Surah al-Tahrim: the Oath over Maria

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

One more incident about Māriyah, mentioned more in the books of tafsīr than of Sīrah, because the Qurʾān was revealed for it, a whole sūrah, and again, better you hear it from me. It is in al-Ṭabarī and many books of tafsīr.

❧The oath

One day Ḥafṣah was away, and the Prophet ﷺ called Māriyah to Ḥafṣah's house. Ḥafṣah returned earlier than expected and saw Māriyah leaving, and was enraged: yā Rasūlallāh, in my house and on my day? He set about calming her, and she was so emotional that in the end she made him swear never to go near Māriyah again, and he said: I have made her ḥarām upon myself, by Allah I will never see her again. And he asked Ḥafṣah to keep it between them and, above all, not to tell ʿĀʾishah.

This is exactly the kind of report at which the superhuman image some Muslims have of the Prophet ﷺ crumbles, and the problem is that the image should never have been there. Was he a human being or not? He was the best of humans, the perfect human, but a human. He wanted Māriyah, and she was ḥalāl for him; he sought to placate Ḥafṣah, so he promised; and he did not want ʿĀʾishah to find out, every husband here understands the fear of a wife. There is nothing wrong in this image at all; it is human nature entire, and he committed no sin.

❧She tells anyway

Ḥafṣah promised to keep it, and then went straight to ʿĀʾishah and spilled it, to make ʿĀʾishah jealous, to show that she was the one who had got Māriyah out of the way. Ḥafṣah and ʿĀʾishah had a curious bond: sometimes the best of friends and sometimes at each other's throats, unlike Zaynab and ʿĀʾishah who never got along at all. Both were jealous of Māriyah, who was a beautiful woman, and it was for this that the Prophet ﷺ had moved her out to al-ʿAwālī, far from the others whose homes ringed the masjid.

❧The sura

Then Allah revealed Sūrat al-Taḥrīm: يَا أَيُّهَا النَّبِيُّ لِمَ تُحَرِّمُ مَا أَحَلَّ اللَّهُ لَكَ تَبْتَغِي مَرْضَاتَ أَزْوَاجِكَ وَاللَّهُ غَفُورٌ رَّحِيمٌ, O Prophet, why do you forbid yourself what Allah has made lawful for you, seeking to please your wives? And Allah is Forgiving, Merciful. قَدْ فَرَضَ اللَّهُ لَكُمْ تَحِلَّةَ أَيْمَانِكُمْ, Allah has ordained for you the absolution of your oaths (by the kaffārah: feeding the poor, or freeing a neck, or fasting). Then of the secret and its betrayal: وَإِذْ أَسَرَّ النَّبِيُّ إِلَىٰ بَعْضِ أَزْوَاجِهِ حَدِيثًا, and when the Prophet confided a matter to one of his wives, and she disclosed it, and Allah made it known to him: she said, مَنْ أَنبَأَكَ هَٰذَا, who told you this? (Ḥafṣah now suspecting ʿĀʾishah had stabbed her in the back), and he said, قَالَ نَبَّأَنِيَ الْعَلِيمُ الْخَبِيرُ, the All-Knowing, the All-Aware informed me.

Then the warning to the two of them: إِن تَتُوبَا إِلَى اللَّهِ فَقَدْ صَغَتْ قُلُوبُكُمَا, if you two turn to Allah in repentance, for your hearts have inclined; وَإِن تَظَاهَرَا عَلَيْهِ فَإِنَّ اللَّهَ هُوَ مَوْلَاهُ وَجِبْرِيلُ وَصَالِحُ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ وَالْمَلَائِكَةُ بَعْدَ ذَٰلِكَ ظَهِيرٌ, and if you back one another against him, then Allah is his protector, and Jibrīl, and the righteous of the believers, and the angels after that are his support. Allah shows the rank of His Messenger ﷺ even to his own wives: the rights of this husband are far greater than any other's. So the Prophet ﷺ broke the oath, gave the kaffārah, and Māriyah returned to him.

❧Two readings, and Ibn Abbas's question

There is an alternative account, that the sūrah was about some honey given him by Sawdah, with ʿĀʾishah and Ḥafṣah conspiring over it, but it does not fit the verses as the Māriyah account does: why would the wives be so jealous over twenty minutes of honey, and why would swearing off honey be so grave a matter? The Māriyah reading is the strongest and the correct one.

Some say these are private household affairs best left alone. But had Allah wished it private He would have kept it so; He revealed a whole sūrah for it, so there is a wisdom for us. Nor did the Companions treat it as off-limits: Ibn ʿAbbās waited years for a chance to ask ʿUmar, and when at last he found him alone, put it to him at once, yā Amīr al-Muʾminīn, who are the two women of Sūrat al-Taḥrīm? And ʿUmar answered plainly: ʿĀʾishah and Ḥafṣah, naming his own daughter, of whom Allah had said فَقَدْ صَغَتْ قُلُوبُكُمَا. If anyone might have kept it private it was ʿUmar; but it is Allah's revelation, and there is nothing here to hide. It shows that the wives of the Prophet ﷺ were human beings who felt jealousy over their husband as any wife would, and that he ﷺ was a human being who satisfied lawful desire in a lawful way and committed no sin.

Māriyah outlived him by only four or five years, dying in the caliphate of ʿUmar around the fifteenth or sixteenth year, and he prayed her janāzah and she was buried in al-Baqīʿ, proof that she had indeed become a Muslim. When she converted we cannot say for certain; one would assume before Ibrāhīm's birth, but Allah knows best.