Umm Salama Hind bint Abi Umayya, may Allah be pleased
with her, was married to the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be
upon him) in 4 AH at the age of twenty nine, after her first husband,
Abdullah ibn Abdul Asad, had died from the wounds he had received while
fighting at the battle of Uhud. Umm Salama and Abdal Asad had been
among the first people to embrace Islam in the early days of the Muslim
community in Mecca. They had suffered at the hands of the Quraish who
had tried to force them to abandon their new faith, and had been among
the first group of Muslims to seek refuge under the protection of the
Negus in Abyssinia. When they had returned to Mecca, believing that the
situation of the Muslims had improved, they had found instead that if
anything it was worse. Rather than return to Abyssinia, Abdal Asad and
Umm Salama had received the Prophet's permission to immigrate to
Medina, but this proved not to be as easy as they might have imagined.
In the words of Umm Salama: "When Abu Salama (my
husband) decided to leave for Medina, he prepared a camel for me,
lifted me up onto it and put my son Salama on my lap. My husband then
took the lead and went straight ahead without stopping or waiting for
anything. Before we were out of Mecca, however, some men from my tribe,
the Banu Mahkhzum, stopped us and said to my husband: "Although you may
be free to do what you like with yourself, you have no power over your
wife. She is our daughter. DO you expect us to allow you to take her
away from us?' They then grabbed hold of him and snatched me away from
him. Some men from my husband's tribe, the Banu Abdul Asad, saw them
taking both me and my child and became hot with rage: "No, by Allah!'
They shouted. 'We shall not abandon the boy. He is our son and we have
a rightful claim over him.' So they took him by his arm and pulled him
away from me. Suddenly, in the space of a few minutes, I found myself
all alone. My husband headed out towards Medina by himself; his tribe
had snatched away my son from me; and my own tribe had overpowered me
and forced me to stay with them. From the day that my husband and my
son were parted from me, I went out at noon every day and sat at the
spot where this tragedy had occurred. I would remember those terrifying
moments and weep until nightfall.
"I continued like this for a year or so until one day a
man from the Banu Umayya passed by and saw my condition. He went to my
tribe and said, 'Why don't you free this woman? You have caused both
her husband and her son to betaken away from her.' He went on like
this, trying to soften their hearts and appealing to their emotions,
until at last they said to me, 'Go and join your husband if you wish.'
But how could I join my husband in Medina, and leave my son, part of my
own flesh and blood, in Mecca among the Banu Abdul Asad? How could I
remain free from anguish, and my eyes free from tears, if I were to
reach the place of hijrah not knowing anything of my little son left
behind in Mecca?
"Some people realized what I was going through and
their hearts went out to me. They approached the Banu Abdul Asad on my
behalf and persuaded them to return my son. I had no desire to remain
in Mecca until I could find someone to travel with me, for I was afraid
that something might happen that would delay me or stop me from
reaching my husband. So I immediately prepared my camel, placed my son
on my lap, and set out in the direction of Medina. I just had just
reached Tan'im (3 miles from Mecca) when I met Uthman ibn Talha (He as
in charge of looking after the Ka'ba, but did not embrace Islam until
the Conquest of Mecca). "'Were are you going, Bint Zad ar Rakib?' he
asked. 'I am going to my husband in Medina.' 'And isn't there anyone
going with you?' 'No, by Allah, except Allah and my little boy here.'
'By Allah,' he vowed, 'I will not leave you until you reach Medina.'
He then took the reins of my camel and led us on our
way. By Allah, I have never met an Arab more generous and noble than
he. Whenever we reached a resting-place, he would make my camel kneel
down, wait until I had dismounted and then lead the camel to a tree and
tether it. Then he would go and rest in the shade of a different tree
to me. When we had rested, he would get the camel ready again and then
lead us on our way. This he did every day until we reached Medina. When
we reached a village near Quba (about two miles from Medina), belonging
to the Banu Amr ibn Awf, he said, 'Your husband is in this village.
Enter it with the blessings of Allah.' Then he turned round and headed
back to Mecca."
Thus after many difficult months of separation, Umm
Salama and her son were reunited with Abu Salama, and in the next few
years that followed, they were always near the heart of the growing
Muslim community of Medina al Munawarra. They were present when the
Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) and Abu Bakr (may
Allah be pleased with him) arrived safely from Mecca, and at the battle
of Badr Abu Salama fought bravely. At the battle of Uhud, however, he
was badly wounded. At first his wound appeared to respond well to
treatment, but then his wounds re opened after an expedition against
the Banu Abdul Asad, and after that they refused to heal and he
remained bedridden. Once while Umm Salama was nursing him, he said to
her, "I once heard the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah
be upon him) that whenever a calamity afflicts anyone he should say
what Allah has commanded him to say: 'Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi
raji'un!' 'Surely we come from Allah and surely to Him we return!' and
then he should say, 'O Lord, reward me for my affliction and give me
something better than it in return, which only You, the Exalted the
Mighty, can give.'"
Abu Salama remained sick in bed for several days. One
morning the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) came to
see him. The visit was longer than usual, and while the Prophet was
still at his bedside, Abu Salama died. With his blessed hands, the
Prophet closed the eyes of his dead Companion and then raised them in
prayer. "O Allah, grant forgiveness to Abu Salama; elevate him among
those who are near to You; take charge of his family at all times;
forgive us and him, O Lord of the worlds; make his grave spacious for
him and fill it with light. Amin."
Once again Umm Salama was alone, only now she had not
one child, but several. There was no one to look after her and them.
Recalling what her husband had told her while she was looking after
him, she repeated the dua'a that he had remembered: "Inna lillahi wa
inna ilayhi raji'un!" "Surely we come from Allah and surely to Him we
return!" she repeated. "O Lord, reward me for my affliction and give me
something better than it in return, which only You, the Exalted and
Mighty, can give." Then she thought to herself, "What Muslim is better
than Abu Salama whose family was the first to emigrate to the Messenger
of Allah?" All the Muslims in Medina were aware of Umm Salama's
situation, and when her idda period of four months and ten days were
over, Abu Bakr proposed marriage to her, but she refused. Then Umar
asked her to marry him, but again she refused. Then the Prophet (peace
and blessings of Allah be upon him) himself asked for her hand in
marriage. "O Messenger of Allah," Umm Salama replied, "I have three
main characteristics: I am a woman who is extremely jealous and I am
afraid that you will see something in me that will make you angry and
cause Allah to punish me; I am a woman who is already advanced in age;
and I am a woman who has many children."
"As for your jealousy," answered the Prophet, "I pray
to Allah the Almighty to take it away from you. As for your age, I am
older than you. As for your many children, they belong to Allah and His
Messenger."
The Prophet's answered eased her heart, and so they
were married in Shawwal, 4 AH, and so it was that Allah answered the
prayer of Umm Salama and gave her better than Abu Salama. From that day
on, Umm Salama was not only the mother of Salama, but also became the
'Mother of the Believers' 'Umm al Muminin'.
Umm Salama was not the only wife to have been widowed
as a result of the battle of Uhud, and thanks to this marriage, many of
the Companions followed the Prophet's example, marrying widows and
thereby bringing them and their children into the circle of their
families, instead of leaving them to struggle on their own.
A'isha said, "When the Messenger of Allah (peace and
blessings of Allah be upon him) married Umm Salama, I felt very unhappy
when he mentioned her beauty to us. I waited until I saw her and she
was even more beautiful than her description." She was also from a very
noble family and known for her keen intelligence. On more than one
occasion, the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) asked
her advice in tricky situations.
Like A'isha and Hafsa, Umm Salama learned the whole of
the Qur'an by heart, and an indication of her high station with Allah
can be found in the fact that she was permitted to see the angel Jibril
in human form: It has been related by Salman that Jibril came to the
Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) while Umm
Salama was with him, and had a conversation with him. After Jibril had
left, the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said to
Umm Salama, "Do you know who that was?" and she replied that it was a
man called Dihya al Khalbi. "By Allah," said Umm Salama, "I didn't
think it was anyone else until the Messenger of Allah (peace and
blessings of Allah be upon him) told me who it really was."
She also had a home for her four children: Salama,
Umar, Zaynab, and Durra who ere the foster children of the Prophet.
Once she was with the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon
him) with her daughter Zaynab when Fatima came with al Hasan and al
Husayn. He embraced his two grandsons and said, "may the mercy and
blessings of Allah be upon you, People of the House. He is
Praiseworthy, Glorious." Umm Salama began to weep and the Messenger of
Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) looked at her and
asked tenderly, "Why are you weeping?" She replied, "O Messenger of
Allah, you singled them out and left me and my daughter!" He said, "You
and your daughter are among the People of the House." Her daughter
Zaynab grew up in the care of the Messenger of Allah (peace and
blessings of Allah be upon him) and become one of the most intelligent
women of her time. Once Zaynab came in while the Prophet was bathing
and he splashed water in her face. Afterwards face retained its
youthfulness even into her old age.
Her son Salama later married Umama, the daughter of
Hamza, the martyred uncle of the Prophet. Umm Salama was married to the
Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) for seven years
until his death in 10 AH and accompanied him on many of his
expeditions: Hudaybiyya, Khaybar, the Conquest of Mecca, the siege of
Ta'if, the expedition against Hawazin and Thaqif, and the Farewell
Hajj. She continued to live for a long time, outliving all the other
wives of the Prophet, may Allah be pleased with them, until she died in
61 AH, at the age of eighty four, may Allah be pleased with her, and
Abu Hurairah said the funeral prayer over her.