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Zaynab bint Jahsh was the Prophet Muhammad’s seventh wife.^[1]

Her original name had been Barrah (“virtuous”) but Muhammad disliked this name because “it makes her sound as if she is claiming to be virtuous.”^[2] At the time of their marriage he renamed her Zaynab,^[3] which literally means “father’s ornament”, but is also the name of a flower.

Background

Zaynab’s grandfather was Riyab ibn Yaamur, a Bedouin from the tribe of Asad ibn Khuzayma.^[4] He immigrated to Mecca and requested an alliance with the Quraysh, apparently because he desired their assistance in his quarrel with the Khuza’a tribe. Khadijah’s grandfather, Asad ibn Abduluzza, responded, “and he gladly joined them as hali [ally on equal terms].” But the Meccans later told him that Asad’s family were “a wretched branch of the Quraysh.” Riyab then broke this alliance and formed one with the Umayya, who were the most powerful clan in Mecca.^[5] Thereafter Riyab’s children and grandchildren were regarded as honorary Umayyads.^[6]

Riyab’s son Jahsh married Umama (or Umayma) bint Abdulmuttalib, who was Muhammad’s aunt;^[7] hence their six children were Muhammad’s first cousins. Zaynab was born c. 590;^[8] her sisters were Habibah (or Umm Habib) and Hamnah,^[9] but their birth-order is unknown.^[10] Her eldest brother, Abd, was always known as an adult by his kunya Abu Ahmad. He was born blind but “he used to go all round Mecca from top to bottom without anyone to lead him. He was a poet.”^[11] The second brother was Abdullah^[12] and the third was Ubaydullah.^[13]

As an honorary Umayyad, Zaynab would have grown up socialising with the Meccan aristocracy. She would have known the Umayya and Makhzum households, and it is possible that she remembered Muhammad’s wedding to Khadijah, which took place when she was about five years old.^[14] She was about fifteen when the Ka'aba was damaged by floods, and the clans co-operated in a joint effort to rebuild it.^[15] This re-housing of the idols seems to have made a deep impression on her brother Ubaydullah, for he then decided that the Black Stone was useless “for it can neither see nor hear nor hurt nor help.” He declared that he believed in only one God and set out on a quest to discover the true religion.^[16] He came under the influence of the monotheist Zayd ibn Amr, whose outspoken opinions on the Arabian gods made him so unpopular that his family drove him out of Mecca into the surrounding mountains. Zayd journeyed to Syria and Mesopotamia, questioning monks and rabbis about the religion of Abraham. On his return to Mecca, before he could enter the city, he was attacked and murdered by some unknown persons.^[17] Ubaydullah was not discouraged but “went on searching until Islam came.”^[18]

First Marriage

Zaynab’s eldest brother married Abu Sufyan’s daughter Al-Faraa,^[19] and Ubaydullah married her sister Ramlah.^[20] As far as we know, Abu Sufyan did not arrange a marriage for the middle brother Abdullah.

Zaynab was also married in Mecca, and it seems likely that her bridegroom was approved, or even chosen, by Abu Sufyan. However, almost nothing is known about this man. Zaynab later reminded Muhammad that her husband had been a Qurashi.^[21] Since the purpose of this assertion had been to emphasise his high social status, she would, if he had been from the leading clans of Umayya, Makhzum or even Hashim, certainly have mentioned as much; since she did not, he must have been from a humbler family. But every member of the Quraysh was deemed of higher social standing than every other person in Mecca.^[22]

Her husband’s anonymity is curious. All the previous husbands of Muhammad’s other wives are carefully listed in their biographies. The lists include some men who were Muslim heroes, others who were considered enemies of Islam, and others again who were of no great importance.^[23] The historians were very obviously not excluding information that was somehow “embarrassing,” so this cannot be the reason why Zaynab’s first husband is missing from the list. The most straightforward explanation is simply that the information was lost before the ahadith were committed to writing. Reasons can be imagined why Zaynab might not have talked very much about her husband. Perhaps she loved him so much or hated him so much that she could not bear to speak about him; perhaps the marriage was so short-lived, or he spent so much of it travelling away from home, or his personality was so quiet or so bland that he made very little impression on her. But Zaynab was not the only silent person here. Other Muslims must have known her first husband: her siblings, their numerous Hashimite cousins, their honorary Umayyad kin, any number of their friends from Mecca. Yet none of them passed on any tradition about him, and his name is forgotten.

We can take two educated guesses about Zaynab’s married life. Firstly, she was later known as a skilled craftswoman. She knew how to tan leather,^[24] dye cloth^[25] and sew textiles and leather to make clothes and sew other household items.^[26] There is no indication that any other member of the Jahsh family had these skills, and she certainly did not grow up with the economic need to learn a trade. So it is reasonable to infer that Zaynab’s first husband was from one of Mecca’s many leather-working families^[27] and that she learned her skills from them. Since she continued with this work all her life, whether there was an economic need for it or not,^[28] she must have enjoyed it. This suggests that the everyday-labour aspect of her first marriage was happy.

Secondly, it appears that she had a child. She was occasionally known as Umm al-Hakam,^[29] which literally means “Mother of the Judge”. There is nothing in her biography that indicates she had any kind of legal expertise or even that she was consulted for her general wisdom. It is therefore most likely that Umm al-Hakam was not a by-name but a literal kunya and that Zaynab gave birth to an actual son named Al-Hakam. This child is never otherwise mentioned, so he probably died in infancy. It is unlikely that Zaynab had any further children; she certainly had none who survived and none by her subsequent husbands.^[30]

Islam

Conversion

Zaynab was about twenty years old when her cousin Muhammad declared himself a prophet.^[31] Another cousin, Abu Salama ibn Abdulasad, was among the earliest converts to Islam.^[32] Her brothers Abu Ahmad and Abdullah came under the influence of Abu Bakr and were converted slightly later, perhaps in 612. No other family member is on the list of “those who accepted Islam at Abu Bakr’s invitation,”^[33] so perhaps the rest of them heard about Islam from the two brothers. Ubaydullah and his wife were Muslims by 615,^[34] but there is no exact date for Zaynab’s conversion.^[35] However, most of the family was drawn into the Muslim community well before 615, for Zaynab’s unmarried siblings soon found spouses among them. Abdullah married Zaynab bint Khuzayma, a Hilal widow known as “Mother of the Poor,” although this marriage ended in divorce.Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content Habibah married Abdulrahman ibn Awf,^[36] a wealthy merchantCite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content who was related to Muhammad’s mother.^[37] Hamnah married Musaab ibn Umayr,^[38] a blue-eyedCite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content rich boyCite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content from the Abduldar clan.^[39]

Ibn Ishaq specifically mentions those Muslims whose widows later married Muhammad;^[40] since there is no such notice about Zaynab, her husband probably remained a pagan. Her mother, Umama, did not become a Muslim either.^[41] Islamic legends claim that Zaynab’s father, Jahsh, became a Muslim, emigrated to Abyssinia and thence travelled eastwards, preaching Islam wherever he went. He never returned home but eventually founded a Muslim community in western China.Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content Uncorroborated tales of China should be treated with caution, and Jahsh is not listed among those who emigrated to Abyssinia. However, it is true that his name disappears from the records at about this point; if it is not because he died, it may be that he departed permanently from Mecca independently from the general emigration.

The Persecution

After 613 the Quraysh began a campaign of persecuting vulnerable Muslims.^[42] “It was that evil man Abu Jahl who stirred up the Meccans against them. When he heard that a man had become a Muslim, if he was a man of social importance and had relations to defend him, he reprimanded him and poured scorn on him, saying, ‘You have forsaken the religion of your father who was better than you. We will declare you a blockhead and brand you as a fool and destroy your reputation.’ If he was a merchant he said, ‘We will boycott your goods and reduce you to beggary.’ If he was a person of no social importance, he beat him and incited people against him.”^[43] Zaynab’s family presumably fell under the first category or perhaps the second. In 615 Abdullah, Ubaydullah and their two brothers-in-law joined the emigration to Abyssinia. Ubaydullah took his wife to Abyssinia with him, but Zaynab’s two sisters were left behind.^[44] This was apparently because the journey to Abyssinia was deemed a great sacrifice and hardship,Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content and women were not subjected to it if they would be safe in Mecca. In practice, no harm befell Zaynab or her sisters, so perhaps the Quraysh assumed that men were the real problem and did not target women (or a blind man like Abu Ahmad). After many of the persecuted slaves recanted their faith,^[45] the Quraysh declared a trade boycott on Muhammad’s clan;^[46] they showed no interest in the handful of Muslim women whose husbands were respectable polytheists or absent.

Ubaydullah remained in Abyssinia until his death;Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content but Abdullah, Abdulrahman and Musaab were among forty Muslims who returned to Mecca in 619 when they heard a rumour that the Meccans had all converted to Islam.^[47] The rumour was false; the true story was that Muhammad had temporarily worshipped some of the Arabian goddesses,^[48] and so the Meccans had officially made peace with him and lifted the boycott.^[49] By the time the fugitives reached Mecca, Muhammad had once again renounced the goddesses,^[50] and the fugitives felt the need to enter the city “under the protection of a citizen or by stealth.”^[51] It is not recorded who protected Zaynab’s relatives, but Abdullah at least appears to have acted without fear. He married Fatima bint Abi Hubaysh,^[52] a choice that reflects a certain carelessness towards the Umayyads. Since Fatima was a member of the Asad clan (her father had been Khadijah’s first cousinCite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content) Abdullah was reverting to the original alliance that his grandfather had rejected forty years earlier. To emphasise the point, the couple named their son Muhammad.^[53]

The Hijra

From mid-620 Muhammad urged the Muslims to emigrate to Medina.^[54] He sent Hamnah’s husband Musaab to his allies there to read the Qur’an, lead the prayers and teach Islam, and Musaab secured the conversion of several of the tribal chiefs.^[55] Zaynab’s brother Abdullah was one of the first to heed the call, probably in early 621. Abu Ahmad’s wife begged to go “anywhere but Medina,” but he told her that Islam was more important than family ties and composed poetry about their argument.^[56] By this time Zaynab was a widow,^[57] although there is no information about when or how her husband had died. She was among those who accompanied Abdullah to Medina.^[58]

Although it was a large party of at least twenty-eight people, they appear to have left in something of a hurry, for Abdullah was one of only three emigrants who did not liquidise his assets before departing from Mecca.^[59] He locked up the house, leaving citizens who passed it to sigh over “its doors blowing to and fro, empty of inhabitants” and pontificate that, “Every house however long its prosperity lasts will one day be overtaken by misfortune and trouble. The house of the Jahsh clan has become tenantless.” Abu Jahl said, “Nobody will weep over that. This is the work of this man’s nephew [Muhammad]. He has divided our community, disrupted our affairs, and driven a wedge between us.”^[60]

The family settled in Medina on the corner of a plot that soon became the community graveyard Al-Baqi (Celestial Cemetery). The building is referred to as “the dwelling of the sons of Jahsh,”^[61] indicating that Abu Ahmad and Abdullah shared one house, so Zaynab would have lived there too. Muhammad did not arrive until September 622, more than a year later.^[62] He spent the next several months building the mosque,^[63] debating with the Jews^[64] and raiding the merchant-caravans of the Meccans. The raid led by Abdullah was the first in which a Muslim killed a Meccan and the first in which they succeeded in stealing the merchandise.^[65]

When the Meccans were certain that the Jahsh clan would not return, Abu Sufyan took possession of their house and sold it to pay off his own debts.^[66] Abdullah was angry about this, saying that his family had chosen to ally with Abu Sufyan when they had received plenty of good offers from other Quraysh families.^[67] He asked Muhammad for justice; but Muhammad, busy in Medina and powerless to act in Mecca, told him to be content that Allah would give him a better house in Paradise.^[68] Abu Sufyan’s side of the story does not survive. Eight years later, when Muhammad conquered Mecca and could have easily commandeered any building that he wanted, Abu Ahmad again asked him to repossess the house for him, but Muhammad ignored him. Other Muslims, though friendly to Abu Ahmad and at loggerheads with Abu Sufyan, told him, “You lost your house in Allah’s service, so don’t ask the Apostle about it again.” This lack of sympathy for the Jahsh family’s case suggests that Abu Sufyan had in fact been acting within his rights. Perhaps he had only lent, leased or given them the property on the understanding that they were his allies. By abandoning the house in order to ally so openly with Muhammad, who had declared war on Mecca,^[69] Abdullah had snubbed Abu Sufyan’s forty years of friendship and forfeited his protection. It seemed that nobody, not even Muhammad, disputed Abu Sufyan’s right to repossess a house that had probably belonged to him originally. All Abu Ahmad could do about it was to write another poem, along the lines of: “I swear Abu Sufyan will regret this; may his theft stick to him like the ring of a dove …”^[70]

Second Marriage

At some stage, it is said, Zaynab proposed herself to Muhammad as a wife and offered not to take any dower.^[71] Muhammad declined this invitation. Early in 625 he visited the family saying he had a marriage proposal for Zaynab.^[72] Because of the uncertain chronology, it is not clear whether this was the occasion when Zaynab offered herself to Muhammad dower-free or whether this visit occurred later and Zaynab assumed he had changed his mind. Either way, she and Abdullah thought at first that Muhammad now wanted to marry her.^[73]

They were displeased to discover that Muhammad was not proposing on his own behalf at all. While he was in fact planning to marry, his choice had fallen on Hafsah bint Umar,^[74] who was less beautiful than Zaynab^[75] but better educated^[76] and some fifteen years younger.^[77] Shortly afterwards, he also married Zaynab bint Khuzaymah,^[78] the woman whom Abdullah had divorced, and he then ruled that four wives were the maximum allowed.^[79] Muhammad could not have rejected Zaynab more pointedly. To her dismay, his proposal at this time was that she should marry his adopted son Zayd.^[80]

Zayd’s Background

Zayd was born into the Udhra tribe c. 581. ^[81] He was kidnapped by slave-traders as a small child and eventually came into the possession of Khadijah. She gave him to Muhammad as a wedding present in 595. Zayd composed a poem about his circumstances and sent it to his original family. His father and uncle came looking for him in Mecca and offered to pay any price to redeem him. But Zayd preferred to remain with Muhammad. Muhammad then took Zayd out to the Hijr and said, “O all those who are present, witness that Zayd becomes my son, with mutual rights of inheritance.” When Zayd’s father and uncle saw this, they were satisfied and went away.”^[82] In the twenty years since then, Zayd had been constantly at Muhammad’s side. He was the first adult male to become a Muslim^[83] and he is described as “one of the famous archers among the Prophet’s Companions”.^[84]

Muhammad had a habit of arranging marriages for Zayd. Before Islam Muhammad wanted to ally with his uncle, Abu Lahab ibn Abdulmuttalib. He married two of his daughters to Abu Lahab’s sons, while Abu Lahab’s daughter Durrah married Zayd. In late 610 or 611 Zayd took as a second wife Muhammad’s freedwoman Baraka.^[85] They had a son, Usama, in 612.^[86] Baraka must have been fifteen years older than Zayd^[87] and she is said to have been ugly.Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content After 613 Muhammad quarrelled with his uncle, who rejected Islam,^[88] so the three marriages between their respective children were all dissolved.Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content

Muhammad was fond of Baraka: he addressed her as “Mother”^[89] and he congratulated Zayd with the words: “The man who wants to marry a woman of Paradise should marry Baraka!”^[90] Nevertheless, he seems to have believed that Zayd could do “better”. In 621 he claimed to have miraculously visited Paradise.^[91] Among the marvels that he reported seeing there was “a damsel with dark red lips. I asked her to whom she belonged, for she pleased me much when I saw her, and she told me ‘Zayd ibn Haritha.’” So he “gave Zayd the good news about her.”^[92] After the Hijra Zayd married a Medinan widow named Humayma bint Sayfi.^[93] Her first husband had been a “chief and senior” in the Khazraj tribe,^[94] and she owned a date-orchard.^[95]

So Zayd already had two wives, not counting his divorced wife and his future heavenly bride, when Muhammad decided that he should also marry Zaynab.

Circumstances of the Marriage

The reason Zaynab gave for refusing the proposal was “because I am a widow of Quraysh.”^[96] This probably meant that she considered herself too highborn to marry a former slave. Perhaps this reflects the insecurity of Zaynab’s nouveau riche origins – she was an Umayyad and yet not an Umayyad. But even if she was not fully Umayyad, her mother and first husband had still been fully Quraysh, while Zayd was not even Meccan. The Meccans could be snobbish about “foreigners”, even if they were third-generation immigrants like Zaynab.Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content If Zaynab married a newcomer like Zayd, as if she did not deserve anyone “better,” there would be a permanent spotlight on her own foreign origins.

Although Zayd traced his ancestry to an Arab tribe,^[97] this might well have been by adoption (following vassalage or slavery) rather than by biology, for his “flat nose” and “very dark skin”^[98] suggest that his genes were from Africa. The Arabs could be very racist about this. For example, Muhammad once said, “You should listen to and obey your ruler even if he was an Ethiopian slave whose head looks like a raisin.”^[99] The remark was made because Muhammad expected his Arab audience to assume the inferiority of black people and slaves. It is sometimes claimed that Zayd was “ugly,”Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content but this seems to be a racist assumption of later historians that “all black people are ugly” rather than anything found in the original sources. Zaynab did not mention Zayd’s appearance out loud, but it is possible that this was another reason why she considered him “not good enough”.

While it does not reflect well on Zaynab that she would reject a suitor for such shallow reasons, this does not alter the principle that she had the right to say no. If she did not wish to marry Zayd, she should not have needed to justify her reason. Finally, it must be stressed that Zaynab was being asked to accept the position of third wife. Added to the other social humiliations of the proposed union, this made the offer close to insulting, for there were still plenty of bachelors in the emigrant community.Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content Her brother Abdullah supported her right to refuse.^[100]

The matter might have ended there, for Muhammad had always claimed that a woman should not be forced into marriage.^[101] But for some reason he was determined that this marriage should take place. He announced a revelation from Allah: “It is not for any believer, man or woman, when God and His Messenger have decreed a matter, to have the choice in the affair. Whosoever disobeys Allah and His Messenger has gone astray into manifest error.”^[102] In other words, in the eternally existing uncreated Qur’an in heaven, Zaynab’s duty to marry Zayd was mentioned. The traditional view is that Abdullah and Zaynab eventually “consented because of the verse,”^[103] a situation that might be deemed spiritual blackmail.

Reasons for the Marriage

Muhammad never stated exactly why he wanted Zaynab to marry Zayd. He only said, “But I am pleased with him for you.”^[104]

The Syrian scholar Ibn Kathir, writing seven hundred years after the event, proposed that Muhammad arranged the marriage to show that class distinctions were abolished in Islam. “The Prophet Muhammad had watched both Zayd and Zaynab grow up, and thought they would make a good couple, and that their marriage would demonstrate that it was not who their ancestors were, but rather their standing in the sight of Allah, that mattered.”^[105] There is little evidence, however, that Muhammad really thought that way. He certainly did not explain at the time why Zayd and Zaynab would have “made a good couple”; and if he had thought so, time was to prove him wrong. If Muhammad really had wanted to promote marriage across the social divide, it would have made more sense to support a naturally occurring example, i.e., to praise two people from different backgrounds who wanted to marry each other despite the disapproval of the wealthier family or favoured race. But he did not; rather, he taught that a woman needed her guardian’s consent for a marriage to be valid.Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content Since families in seventh-century Arabia (as in most other cultures throughout history) usually arranged marriages to maximise economic advantage to both families, the practical result was that most people married someone of a similar social background. Muhammad openly admitted that money and social connections were two of the main reasons why anyone would marry and did not in any way criticise this attitude.Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content By pressuring Zaynab into marrying a man whom she did not want, Muhammad was setting up an unhappy marriage. If he was demonstrating anything at all about social differences, it was therefore the opposite point – that marriage across the social divide is not a good idea.

There were no obvious political or economic reasons why Zayd and Zaynab needed to marry. They were already on the same side of every political situation, and a closer alliance between them would not in any way promote a stronger loyalty to Muhammad. Neither had an economic problem, for Zayd would have been living off Humayma’s date-orchard, while Zaynab supported herself through her leather-crafts.

While we do not really know why Muhammad was so insistent about this marriage, we can only guess that he arranged it to please Zayd. Perhaps Zayd had noticed that Zaynab was “a perfect-looking woman,” small,^[106] fair-skinned and shapely.^[107] However, the imaginative description of her “fine black hair, covering half her body,”^[108] while not implausible, does not seem to be based on early sources.

It is not mentioned whether anyone had asked Baraka or Humayma if they wanted Zaynab as a co-wife.

Zaynab married Zayd^[109] sometime between 20 January 625^[110] and 22 March 625.^[111] Abu Ahmad acted as the bride’s guardian,Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content and Muhammad paid the dower.Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content

The Battle of Uhud

The fortunes of the Jahsh family suffered a major setback at the Battle of Uhud on 22 March 625. Muhammad suffered the worst defeat of his career when his army was routed and decimated.^[112] Zaynab lost three family members. Her sister Hamnah, who had served as a battle auxiliary,^[113] met the returning army to ask about casualties, and Muhammad told her, “Hamnah, expect that your brother Abdullah will be rewarded.” Hamnah dutifully responded, “We belong to Allah and to him we return.” Then Muhammad told her, “Hamnah, expect that your uncle Hamza will be rewarded.” Hamnah repeated, “We belong to Allah and to him we return.” Then Muhammad told her, “Hamnah, expect that your husband Musaab will be rewarded.” Hamnah “shrieked and wailed,”^[114] and exclaimed, “Oh, loss!”^[115] The Meccans had cut off the ears and noses of Abdullah and his uncle Hamza, and Abu Sufyan’s wife had even chewed Hamza’s liver.^[116]

Muhammad decreed that the women could only mourn their relatives (other than a husband) for three days. After the three days were over, Zaynab received a condolence visit from the daughter of her cousin Abu Salama.^[117] In front of her guest, Zaynab made a show of asking for perfume and anointing herself, then explaining that she did not really want the perfume but that she was officially out of mourning.^[118] The prohibition on displays of grief must have been hard for the bereaved mothers, sisters and daughters. The specific loss for Zaynab, however, was that her brother Abdullah had been willing to support her against Muhammad’s wishes; now she had lost her protector just as she found herself married to a man whom she disliked.

There is no evidence that Medina was suddenly swamped by desperate widows; it is even claimed that only thirty of the dead men had been married,Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content suggesting that many bachelors would also have survived the battle. Hamnah had barely completed her idda before she was remarried to Talhah ibn Ubaydullah,^[119] a wealthyCite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content thirty-year-oldCite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content bachelor who was kin to Abu Bakr.Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content Hamza’s widow returned to Mecca, where she also found a new husband.^[120] But Abdullah’s widow never remarried; she had a bleeding disorder that raised doubts about her ritual cleanness, i.e., availability for sex.^[121]

See Also

References