The Marriages Around Khaybar

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

Around the time of Khaybar, several marriages of the Prophet ﷺ cluster together. The long-deferred story of Zaynab bint Jaḥsh, the most sensitive of them, the shaykh sets aside for its own dedicated discussion. Rayḥānah of the Banū Qurayẓah had already been mentioned: he married her and she likely died within his lifetime, one of only two wives to do so.

❧UMM ḤABĪBAH: THE PROXY MARRIAGE IN A KING'S PALACE

Ramlah bint Abī Sufyān, Umm Ḥabībah, was widowed in Abyssinia with no one to care for her, and she was the daughter of the noblest living man of the Quraysh. The Prophet ﷺ sent her a proposal from Medina while she remained in Abyssinia. In that society lineage, not beauty, was the first consideration in marriage, and every one of the Prophet's ﷺ marriages carried long-term wisdom: marrying the daughter of Abu Sufyān sent a message to the Quraysh themselves. Her own credentials needed no praise, among the earliest emigrant women, devoted to the poor and needy. When the Najāshī heard, he was overjoyed: he conducted the nikāḥ, acted as her walī, her father being a non-Muslim, and gifted on the Prophet's ﷺ behalf the highest mahr of any of his wives, hosting the finest wedding ceremony of them all in his own palace before sending her to Medina with trustworthy escorts, arriving around the time of Hudaybiyyah.

❧ṢAFIYYAH: TEED UP

And during the Khaybar campaign itself, the Prophet ﷺ married Ṣafiyyah bint Ḥuyayy, daughter of Ḥuyayy ibn Akhṭab, the Banū Naḍīr chieftain who had moved to Khaybar. Her story, the shaykh promises, comes next week.