond her own household: it is the second of the two marriages from which Uthman's epithet Dhu al-Nurayn derives, and it bound the man who would become the third caliph to the Prophet's family twice over.

Historiographical Note

Two elements of this account rest on the canonical collections and the rest does not, and the difference is worth keeping in view.

The scene at the graveside comes from Anas ibn Malik in Sahih al-Bukhari, and the sequence by which Hafsah was offered first to Uthman and then to Abu Bakr comes from Sahih al-Bukhari on Umar's own authority. Those are the firmest points in the article. Everything else — her birth date, the sense of her name, the betrothal to Utaybah, the years in Shi'b Abi Talib, the sending of Zayd ibn Harithah and Abu Rafi, the wedding arrangements, the dates of contract and consummation, and the washing of her body — comes from the sira and tabaqat literature and from later compilations: Ibn Sa'd, Ibn Manzur's abridgement of Ibn Asakir, al-Hakim, al-Suyuti, al-Muttaqi al-Hindi, al-Salihi. Golden Stories of Sayyida Khadijah is the work through which these reach this article, and it cites them.

The reports of divine instruction concerning the marriage need the same care as the corresponding reports about Ruqayyah. They come from al-Hakim's al-Mustadrak and from a parallel transmission attributed to Abu Hurayrah, not from the two Sahihs. The article reports what those sources transmit, and names them in doing so, rather than asserting the matter independently.

Her age is not stated at any point after birth. The figure of six years before the beginning of revelation would allow one to be calculated, but it depends on an ordering of the four births that the earliest sources do not settle, and compounding one uncertain figure with another produces a false precision.

Nothing is transmitted from Umm Kulthum in her own words. The one exchange in which she features — her father's visit three days after the wedding to ask how she found her husband — records his question and not her answer.

References and Further Reading

Primary Islamic Sources

• Sahih al-Bukhari, no. 1342 — Anas ibn Malik's narration of the Prophet seated at Umm Kulthum's grave, in tears, asking which of those present had not gone to his wife that night, and directing Abu Talhah to descend into the grave; cited here from Golden Stories of Sayyida Khadijah
• Sahih al-Bukhari, no. 5122 — Umar ibn al-Khattab's own account of Hafsah's widowhood after the death of Khunays ibn Hudhafah al-Sahmi, his offer of her to Uthman and then to Abu Bakr, and the Prophet's marriage to her; cited here from Golden Stories
• Qur'an, Surah al-Masad 111 — the denunciation of Abu Lahab and his wife, the revelation that ended Umm Kulthum's betrothal to Utaybah
• Al-Hakim, al-Mustadrak — the Prophet's offer of Umm Kulthum to Uthman following his own marriage to Hafsah, and the reports that the marriage was made on divine instruction, with the mahr fixed as Ruqayyah's had been; cited here from Golden Stories

Classical Islamic Sources

• Ibn Sa'd, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kubra — Umm Kulthum's death in Sha'ban 9 AH; cited here from Golden Stories
• Ibn Manzur, Mukhtasar Tarikh Dimashq li-Ibn Asakir — the sending of Zayd ibn Harithah and Abu Rafi to bring Umm Kulthum, Fatimah and Sawdah from Mecca to Medina; cited here from Golden Stories
• Al-Suyuti, Jami' al-Ahadith, and al-Muttaqi al-Hindi, Kanz al-Ummal — Aisha's account of Umm Ayman preparing Umm Kulthum and taking her to Uthman's house with the duff, and the Prophet's visit three days later; cited here from Golden Stories
• Al-Salihi, Subul al-Huda wa al-Rashad — the parallel report from Abu Hurayrah on the marriage; cited here from Golden Stories

Academic and Scholarly Sources

• Golden Stories of Sayyida Khadijah — the principal source for this article throughout, and the work through which the classical citations above were consulted: the birth and the name, the betrothal, the Meccan years and the boycott, Khadijah's death and burial at Hujun, the journey from Mecca after the Hijra, the sequence of the Hafsah proposals, the marriage to Uthman and its dates, the wedding arrangements, the death and the washing of the body
• As-Sallabi, Ali Muhammad. The Biography of 'Uthman Ibn 'Affan: Dhun-Noorayn, translated by Nasir Khattab — Uthman's character and standing, his three migrations, and the derivation of the epithet Dhun-Noorayn from his marriage to two of the Prophet's daughters

Further Reading

• The article on the children of the Prophet — the family as a whole, and the difficulty of ordering the four births
• Ruqayyah bint Muhammad — her closest sister, betrothed to the other son of Abu Lahab and Uthman's first wife among the daughters
• Zaynab bint Muhammad — the eldest sister, whose marriage survived the same Qurayshi pressure
• Khadijah bint Khuwaylid — her mother, whom she and Fatimah cared for in her last illness
• Uthman ibn Affan — her husband, and the third caliph