Safiyyah bint Huyayy

Ṣafiyyah bint Ḥuyayy was the daughter of Ḥuyayy ibn Akhṭab, a chieftain of Banū al-Naḍīr. As a child in Medina she was the favorite of her father and uncle, until the day the Prophet ﷺ arrived, when she overheard her uncle ask, is he the one? and her father answer: yes, by the Lord of Mūsā, and we will oppose him as long as he lives. Exiled with her tribe, she grew up in Khaybar and married there. The Battle of Khaybar (7 AH) took her father, brother, and husband; taken captive, she fell to the lot of Diḥyah al-Kalbī before the Prophet ﷺ ransomed her. He covered her with his cloak, the sign that told the companions she would be a wife, not a concubine, tested her heart with the memory of her father's enmity, and heard her answer with the Qurʾan: no bearer of burdens bears the burden of another. Choosing Allah and His Messenger over freedom among her people, she was freed and married, her manumission itself her mahr. Among the wives she belonged to neither ʿĀʾishah's camp nor Zaynab's, having no family of her own; the Prophet ﷺ armed her against the slur of 'daughter of the Jewess', say: my father is a Prophet, my uncle is a Prophet, and I am married to a Prophet. At his deathbed she wept, wishing to bear his fever herself, and he swore she spoke truly. She lived to seek to aid ʿUthmān under siege and died in 52 AH, among the last of the Mothers of the Believers.