Zaynab bint Khuzayma: Mother of the Poor

Zaynab bint Khuzayma ibn al-Harith al-Hilaliyya (died 4 AH / 625 CE) was a wife of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) and one of the Mothers of the Believers (Ummahat al-Mu'minin), the designation the Qur'an gives the Prophet's wives in declaring that "the Prophet is closer to the believers than themselves, and his wives are their mothers" (Qur'an 33:6). She is known throughout the biographical literature by the epithet Umm al-Masakin, the Mother of the Poor, given to her for her giving to the destitute.

She came not from the Quraysh of Mecca but from the Banu Hilal of central Arabia, and her marriage to the Prophet was the shortest of any of his. It was contracted at Medina in Ramadan of 3 AH and she died some seven or eight months later, the first of his wives to be buried in the cemetery of al-Baqi. She and Khadijah bint Khuwaylid were the only two of his wives to die during his lifetime.

Because the marriage was so brief, the early literature records less about her than about any other Mother of the Believers, and what it records is concentrated in three places: her descent, her epithet, and the question of whom she had been married to before. On that last question the sources genuinely diverge, and the divergence is set out below where it arises rather than smoothed over.

Descent and Family

Her father was Khuzayma ibn al-Harith, and the fullest statement of her line in the approved sources comes from al-Tabari, quoted by Ibn Kathir: Zaynab, daughter of Khuzayma ibn al-Harith ibn Abdullah ibn Amr ibn Abd Manaf ibn Hilal ibn Amir ibn Sa'sa'a, "a woman of Hilal". The Banu Hilal were a division of the Banu Amir ibn Sa'sa'a, a large grouping of central Arabia standing wholly outside the Quraysh and outside the network of Meccan clans into which most of the Prophet's other marriages reached. The Encyclopedia of Islam published by the Turkish Religious Foundation places her in the same branch, and The Sealed Nectar likewise gives her tribe as Hilal ibn Amir ibn Sa'sa'a.

Her tribal identity was disputed in at least one strand of the tradition, and Ibn Kathir addresses the point directly. He records that al-Mawardi, reporting from al-Sha'bi, made her a woman of the Ansar — the Helpers of Medina — and rejects it without qualification: this is not correct, he writes, since she was indisputably of Banu Hilal. The correction matters for more than pedantry. Her being an outsider to both Mecca and Medina is the fact that gives the marriage its political dimension, discussed below.

Her mother was Hind bint Awf, whose name is also given as Khawla. The household Hind headed is, in the sources, considerably more remarkable than anything recorded of Zaynab's own early life. The TDV entry states that all nine of Hind's daughters accepted Islam, and that the Prophet called them on that account "the believing sisters". Those daughters married into the very centre of the early community. Among Zaynab's sisters were Maymuna bint al-Harith, who became a wife of the Prophet some four years after Zaynab's death; Umm al-Fadl Lubaba, the wife of al-Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib; Lubaba al-Sughra, the mother of Khalid ibn al-Walid; Salma bint Umays, the wife of Hamza ibn Abd al-Muttalib; and Asma bint Umays, the wife of Ja'far ibn Abi Talib. Great Women of Islam sets out the same family from Maymuna's side, naming the same marriages and observing that Hind bint Awf held the distinction of being mother-in-law to the Prophet, to Abu Bakr, to Hamza, to al-Abbas, to Ja'far and to Ali — and that her grandsons included Abdullah ibn Abbas and Khalid ibn al-Walid.

The sisterhood with Maymuna carries one qualification that the classical tradition itself supplies. Ibn Kathir records that Ibn Abd al-Barr cited Ali ibn Abd al-Aziz al-Jurjani for the statement that Zaynab was Maymuna's sister, and then added that no one other than al-Jurjani had reported it to him. The relationship is therefore well attested in the later literature and singly attested in the earliest notice that discusses it, and both women being of the Banu Hilal is consistent with it.

Great Women of Islam places her birth thirteen years before the Prophet was called to prophethood, and counts her among those at Mecca who accepted his claim at once, at a time when many who had called him truthful and trustworthy turned against him. That work also gives her age at death as thirty, as does the TDV entry; the earlier biographical notices consulted do not fix a year of birth.

Umm al-Masakin

Masakin denotes the destitute — those without the means to provide for themselves — and the epithet is applied to Zaynab with unusual consistency across the whole of the literature. Ibn Kathir gives the reason plainly: she was called Umm al-Masakin for the many donations she made to the poor and for her kindness and compassion towards them. The Heavenly-Dispute records that she was called the mother of the needy on account of the abundance of the ihsan, the active kindness, that she showed them. The Sealed Nectar gives the same reason, and Bahishti Zewar reduces it to a sentence: she was so generous that she became known as the mother of the poor.

The register of the name is worth noticing, because it was not unique to her. The Heavenly-Dispute preserves a narration from Abu Hurayra that Ja'far ibn Abi Talib loved the needy, sat with them and talked with them, and that the Prophet used to call him Abu al-Masakin, father of the needy. The form was a recognised way of naming a person by those they cared for, and Zaynab's epithet belongs to that pattern rather than being an honorific attached to her marriage.

Whether the name was earned within Islam or already borne before it was a question the classical scholars answered differently, and Great Women of Islam records both positions: Ibn Kathir held that she earned the title through her acts of charity and generosity, while al-Qastallani wrote that she was known by it already in the pre-Islamic period. The TDV entry states the matter in a way that accommodates both, holding that she was known for her generosity, her devotion to the needy and her helpfulness in the age of ignorance and in the Islamic period alike. The same work reports that she could not bear to see a person hungry or in dire need, that she was eulogised in verse by poets of the time, and that this quality became more marked after she accepted Islam. Among modern treatments, The Straight Path places her alongside Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf as one of the Companions who were distinguished specifically by charity and philanthropy, in a discussion of how the Companions excelled in different fields rather than uniformly.

What the sources do not supply is incident. No particular act of giving is recorded of her, no amounts, no named beneficiaries, and no account of an occasion from which the name first arose. The epithet and the reason given for it are the substance of what survives of her character.

One point of identity should be settled here, because the two women are easily confused and the confusion has entered the secondary literature. A well-known hadith, narrated by Aisha and recorded in both Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, relates that the Prophet told his wives that the first of them to join him after his death would be "the one with the longest hands"; they measured their hands against one another, and the sense turned out to be figurative, denoting the most generous in charity. That hadith concerns Zaynab bint Jahsh, not Zaynab bint Khuzayma. Al-Lu'lu wal-Marjan supplies the detail that settles it: Sawda's hand measured longest, but it was Zaynab bint Jahsh who died first, in the caliphate of Umar, and it was from that that the figurative meaning was understood. Sahih Muslim places the report in its chapter on the virtues of Zaynab and explains her long hand by her working with her hands in order to give the proceeds away. Zaynab bint Khuzayma cannot be its subject for a simpler reason still: the hadith is about which wife would die first after the Prophet, and she died during his lifetime.

Her Earlier Marriages

Zaynab had been married before, and the sources do not agree on to whom. What they offer is not a straightforward pair of alternatives but a cluster of reports, some of which can be held together and some of which cannot.

One line of report places her among the Banu al-Muttalib, the clan allied to the Banu Hashim. The TDV entry sets out the fullest version: she was first married to her paternal cousin Jahm ibn Amr ibn al-Harith, then to al-Tufayl ibn al-Harith, and then to al-Tufayl's brother Ubayda ibn al-Harith. Ibn Kathir carries the middle and later parts of the same sequence from the classical authorities: he states that she had previously been married to al-Tufayl ibn al-Harith, who divorced her, and records Ibn Abd al-Barr citing al-Jurjani for the statement that thereafter al-Tufayl's brother Ubayda ibn al-Harith ibn al-Muttalib ibn Abd Manaf married her. Ibn Ishaq, quoted by Ibn Kathir through Yunus ibn Bukayr, gives a variant within the same family: she had been married to al-Husayn ibn al-Harith, or else to his brother al-Tufayl.

The three brothers were sons of al-Harith ibn al-Muttalib ibn Abd Manaf. Al-Muttalib and Hashim were both sons of Abd Manaf, and Hashim was the father of Abd al-Muttalib, the Prophet's grandfather; so these men stood to the Prophet as kinsmen of the allied clan a generation further out, and not as his first cousins. Ubayda is the best known of them. He was among the earliest Muslims of Mecca and among the Emigrants, he commanded the first detachment the Prophet despatched and carried the first standard of Islam, and he was mortally wounded in single combat at the Battle of Badr in 2 AH, becoming the first of the Prophet's kinsmen to die in battle. Haykal, in The Life of Muhammad, identifies Zaynab simply as the wife of Ubayda ibn al-Harith ibn al-Muttalib who fell at Badr.

A second and equally well-represented line of report names a different man altogether: Abdullah ibn Jahsh, who was killed at the Battle of Uhud in Shawwal of 3 AH. Al-Zuhri's list of the Prophet's wives, as Ibn Kathir gives it, states that she had previously been the wife of Abdullah ibn Jahsh ibn Ri'ab, who was killed at Uhud; Ibn al-Athir reports in Usd al-Ghaba that it is said she was his wife and that he was killed while still married to her; and The Sealed Nectar, Great Women of Islam and Bahishti Zewar all follow this identification. Abdullah ibn Jahsh was the Prophet's cousin through his mother Umayma bint Abd al-Muttalib, and Ibn Kathir's account of Uhud names him as one of only four Emigrants killed in the battle, alongside Hamza ibn Abd al-Muttalib, Mus'ab ibn Umayr and Shammas ibn Uthman; he was buried in the same grave as Hamza.

The two lines cannot both be right, and the reason is chronological rather than textual. The marriage to the Prophet is placed by al-Tabari, by Ibn Kathir and by the TDV entry in Ramadan of 3 AH, which fell in February or March of 625 and therefore before Uhud, which was fought in Shawwal of the same year. On that dating Abdullah ibn Jahsh was still alive and still at Medina when Zaynab was already married to the Prophet, and cannot have been the husband she was widowed from. The reports that make her his widow are accordingly bound up with the alternative dating of the marriage to 4 AH, which The Sealed Nectar gives. A reader will meet both, and neither is a minority curiosity: the Banu al-Muttalib line rests on Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Abd al-Barr and al-Jurjani, and the Abdullah ibn Jahsh line on al-Zuhri and Ibn al-Athir.

One further formulation should be noted because it is compatible with more than one of the above. Islamic Studies states that she had been twice married and widowed before the Prophet married her, without naming the husbands.

Marriage to the Prophet

The Prophet married Zaynab after Hafsa bint Umar, making her the fifth of his wives in the order Ibn Ishaq gives — Khadijah, then Sawda bint Zam'a, then Aisha, then Hafsa, then Zaynab bint Khuzayma, and after her Umm Habiba and Umm Salama. Ibn Kathir, having set out both this sequence and al-Zuhri's rather different one, judges Ibn Ishaq's to be the preferable and more accurate of the two.

Al-Tabari places the marriage in Ramadan, and Ibn Kathir adds that the marriage was consummated in that month. The TDV entry dates it to Ramadan 3 AH, February or March 625, a year after Ubayda's death at Badr and immediately before Uhud. The Sealed Nectar instead places it in the fourth year of the Hijra, and Strategies of Prophet Muhammad gives 626 CE.

On the dowry the sources give two figures. Both the TDV entry and Great Women of Islam record four hundred dirhams. Ibn Kathir states that the Prophet gave her a dowry of twelve and a half ounces of gold. The variance is reported here as it stands.

Two reasons for the marriage are given in the sources, and they are not in competition. The first is provision. Great Women of Islam describes the practice by which the widows and orphaned children of Companions killed in battle were provided for, other Companions marrying the widows and taking the children into their care, and it gives a parallel case in Hamnah bint Jahsh, who lost her brother Abdullah ibn Jahsh, her uncle Hamza and her husband Mus'ab ibn Umayr at Uhud. To Hamnah, the same work reports, the Prophet said that the place a husband held in his wife's heart could not be taken by another; she replied that it was the thought of the orphaned children that troubled her most and asked him to pray that she be given patience, and she afterwards married Talha, who raised her first husband's children. Of Zaynab the work says that she appealed to no one, but committed her situation to God and gave herself to prayer. Haykal presents the marriage in the same terms, as an act of provision for a widow rather than anything else, and groups it with the marriage to Umm Salama on that ground.

The second reason is tribal. Zaynab belonged to a large confederation of central Arabia with which relations had deteriorated, and the TDV entry states that the Prophet's wish to repair the damaged relationship with Banu Amir ibn Sa'sa'a played an important part in the marriage. Strategies of Prophet Muhammad says the same, describing the tribe of Amir as one with which the Prophet had been seeking closer relations. This is the point at which her standing outside the Quraysh becomes significant: the marriage reached outward, into a tribal grouping that the Meccan and Medinan alliances did not touch.

Great Women of Islam supplies the domestic arrangement. An apartment was built for her beside those of Hafsa and Aisha, and those two, understanding that the Prophet had married her because she was so affected by her first husband's death, set themselves to keep her company; her grief was lightened by it and she was more at peace. The marriage produced no children.

Death and Burial

Islamic Studies reports that she fell ill and died, which is as much as the sources say of the cause. The date is given by the TDV entry as Rabi al-Akhir of 4 AH, September 625, seven or eight months after the marriage, with the note that some reports make the interval shorter. History of Islam likewise places her death among the events of 4 AH, in the same year as the birth of al-Husayn, the prohibition of wine, and the deaths of Abdullah ibn Uthman and of Fatima the mother of Ali. Islamic Studies sets it a month or so before the death of Abu Salama, which it dates to 8 Jumada al-Akhira of 4 AH.

The reported duration of the marriage varies more than the date of its end. Ibn Abd al-Barr, quoted by Ibn Kathir, states that she remained with the Prophet only two or three months; The Sealed Nectar gives two or three months and records eight months as another version; Great Women of Islam gives barely eight months, and the TDV entry seven or eight; Haykal alone says one or two years. What all of them agree on, and what Ibn Abd al-Barr states there is no dispute about, is that she died during the Prophet's lifetime. Hers was the shortest of all his marriages.

The Prophet led her funeral prayer, and she was buried in the cemetery of al-Baqi at Medina. Islamic Studies adds that her grave lay not far from that of his daughter Ruqayya, and the TDV entry records a detail of some significance in the history of the site: she was the first of the Prophet's wives to be buried there. Khadijah had died at Mecca and was buried there, so Zaynab's burial began the association of al-Baqi with the Mothers of the Believers that later generations knew it by.

She was the second of the Prophet's wives to die in his lifetime, after Khadijah, and one of only two. The point is made in nearly identical terms across the sources — The Sealed Nectar states that of the eleven women with whom he consummated marriage, two died within his lifetime and nine survived him; Bahishti Zewar names the same two; Haykal writes that besides Khadijah she was the only wife who died before him. Her sister Maymuna married the Prophet in Dhu al-Qa'da of 7 AH, March 629, about four years after Zaynab's death.

Standing Among the Mothers of the Believers

The brevity of the marriage does not affect her standing. The Qur'anic designation at 33:6 applies to the Prophet's wives without reference to duration, and the same sura addresses them as a body: "O wives of the Prophet, you are not like any other women" (Qur'an 33:32), and speaks of God's wish to remove impurity from the people of the household and to purify them thoroughly (Qur'an 33:33) — both verses that Great Women of Islam cites in connection with her entry into that household. A Concise Children's Encyclopedia on Islam includes her in the standard enumeration of the Mothers of the Believers and records the consequence of the title, that it was forbidden to marry any of them after the Prophet's death.

She appears in every standard list of the wives, in Ibn Ishaq's ordering and al-Zuhri's alike. No hadith is transmitted from her, the marriage having been too short to leave a body of narration, which is why her place in the literature rests on the epithet rather than on a corpus of reports. The care of the poor that the epithet names is a recurring Qur'anic obligation, and the verses naming the needy, the orphan and the captive among those with a claim on the believer's wealth (Qur'an 76:8-9) and making the giving of wealth to kin, orphans and the needy a constituent of faith (Qur'an 2:177) are the framework within which the classical writers understood her reputation. Those verses are cited here as the Qur'anic theme her epithet invokes, not as passages revealed concerning her.

References and Further Reading

Primary Islamic Sources

The primary material naming Zaynab bint Khuzayma is limited, and the entries below reflect that rather than being extended with passages that do not concern her.

• Qur'an, Surah al-Ahzab (33:6) — the Prophet's wives are as mothers to the believers, the basis of the title Umm al-Mu'minin
• Qur'an, Surah al-Ahzab (33:32 and 33:33) — the address to the wives of the Prophet and the purification of the people of the household
• Qur'an, Surah al-Insan (76:8-9) — the needy, the orphan and the captive as those with a claim on the believer's wealth; the Qur'anic theme invoked by her epithet, not a passage revealed concerning her
• Qur'an, Surah al-Baqarah (2:177) — the giving of wealth to kin, orphans and the needy as a constituent of faith
• Sahih Muslim, hadith 2452, in the chapter on the virtues of Zaynab, Mother of the Believers — the report from Aisha on the wife with the longest hands, which concerns Zaynab bint Jahsh
• Sahih al-Bukhari, hadith 1420, Book of Virtues — the same report; Al-Lu'lu wal-Marjan preserves the detail identifying the wife who died first
• No hadith is transmitted from Zaynab bint Khuzayma herself; the biographical notices listed below are the record for her life

Classical Islamic Sources

• Ibn Kathir. Al-Sira al-Nabawiyya — the fullest classical treatment available in the approved library, carrying al-Tabari on her genealogy and the date of the marriage, Ibn Abd al-Barr and al-Jurjani on her sisterhood with Maymuna and on her earlier husbands, al-Zuhri's list of the wives, Ibn Ishaq's ordering and variant, Ibn al-Athir's report from Usd al-Ghaba, and the rejection of the report making her a woman of the Ansar
• Ibn Ishaq, in the recension of Ibn Hisham — the ordering of the Prophet's marriages that Ibn Kathir judges the more accurate, and the variant naming al-Husayn or al-Tufayl ibn al-Harith as her earlier husband
• Al-Tabari, Muhammad ibn Jarir — quoted by Ibn Kathir for her full line of descent to Amir ibn Sa'sa'a and for the marriage in Ramadan
• Ibn Abd al-Barr, Al-Isti'ab fi Ma'rifat al-Ashab — quoted by Ibn Kathir for the sisterhood with Maymuna on al-Jurjani's sole authority, for al-Tufayl and Ubayda as her earlier husbands, and for the statement that there is no dispute that she died in the Prophet's lifetime
• Ibn al-Athir, Usd al-Ghaba — quoted by Ibn Kathir for the report that Abdullah ibn Jahsh was her husband and was killed at Uhud while married to her
• Ibn Sa'd, Al-Tabaqat al-Kabir; al-Tabarani, Al-Mu'jam al-Kabir; al-Suhayli, Al-Rawd al-Unuf; Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, Al-Isaba fi Tamyiz al-Sahaba — the classical notices on her identified in the bibliography of the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam entry; they are named here as the location of the early record rather than as works consulted directly for this article

Academic and Scholarly Sources

• Ayşe Esra Şahyar. "ZEYNEB bint HUZEYME", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 44 (Istanbul: TDV İslâm Araştırmaları Merkezi, 2013), p. 361. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/zeyneb-bint-huzeyme — the principal source for this article: her tribal branch, her mother Hind or Khawla bint Awf and the nine believing sisters, the identification of her sisters, the sequence of her earlier marriages, the dating of the marriage to Ramadan 3 AH with a dowry of four hundred dirhams, the tribal motive, her death in Rabi al-Akhir 4 AH aged thirty, and her place as the first of the Prophet's wives buried at al-Baqi
• Great Women of Islam — the chapters on Zainab bint Khazeemah and on Maimoonah bint Harith al-Hilaliah, for her birth thirteen years before the call, her early acceptance of Islam, the dowry and the apartment beside Hafsa and Aisha, the disagreement between Ibn Kathir and al-Qastallani over the epithet, the parallel of Hamnah bint Jahsh, her burial at al-Baqi, and the household of Hind bint Awf
• al-Mubarakpuri, Safi-ur-Rahman. Ar-Raheeq al-Makhtum (The Sealed Nectar). Riyadh: Darussalam — the section on the Prophetic Household, for her tribe, her epithet, the alternative dating to 4 AH and the variant durations
• Haykal, Muhammad Husayn. The Life of Muhammad. Translated by Isma'il Razi A. al-Faruqi — for her identification as the widow of Ubayda ibn al-Harith ibn al-Muttalib who fell at Badr, and for the presentation of the marriage as provision for a widow
• Thanawi, Ashraf Ali. Bahishti Zewar (Heavenly Ornaments) — for her generosity as the source of the epithet and for the identification of the wife who died first after the Prophet
• The Straight Path — for her place among the Companions distinguished specifically by charity and philanthropy
• History of Islam, Vol. 1; Islamic Studies, Grade 8; Strategies of Prophet Muhammad (SAW); The Heavenly-Dispute; A Concise Children's Encyclopedia on Islam — for her final illness and the place of her burial near Ruqayya's grave, the placing of her death in 4 AH, her position as the fifth wife and the tribal motive, the parallel epithet of Ja'far ibn Abi Talib, and her place in the standard enumeration of the wives

Further Reading

• Maymuna bint al-Harith — her sister through their mother Hind bint Awf, and a later wife of the Prophet, whose article covers the same Hilali household from the other side
• Ubayda ibn al-Harith — the Banu al-Muttalib Companion named as her husband in one line of the reports, for the detail of his lineage, his command of the first expedition and his death at Badr
• Zaynab bint Jahsh — the other wife of the Prophet named Zaynab, and the subject of the hadith on the longest hands with which her epithet is sometimes confused
• The following lie outside the project's approved source base and nothing above rests on them; they are named for the reader: Barbara Freyer Stowasser, Women in the Qur'an, Traditions, and Interpretation; W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Medina, on Badr, Uhud and the Medinan community in 3 and 4 AH; Martin Lings, Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources; and Nabia Abbott, Aishah: The Beloved of Mohammed, for the household context at Medina