Banu al-Mustaliq

The Banu al-Mustaliq were a tribe living by a pool of water called al-Muraysi', between Makkah and Madinah. They were allies of the Quraysh and had fought against the Muslims at Uhud. News came that their chieftain, al-Harith ibn Abi Dirar, was planning a surprise attack on the Muslims. The Prophet ﷺ first sent Buraydah ibn al-Husayb RA to check whether the rumor was true. Buraydah pretended to be a Bedouin who wanted to join the raid for a share of the spoils. Al-Harith confirmed the plan and welcomed him. That night Buraydah slipped away and reported back. The Prophet ﷺ quickly gathered more than 700 Companions, 30 of them on horseback and fully armed. They attacked right after the dawn prayer, taking the tribe completely by surprise. The women were out collecting water and the children were playing outside. The tribe surrendered almost at once. Because a large battle seemed so unlikely, many of the hypocrites (munafiqun) joined this expedition, including their leader Abdullah ibn Ubayy ibn Salul. They had stayed away from both Badr and Uhud.

Al-Harith ibn Abi Dirar was the chieftain of the Banu al-Mustaliq. After the Muslims defeated his tribe, many of its people were taken captive, including his daughter Juwayriyya. Al-Harith himself had fled. Juwayriyya then married the Prophet ﷺ. When the Ansar heard of the marriage, they said they could not keep the Prophet ﷺ's in-laws as captives, and they freed every one of them. Al-Harith knew none of this when he came to Madinah to pay a ransom for his people. He asked for his daughter back. The Prophet ﷺ told him that it was up to Juwayriyya whether she went back with him. She chose of her own free will to stay with the Prophet ﷺ rather than return with her father. Seeing this moved al-Harith so deeply that he embraced Islam.

Juwayriyya bint al-Harith was the daughter of the chief of the Banu al-Mustaliq. She was taken captive in the fighting at al-Muraysi' and given to Thabit ibn Qays ibn Shammas RA, one of the Ansar. She did not want to remain a captive, so she agreed with Thabit to buy her own freedom. She came to the Prophet ﷺ's door to ask for help with the money. She told him she was the daughter of her tribe's chief, and that she had arranged to free herself from Thabit. The Prophet ﷺ said, "What if I give you something better?" She asked what it was. He said, "I will free you myself and marry you." She agreed, and her freedom became her dowry.

The Prophet ﷺ visited his wife Juwayriyya RA on a Friday and found her fasting. He asked whether she had fasted the day before or meant to fast the day after. She said no, she was fasting only that Friday. He then taught her not to single out Friday on its own as a day of fasting.

The Prophet ﷺ once left the house of his wife Juwayriyya RA to pray Fajr. As he left, she was sitting in her prayer place doing dhikr (the remembrance of Allah). He came back later, in the middle of the day, and found her still sitting in exactly the same place. He asked her, "Have you remained in the same place since Fajr?" She said that she had. Then he said, "Should I not tell you of a dhikr that if you do it, it will give you all of the reward you have done?" He then taught her a short dhikr whose reward equals all the dhikr she had done that morning.

Safiyyah was a young girl in Madinah on the day the Prophet ﷺ arrived there. Her father was Huyayy ibn Akhtab, the chief of the Banu Nadir. She was his favourite child, and the favourite of her uncle Abu Yasir too. One day the two men came home from going to see the Prophet ﷺ. Safiyyah ran to greet them, but they walked straight past her with their shoulders slumped. Then she overheard them talking. Her uncle asked whether it was really him. Her father answered, "By the Lord of Moses, it is him." Her uncle asked what they would do now. Her father said they would oppose him for as long as he lived. Later Safiyyah was exiled along with her tribe. She settled in Khaybar and married there. In the fighting at Khaybar, the Banu Nadir threw themselves into the front line of its defence. More of them died than of Khaybar's own people, and her husband Kinana was among the dead. When the fighting ended, Safiyyah was a widow and a captive. When the captives were divided, she was given to Dihyah al-Kalbi. Some Companions told the Prophet ﷺ that the daughter of the chief of the Banu Nadir should be his, not left with Dihyah. So he paid Dihyah her price and took her. At first no one knew whether he had taken her as a servant or as a wife, so they watched. When it was time to leave Khaybar, he made his camel kneel. He knelt down himself and made his thigh into a step to help her mount. Out of respect, she placed her knee on it rather than her foot. Then he covered her with his cloak. At that the Companions understood, because that veil was only for his wives. Safiyyah herself did not yet know what it meant. When he went to her on the first night, she refused him, and he left her alone. When they were a night's journey from Madinah, she agreed. He asked Umm Sulaym to prepare her. Umm Sulaym hung two cloths between some trees, and the women did what they could with the little they had. They worried that they had no perfume or jewellery for her. But when they had finished, they smelt a scent finer than any they knew. When the Prophet ﷺ came in, he said the hard thing first. He said to her, "Your father Huyayy was the most open of the Jews in their animosity against me until Allah caused his death." This was a test of what was in her heart. She answered with a teaching of the Qur'an, that no soul bears the burden of another. Then he said to her, "You have a choice. If you accept Islam, I shall keep you for me; if you remain in your faith, then perhaps I will free you and you can return to your people." As she understood it, staying with him meant remaining a captive. She told him that she had been drawn to Islam even before he offered it, and had already believed in him. She said she had no people to go back to, since her father and her brother were gone. And she said that Allah and His Messenger ﷺ were dearer to her than her own family. So he freed her, made her freedom her dowry, and married her. He had noticed a bruise on her face and asked her about it. She explained that she had once told her husband about a dream. In it, the moon rose from Yathrib and fell into her lap. Her husband struck her and asked whether she expected the king of the Arabs to marry her. He had understood the dream correctly. Later she was asked why she had refused him on the first night. She said that they were still so close to Khaybar that she had feared the Jews would retaliate. The Prophet ﷺ loved her all the more for it. Abu Ayyub al-Ansari stood outside the tent all night with his sword drawn. He was afraid of what a woman whose family had died at Muslim hands might do. In the morning the Prophet ﷺ found him there. He laughed and prayed for him. The wedding feast was made of whatever anyone had. There were dates, a little clarified butter and barley, all mixed together. On the road home, the walls of Madinah came into sight. As was the custom in Madinah, the riders whipped their camels forward. The Prophet ﷺ's camel stumbled and threw both him and Safiyyah to the ground. Every Companion turned his face away. Only Abu Talha cried out to ask whether he was all right. The Prophet ﷺ replied, "I am okay; I am not hurt." He was on his feet at once and put his cloak over her. In Madinah the other wives came to look at her. Zaynab bint Jahsh said to Juwayriyya that this one would be trouble. Safiyyah belonged to neither of the groups among the wives, since she had no family of her own there. Perhaps that is why the Prophet ﷺ was so tender with her. Once Hafsa called her "the daughter of a Jew", and Safiyyah wept. The Prophet ﷺ asked her, "Why didn't you defend yourself?" She asked how. He said, "You should have said your father was a prophet (Harun), and your uncle was a prophet (Musa), and you are married to a prophet. What do they have over you?" On the Farewell Hajj, he stopped speaking to Zaynab because she refused Safiyyah a camel. In his last illness, Safiyyah said she wished she could take his fever on herself. The other wives said something unkind to her. He told them to rinse their mouths, and when they asked why, he said, "Because you have made fun of Safiyyah, and wallahi, she has spoken the truth." She died in 52 AH.

No one knows the year this happened. Ibn Sayyid al-Nas says it was the ninth year of the Hijrah. Others say the fourth, fifth or sixth. Some clues point to a late date. By then the Prophet ﷺ was married to all nine of his wives: Sawda, Aisha, Hafsa, Umm Salama, Juwayriyya, Zaynab bint Jahsh, Umm Habiba, Safiyyah and Maymunah. Also, Umar was worried at the time about an attack by the Ghassanids, and that fear ended after Tabuk. On the other hand, Umar went in to see Aisha, which points to a time before the verses of hijab. The verses revealed about the episode are in Surah al-Ahzab, but that proves nothing about the date, because the verses of a surah did not have to come down together. The cause is easier to state than the date. The Prophet ﷺ had never lived in comfort. As a boy he worked as a shepherd for pennies. He lived as a lodger in Abu Talib's crowded house. He had no riding animal of his own until the Hijrah. When wealth came, it went to the community rather than to him. It came in the ransoms of Badr, the fields of Khaybar, and the gift of Fadak, which fed his household. Greatest of all were the spoils of Hunayn. He kept none of them for himself, even though the law allowed a ruler his share. This was his own choice. An angel who had never come down before had once brought him an offer from his Lord. He could be a king and messenger, or a slave and messenger. Jibril signalled to him to humble himself, and he chose to be a slave. The narrator says that after that day he was never seen eating while leaning back against a wall. His wives saw the standard of living rising all around them in Madinah, but not in their own rooms. At some point, most likely in the eighth or ninth year, they went to him together and asked for more. No book records exactly what they asked for, and that is right, because it was a private household matter. What is clear is that they asked together, that Aisha and Hafsa led them, and that what they wanted was lawful. He answered with an ila'. This is an oath before Allah to stay away from one's wives. The law allows it for up to four months, when a marriage needs time to cool down. He swore it for one month. Then he withdrew to a small loft near the mosque, which was reached by a ladder. Umar later told the story to Ibn Abbas. Ibn Abbas had waited more than a year for a chance to ask him about the two wives addressed in Surah al-Tahrim. Umar began with the affair of Maria. He explained that the men of the Quraysh had been used to ruling over their women. In Madinah they found people whose women ruled over them, and their own wives began to learn the same ways. One day, at his house in al-Awali, Umar's wife answered him back. When he scolded her, she told him that the Prophet ﷺ's own wives answered him back. Some of them even stayed away from him for a whole day when they were angry. Umar went straight to his daughter Hafsa and asked if this was true. She said it was. He told her that any woman who did that had lost everything. He warned her never to answer the Prophet ﷺ back again, and never to trouble him for anything. If she needed something, she should bring it to her father. He also told her not to be misled by what her co-wife could get away with. Aisha was more graceful than Hafsa and dearer to the Prophet ﷺ, he said, and she would be forgiven things that Hafsa would not. Umar and a neighbour of his from the Ansar used to take turns. One would work the land while the other spent the day with the Prophet ﷺ and brought back the news. In those days everyone was talking about a Ghassanid army that was said to be shoeing its horses to march on them. One night after Isha, the neighbour hammered on Umar's door. Umar asked whether the Ghassanids had come. The neighbour said no, it was something worse. He said the Prophet ﷺ had divorced his wives. Umar went at first light. He found the mosque full of men sitting in silence, turning pebbles over in their hands. In one telling, he went first to Aisha. He asked whether the daughter of Abu Bakr had troubled the Prophet ﷺ so much that he had left all of them. She told him to mind his own business. Then he went to Hafsa and found her weeping. He reminded her that he had warned her. He told her she knew the Prophet ﷺ did not love her, and that if she were not his daughter, the Prophet ﷺ would have divorced her long ago. Hafsa did not know whether they had been divorced. She only knew that he had gone up to the loft. A servant stood at the foot of the ladder. One version says it was Bilal. Umar asked him to ask permission for him to come in. The servant came back and said he had mentioned Umar, but the Prophet ﷺ had said nothing. Umar went and sat by the minbar. Then he came back and was refused a second time. The third time, Umar called up loudly. He said he thought the Prophet ﷺ believed he had come on Hafsa's behalf. He swore by Allah that if he were told to strike off her head, he would do it. Then he was let in. Inside, he found a room with some barley, a half-tanned water-skin, a chamber pot and a few animal hides. The Prophet ﷺ was lying on a mat of palm fibre, and its weave had left marks on his side. Umar asked whether he had divorced his wives. The Prophet ﷺ said he had not. Umar said "Allahu akbar." He could see the tension, so he told the Prophet ﷺ the whole story about the women of Madinah. He also told him how he had warned Hafsa not to compare herself with Aisha. The Prophet ﷺ smiled, then smiled again, and invited Umar to sit. Umar looked around the room and could see nothing else in it. He asked why the Prophet ﷺ did not pray for his people to be given wealth, as Persia and Rome had been, when those nations did not even worship Allah. Then Umar began to cry. When the Prophet ﷺ asked him why, Umar said it was because the mat had marked the side of Allah's chosen one, while Kisra and Caesar lay in silk. The Prophet ﷺ sat up. He said, "O son of al-Khattab, are you in doubt? Are you not content that Allah has chosen us over them for the Next world and given them this world?" Umar asked him to pray for Allah's forgiveness for him. Another version adds something Umar said. He told the Prophet ﷺ that if he wished to divorce any of his wives, then Allah, Jibril and Mika'il, Abu Bakr, Umar himself and all the believers were with him. Umar used to say that he hoped Allah would confirm what he had said. Allah did, in the fourth verse of Surah al-Tahrim. It was one of three times the Qur'an came down in agreement with Umar. After twenty-nine days the Prophet ﷺ came back down. Aisha reminded him that he had sworn to stay away for a month, and it had only been twenty-nine days. He said, "The month may be 29 days as well." He went to her room first. He told her he was going to put something to her. He asked her not to answer in haste, and to consult her parents before she replied. Then he recited the verses Allah had sent down: "O Prophet ﷺ, say to your wives, if you desire the life of this world and its adornment, come and I will provide for you and release you graciously. But if you desire Allah and His Messenger ﷺ and the Home of the Hereafter, then Allah has prepared for those of you who do good a great reward." Aisha understood why he had told her to consult her parents. He knew they would never tell her to leave him. She asked what there was to consult about. She said she chose Allah and His Messenger ﷺ and the Hereafter. Then she asked him not to tell the other wives what she had chosen. He refused. He said Allah had sent him to convey the message, not to make things hard. He put the same choice to each of his wives in turn, and every one of them chose as Aisha had. The whole city had known about the quarrel, and Allah put it into the Qur'an. The problem it revealed did not lie with the wives. It lay in a standard of living that a messenger who had chosen to be a slave could not share with them. The episode is the source of the law of ila'. It is also the source of the husband's right to give his wife the choice of divorce. And it gives the plainest picture the Companions left of how the Prophet ﷺ chose to live.

Juwayriyya RA, one of the wives of the Prophet ﷺ, lived a relatively long life. She died at around 65 years of age, in the 50th year of the Hijrah. This was the same year in which Hasan ibn Ali RA, the Prophet ﷺ's grandson, died.