The Marriage of Umm Salamah

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

Umm Salamah, Hind bint Abī Umayyah of Banū Makhzūm, was married to Abū Salamah (ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿAbd al-Asad), the Prophet's (ﷺ) cousin through his mother's side. The two had emigrated together twice, to Abyssinia and then to Madinah, with Umm Salamah being the very first woman to make the journey to Madinah alone after being initially prevented from following her husband. Abū Salamah was severely wounded at Uḥud; he survived for several months afterward before eventually dying of those wounds.

❧THE DEATHBED EXCHANGE

On his deathbed, Umm Salamah told Abū Salamah she had heard that a wife who never remarries after her husband's death in Jannah will be reunited with him there, and proposed the two make a mutual promise not to remarry after the other's death, her way, Dr. Qadhi notes, of comforting him even as she was the one making the actual promise, since he was the one dying. Abū Salamah asked if she would obey him in what he was about to say; she agreed. He told her that after he died, she should in fact remarry rather than remain alone, and made a duʿāʾ: "O Allah, grant her a husband better than me, who will never harm or trouble her."

Shortly before this, Abū Salamah had come home pleased to share a hadith he had learned from the Prophet (ﷺ): that anyone struck by a calamity who says "Innā lillāhi wa innā ilayhi rājiʿūn, Allāhumma ajurnī fī muṣībatī wa akhlif lī khayran minhā" (to Allah we belong and to Him we return; O Allah, reward me in my affliction and replace it with something better) will be granted exactly that. When Abū Salamah died, Umm Salamah recited it, though privately wondering who could possibly be better than him.

❧DECLINING ABU BAKR, ACCEPTING THE PROPHET

After her mourning period, Abū Bakr was the first to propose; she declined. The Prophet (ﷺ) then came to her house and proposed directly. She responded candidly with three concerns: that she was a jealous woman and worried her jealousy, given his other wives, might displease him and by extension displease Allah; that she was no longer young; and that she had a family, four children from Abū Salamah, to be provided for. The Prophet (ﷺ) answered each in turn: he would make duʿāʾ for her jealousy to be lifted from her heart; as for age, he told her, with characteristic humor, that he was "afflicted with the same calamity"; and as for her children, "ʿiyāluki ʿiyālī", your family is my family. She married him, most likely around Shawwāl of the fourth year of the Hijrah, becoming his fourth living wife at the time (sixth overall, after Khadījah and Zaynab bint Khuzaymah had already passed away).

Umm Salamah was known for her wisdom, and it was her counsel, to shave his own head without further discussion, so the Companions would follow his example, that resolved the tense standoff at the Treaty of Ḥudaybiyyah. She lived a long life, dying in 59 AH, one of the last of the Prophet's (ﷺ) wives to pass away; Abū Hurayrah led her funeral prayer.