Zaynab bint Khuzaymah, Umm al-Masakin, and Her Remarkable Family

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

❧ZAYNAB BINT KHUZAYMAH

Zaynab bint Khuzaymah al-Hilāliyyah, of the Banū Hilāl of Najd rather than Quraysh, was already known before Islam as Umm al-Masākīn, "mother of the poor", for her generosity toward orphans and the needy. She had first married Ṭufayl ibn al-Ḥārith, the Prophet's (ﷺ) cousin, who later divorced her; she then married his brother ʿUbaydah ibn al-Ḥārith, one of the three Muslim champions (alongside Ḥamzah and ʿAlī) in the opening mubārazah at Badr, where he was mortally wounded and died shortly after.

With no family remaining in either Mecca or Medina, she was married by the Prophet (ﷺ), probably around the third year of the Hijrah, likely, as with Sawdah, out of concern for her having no one else to provide for her. The marriage lasted only a few months (reports range from three to eight) before she died in Rabīʿ al-Awwal of the fourth year of the Hijrah. She was one of only two of the Prophet's (ﷺ) wives to die during his lifetime (the other being Khadījah, in Mecca), the only one to die in Madinah, and the first of his wives buried in Baqīʿ al-Gharqad.

❧A REMARKABLE FAMILY OF SISTERS

Because so few details of Zaynab's own life survive, her family offers a striking window into the interconnected marriages of the early Ummah. Her mother had five daughters (two by different fathers), each of whom married men of major standing:

- Zaynab bint Khuzaymah, married the Prophet (ﷺ), as above.

- Maymūnah bint al-Ḥārith, Zaynab's maternal half-sister, who would herself later marry the Prophet (ﷺ).

- Umm al-Faḍl (Lubābah al-Kubrā) bint al-Ḥārith, married al-ʿAbbās ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, the Prophet's (ﷺ) uncle, and bore him ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿAbbās, the great scholar-exegete, and al-Faḍl ibn al-ʿAbbās.

- Lubābah al-Ṣughrā bint al-Ḥārith, married al-Walīd ibn al-Mughīrah, chieftain of Banū Makhzūm, and became the mother of Khālid ibn al-Walīd.

- Asmāʾ bint ʿUmays, married successively to Jaʿfar ibn Abī Ṭālib (with whom she emigrated to Abyssinia and was widowed at his martyrdom at Muʾtah, personally consoled by the Prophet ﷺ, who called Jaʿfar "my brother" and took responsibility for his orphaned children), then, remaining unmarried through the rest of the Prophet's (ﷺ) life, to Abū Bakr aṣ-Ṣiddīq in the final months of his caliphate (she was pregnant with their son, Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr, when Abū Bakr died), and finally to ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, Jaʿfar's younger brother, bearing sons to each of her three husbands.

- Salmā bint ʿUmays, the youngest sister, married to Ḥamzah ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, with whom she had a daughter, ʿUmārah bint Ḥamzah.

The consequence is a dense web of relation: Khālid ibn al-Walīd and ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿAbbās are cousins through their mothers, and both counted Maymūnah as their maternal aunt.

❧THE CUSTODY OF ʿUMĀRAH BINT ḤAMZAH

After Ḥamzah's martyrdom at Uḥud, his young daughter ʿUmārah remained in Makkah. When the Prophet (ﷺ) performed the ʿUmrah following the Treaty of Ḥudaybiyyah, she ran to rejoin the Muslims, unwilling to stay among the Meccans. Several Companions, ʿAlī, Jaʿfar, and Zayd ibn Ḥārithah among them, each wished to take responsibility for her, and the matter was brought to the Prophet (ﷺ), who awarded her custody to Jaʿfar on the principle that a maternal aunt holds the standing of a mother (al-khālah bi-manzilat al-umm): Jaʿfar's wife, Asmāʾ bint ʿUmays, was ʿUmārah's maternal aunt through her mother Salmā.