Q524 :Could you please explain how many wives the
Prophet did actually marry and what were the reasons for his
marriages.
A524 : Lady Khadija and Lady Aisha were the best
known of the Prophet’s wives. He married Lady Khadija when he was
twenty five. Some reports put her age at the time of his marriage at
forty, but this is most probably not correct considering that she gave
the Prophet no fewer than six children, some of whom were born more
than ten years after their marriage. All indications suggest that she
was much younger than that, perhaps in her early thirties. He was
married to her for twenty-five years during which he did not get
married to anyone else. She died ten years after the Prophet started to
receive revelations from Allah, and three years before his emigration
from Makkah to Madinah. The Prophet continued to have good memories of
his marriage to Lady Khadija right to the end of his blessed life.
After Lady Khadija’s death, the Prophet was married to two women, Lady
Sawda, who was in middle age when he married and Lady Aisha, the
daughter of his most intimate friend, Abu Bakr. Lady Aisha was young at
that time, with many reports putting her age at nine or ten. It must be
borne in mind that such reports could not have been accurate in a
largely illiterate netmunity where there was no registration of births
or deaths. But from the total sum of the reports that mention Lady
Aisha, her early childhood, youth, marriage and later life, we can
conclude on very reliable authority that she was well in her teens when
she got married to the Prophet. I have mentioned in the past that many
of the Prophet’s marriages were motivated by political, social or
legislative considerations. As we have mentioned, Lady Aisha was the
daughter of Abu Bakr, the Prophet’s friend and successor. He was also
married to Lady Hafsah, the daughter of Umar ibn Al-Khattab, the second
ruler of the Muslim state after Abu Bakr. So, both of the first two of
the rightly guided caliphs had their daughters married to the Prophet.
The third and fourth, Usman and Ali, were married to the Prophet’s
daughters. The Prophet also married Umm Habibah, the daughter of Abu
Sufiyan, the leader of Quraish who was waging a most determined fight
against Islam. Lady Umm Habibah had emigrated to Abyssinia a few years
earlier when the Prophet advised a group of his netpanions to travel
and settle there. During her stay in that faraway country, Umm
Habibah’s husband died. She was in a very difficult situation, having
no relations in Abyssinia, with her father leading Quraish and other
Arabian tribes in a fight to exterminate Islam. Learning of her plight,
the Prophet sent one of his netpanions to Negus, the ruler of Abyssinia
who had accepted Islam, to arrange his marriage to Lady Habibah and
send her to him. That was a marriage even Abu Sufiyan, her father,
could be proud of. The Prophet also married Umm Salamah, the widow of
one of his valiant netpanions, who was left with children to look after
and practically no one to support her. Two marriages had clear
political motives. The first was the Prophet’s marriage to Lady
Juwairiyah, the daughter of a tribal chief who had raised an army to
fight the Prophet. The Muslims preempted his attempt and managed to
inflict a heavy defeat on him and his tribe of Almustalaq. Many of the
men in that tribe were taken captive, and as was the netmon practice at
that time, prisoners of war were made slaves. The Prophet hated slavery
and freed every slave who came into his possession. When the Prophet
married Lady Juwairiyah, his netpanions felt that they could not keep
the Prophet’s “in-laws” as their slaves. Therefore, they refrained from
taking any one of them and let them free. It was said of Lady
Juwairiyah that probably no woman brought her tribe greater blessings.
The other marriage to be mentioned in this connection was the Prophet’s
matrimonial union with Lady Safiyah, the daughter of Huyai ibn Akhtab,
a Jewish scholar who was dedicated to fighting the Prophet and Islam.
In fact, it was Huyai who worked hard to forge an alliance of Arabian
and Jewish tribes which marched on Madinah to try to eliminate the
Muslim netmunity altogether. That was the alliance which tried to
attack the Muslims in what is known as “the expedition of the Moat
[Ghazwa-e-Khandaq].” Huyai was executed along with the Jews of
Huraithah after victory was granted by God to Muslims. A couple of
years later, Safiyah’s Jewish husband was killed in the Battle of
Khaybar. After the battle, the Prophet married her to help normalize
the relations with those Jews who continued to live in Arabia. In fact,
Lady Safiyah fell to the Prophet as a slave as part of his share of
what the Muslims gained as a result of the battle. He, however, offered
her freedom if she would accept Islam, which she did and he married
her. Now about the Prophet’s marriage to Lady Zainab, who was known by
the title, “Mother of the Poor”, because she was so keen to help every
poor person. She was married to the Prophet for only two months before
she passed away. The other marriage was to Lady Maimounah which took
place after the Prophet and the Muslims went for their Umrah, a few
months before the conquest of Makkah. One marriage which had clear
legislative purpose was that which saw the Prophet married, by God’s
own order, to Lady Zainab bint Jahsh. Before Islam and well into the
early years of the Muslim settlement in Madinah, the Arabs used to
recognize adoption as giving full parental status. Thus, if a couple
adopted a child, he was considered their own son or daughter in every
respect. Islam, however, stopped adoption and considered it a forbidden
practice which could give no legal effect to any relationship. The
Prophet had adopted, in pre-Islamic days, a young man who had been
gifted to him as a slave. The young man was known as Zaid ibn Haritha.
He declared his adoption of Zaid, who was subsequently known as Zaid
ibn Muhammad. It is perhaps worth mentioning here that Zaid was the
first man to adopt Islam. When the prohibition of adoption was
declared, Zaid reverted to his original name and was known ever since
as Zaid ibn Haritha, after his real father. The Prophet had married
Zaid to Lady Zainab, the daughter of his paternal aunt. However, Zainab
was rather unhappy about the marriage, because of Zaid’s former slave
status. Zaid was very uneasy about the marriage and asked the Prophet’s
permission to divorce her. At this point, the Prophet was ordered to
allow the divorce to go through and to marry Zainab after her waiting
period was over. The Prophet was very reluctant to do so, because of
what people might say about his marrying his former “daughter-in-law”.
But God wanted to demonstrate in practice the absolute invalidity of
adoption in the most practical manner. God declares in the Qur’an:
“When Zaid had acnetplished his purpose with her, We married her off to
you so that there would be no objection for believers in respect of
their adopted sons’ wives once they have acnetplished their purpose
with them. God’s netmand must be done.” (33;36) A few verses later,
God declared: “Muhammad is not the father of any of your men, but he is
God’s messenger and the seal of the prophets.” (33;40) I hope I have
made this question clear to you.
Our Dialogue ( Source : Arab News – Jeddah )