Safiyyah Among the Wives: Slurs, a Boycott, and the Deathbed Tears

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

❧A WIFE WITHOUT A CAMP

The wives of the Prophet ﷺ fell broadly into two camps, ʿĀʾishah's and Zaynab's, and Ṣafiyyah belonged to neither, for she had no family at all. Perhaps that very loneliness drew the Prophet's ﷺ extra tenderness. When she arrived in Medina the wives hurried to see their new rival, and Zaynab remarked to Juwayriyah that this one would take the Prophet ﷺ from them; Juwayriyah soothed her with a stereotype, her people are rarely lucky with their husbands. It did not turn out that way. And here the shaykh pauses on the Prophet's ﷺ character: his wives were jealous of one another, yet every single one of them felt she was the special one, each has her stories to prove it. What a husband that takes.

❧YOUR FATHER IS A PROPHET

Once he found Ṣafiyyah crying: Ḥafṣah had called her bint al-Yahūdiyyah, daughter of the Jewess. Why did you not answer her, he asked: say, my father is a Prophet (Hārūn), my uncle is a Prophet (Mūsā), and I am married to a Prophet. What do you have over me?

❧THE CAMEL OF HAJJ

On Ḥajjat al-Wadāʿ, Ṣafiyyah's camel fell ill. Zaynab bint Jaḥsh, wealthier, and with spare camels for sacrifice, was asked by the Prophet ﷺ to lend her one, and scorned it: my camel, for the Jewess? The Prophet ﷺ was so angered by the slur and the refusal that he boycotted Zaynab for the rest of the Hajj, until she understood the gravity of her error; after their return he came to her with an expensive gift and they reconciled. Even the best of the best, the shaykh notes, are not beyond human politics, even Abu Bakr and ʿUmar had their quarrels.

❧TELL THEM TO RINSE THEIR MOUTHS

At the Prophet's ﷺ final illness, in ʿĀʾishah's house, the wives gathered, not yet realizing he was dying. Watching his fever and agony, Ṣafiyyah wept: O Messenger of Allah, how I wish it were I who bore your fever and your burden. The other wives exchanged winks and mockery, and the Prophet ﷺ, through his fever, told them: go rinse your mouths (madmadah), for by Allah she has spoken the truth. The shaykh marvels: the woman whose father, brother, and husband fell to this man's army weeps at his bedside wishing to take his pain upon herself. Where in history is such a transformation? That is what īmān does when it enters a heart.

Ṣafiyyah lived long, she later sought to help ʿUthmān when he was besieged, and died in 52 AH, in the era of Muʿāwiyah, among the last of the Mothers of the Believers.