The Longest Hand: Zaynab's Piety, Generosity, and Death

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

❧ʿĀʾISHAH'S ONLY RIVAL

ʿĀʾishah said it herself, in a ḥadīth in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim: Zaynab bint Jaḥsh "was the only one who competed with me in status in the eyes of the Prophet ﷺ." The household divided into two camps, the camp of ʿĀʾishah and the camp of Zaynab. One interpretation in Bukhārī even ties the opening of Sūrat al-Taḥrīm to this rivalry: the Prophet ﷺ would linger at Zaynab's house over honey, so ʿĀʾishah and Ḥafṣah agreed to each tell him that an odor clung to him, until he swore off Zaynab's honey altogether, and Allah revealed: يَا أَيُّهَا النَّبِيُّ لِمَ تُحَرِّمُ مَا أَحَلَّ اللَّهُ لَكَ, O Prophet, why do you forbid what Allah has made lawful for you, seeking the pleasure of your wives?

❧TAQWĀ STRONGER THAN RIVALRY

Yet when the slander against ʿĀʾishah swept Medina and the Prophet ﷺ asked Zaynab what she thought of her, the rival answered: "Yā Rasūlallāh, I will only speak the truth, I know nothing but good of her." ʿĀʾishah said it was Zaynab's taqwā that guarded her tongue, while Zaynab's own sister, Ḥamnah bint Jaḥsh, out of partisanship for Zaynab, was among those who spread the rumor. And after Zaynab's death, ʿĀʾishah praised her in a full paragraph preserved in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim: I have never seen a woman more righteous in religion, more fearful of Allah, more truthful in speech, more caring toward her relatives, more generous in charity, more energetic in drawing near to Allah, except for a temper that came quickly and left quickly. She was ṣawwāmah qawwāmah, much given to fasting and night prayer, and the people called her Umm al-Masākīn and Umm al-Yatāmā, Mother of the Poor and of the Orphans.

❧"THE ONE WITH THE LONGEST HAND"

Once, finding his wives debating which of them would die first after him, the Prophet ﷺ said: the one of you with the longest hand, أَطْوَلُكُنَّ يَدًا, will be the first to meet me. For years after his death they would literally line up against a wall and measure their hands. Only when Zaynab died first did they understand: the longest hand was the hand that gave the most.

❧TWELVE THOUSAND DIRHAMS GONE BY NIGHTFALL

Where Abū Bakr had paid every Muslim of Medina an equal stipend, ʿUmar built a tiered register, and the highest category, above even the earliest converts, was the wives of the Prophet ﷺ: twelve thousand dirhams a year. When Zaynab's fortune was poured out before her, she kept murmuring lā ḥawla wa-lā quwwata illā billāh and asking Allah's protection from its fitnah, and then began dispatching it, handful by handful, to household after household, until by nightfall not a coin remained. When ʿUmar heard, he came to her door with a thousand more in appreciation; she gave that away too, and prayed: O Allah, let me not live to see this money again next year. Money, the shaykh reminds his listeners, is a fitnah, and her duʿāʾ was answered.

❧THE FIRST TO FOLLOW HIM

Zaynab died in the twentieth year of the Hijrah, the first of the Prophet's ﷺ wives to pass away after him, the prophecy of the longest hand fulfilled. ʿUmar himself led her funeral prayer, and the great Companions walked her to al-Baqīʿ, where she became the first of the Mothers of the Believers to be buried in the ground that would eventually hold them all.