6 facts about Muhammad’s marriages: Zaynab, Safiyya and others

Zayd ibn Haritha was taken captive as a boy, came into the Prophet’s household and was freed and adopted by him; people called him Zayd ibn Muhammad until the Quran changed the custom.^[1] Zaynab bint Jahsh was the Prophet’s cousin, the daughter of his paternal aunt. The commentators report that the Prophet arranged her marriage to Zayd, that she and her family disliked the match because Zayd had been a slave, and that 33:36 was revealed on the occasion: no believer has a choice once God and His Messenger have decided a matter. She agreed.^[2]

The marriage was unhappy. Zayd came to the Prophet more than once to speak of divorce, and was told to keep his wife and fear God, which is the exchange 33:37 describes. After the divorce and her waiting period, Anas reports, the Prophet sent Zayd himself to bring the proposal, and Zaynab said she would do nothing until she had prayed to her Lord.^[3] The critic is right that the marriage then came with a verse. The sources do not hide this; the next two entries deal with what it says.

At full strength the charge is that a man married the former wife of his son. The Quran answers on the law. It says that God did not make adopted sons into sons (33:4) and orders that they be called by their fathers’ names (33:5). The list of forbidden marriages in 4:23 names the wives of sons “from your loins,” which excludes adopted sons by its own wording. Verse 33:40 adds that Muhammad was the father of none of the men of Medina.^[4]

Incest rules rest on blood and marriage ties, and an adopted child has neither with the adopter. Pre-Islamic Arab custom treated the adopted as a full son, so contemporaries felt the objection, and the Quran says the marriage happened “so that there be no blame on the believers” over the wives of adopted sons (33:37). The change ended a legal fiction while care for orphans stayed a duty (2:220); the jurists kept guardianship and fostering and denied adoption its effects on inheritance and kinship.^[5] The sources do not fix the order of 33:4 and 33:5 against the marriage, so no claim about timing should be pressed.

The critic’s strongest form is that a revelation arrived just when the Prophet wanted the marriage. The text of 33:37 sits oddly with that. It says he hid in himself what God was about to bring to light, and that he feared the people while God had more right to be feared. A man composing a verse for his own cover would hardly write his own embarrassment into it. Aisha is reported to have said that if the Prophet were to conceal any part of revelation, he would have concealed this verse.^[6]

Some early commentary retells a story that he saw Zaynab and was taken with her. Later commentators rejected it. Ibn Kathir set such reports aside as unsound, and al-Qurtubi called the story the work of someone ignorant of the protection of the prophets, preferring the reading preserved from Ali ibn al-Husayn: what he hid was that God had told him Zayd would divorce her and she would become his wife.^[7] Her age also counts. Reckoned from her age at death, fifty-three lunar years, she was in her late thirties, a cousin he had known since her childhood and had himself matched with Zayd.^[8]

Juwayriyah was the daughter of the chief of Banu al-Mustaliq and fell to a Muslim after the raid on that tribe. She agreed a ransom contract (mukataba), and the Prophet paid it and married her. Aisha reports that the Muslims then freed their Mustaliq captives, saying they were now in-laws of the Prophet, and that she knew no woman more of a blessing to her people.^[9] The source is a companion’s report, and the reason it gives is tribal: the marriage ended hostility with a whole clan.

Safiyya, of Banu al-Nadir, was captured at Khaybar after her husband was killed. Anas reports that a companion said her rank suited her only to the Prophet, and that he freed her and made her freedom her dower.^[10] Later reports say she chose him over returning to her people, and that he defended her against taunts about her Jewish descent.^[11] A critic can fairly say that a captive’s choice is limited. Rayhana, taken after Qurayza, is disputed: early biographers differ on whether she was a wife or a concubine. Mariya was a gift from the ruler of Egypt, a diplomatic courtesy; she bore Ibrahim, and the biographers mostly describe her as a concubine.^[12]

Ismail al Faruqi reads the Prophet’s later marriages in this light: on his account they were given to women in need of support and to families he wished to reconcile, among them a widow with young children and the divorced wife of a former slave.^[13] Critics contest that reading, and the sources for each marriage are weighed above.

The critic cites the Quran’s phrase ma malakat aymanukum, “what your right hands possess,” and the report of Abu Said al-Khudri about the Mustaliq raid. In it the men desired the captive women, found celibacy hard, wished to practise azl (withdrawal) and asked the Prophet, who said that nothing God had decreed to exist could be prevented.^[14] The report is authentic, and its wording in Sahih Muslim adds that the men also wanted ransom for the captives. A second report says that after 4:24 was revealed the companions took captive women with pagan husbands as lawful after a waiting period (istibra).^[15]

The Quran permits intimacy with a woman one owns, as with a spouse (23:5 and 23:6), and the classical jurists did not require the captive’s consent. That is a real feature of the law and no honest reply denies it. The Quran also forbids forcing slave women into prostitution (24:33), urges their marriage and freeing (24:32 and 24:33), and counts freeing a slave among the highest acts (90:13). Many modern scholars hold that the institution has ended, since Muslim states have bound themselves by treaty against slavery and the Quran urges freeing; see Slavery in Islam: 6 facts.

Verse 33:50 allows the Prophet marriages beyond the limit of four set for other believers in 4:3, and calls this a privilege for him alone. Verse 33:51 relieves him of the duty to share nights equally. Aisha is reported to have remarked that her Lord seemed to hasten to fulfil his wishes.^[16] The record behind the charge is worth setting out.

He married Khadija at about 25 and was with her alone for roughly 25 years, until she died. Every wife after her except Aisha had been widowed or divorced, and several brought children. Several of the later marriages joined him to leading families: the daughters of Abu Bakr and Umar, of Abu Sufyan (Umm Habiba), and of tribal chiefs. Modern historians, W. Montgomery Watt among them, have discussed them in that light.^[17] The wives were offered the choice of divorce if they wanted the world (33:28 and 33:29), could never remarry (33:53), and were closed to any further wives by 33:52. Aisha reports months in which no fire was lit in his houses.^[18] A critic may still call the exemption special treatment, and the sources agree that it was.