The life of the Prophet Muhammad (3/11): marriage and maturity
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Muhammad becomes a fulfilled adult: marriage and maturity
As his assurance grew, the Prophet of God, then in his twenties, was entrusted by a wealthy Meccan widow, Khadija, with the conduct of her trading caravans, and he succeeded so well in drawing her attention and impressing her with the success of his transactions that she resolved to approach him and ask for his hand in marriage. Allah’s protégé was then twenty-five. Khadija’s father’s consent was needed, however, and he held Muhammad to be a penniless orphan, unworthy of his daughter. A ruse finally won his consent. This took place in the year 595. The tradition reports that they had two sons who died in infancy, Qasim and ’Abd Allah, and four daughters, Zaynab, Ruqayya, Fatima and Umm Kulthum1, within a monogamous union lasting until Khadija’s death in the year 619, which came to be called ‘the year of sorrow’; for in that same year Abu Talib also died, the Prophet’s uncle and protector, chief of the Banu Hashim. This monogamous union, unlike the customs of the time, unfolded at Mecca and was central2, as we shall see, in the life of the Prophet of God. Indeed, her intimate presence and influence endured for ever in the heart of the Prophet of God, and are to be compared, to be understood, with what later came to be called the harem (harim) of the Prophet of Islam, chiefly at Medina.
From the year 595, which marks the beginning of the Prophet of God’s family life, until the year 610, marked by the Revelation on the 27th day of the blessed month of Ramadan, a long period of some fifteen years, it must be observed that the transmitters of the sira are virtually silent. In fact the Prophet of God, not yet commissioned, was maturing, turning constantly towards God in frequent retreats, thereby making his own every human aspect of the quest for God, and preparing himself to be a pedagogue, an educator ever pertinent, in tune with each of his interlocutors.
One event, however, is revealing of the Prophet of God’s particular standing in the Qurayshite community, even before he began his preaching: his participation in the completion of the rebuilding of the Ka’ba, undertaken by all the Qurayshite clans, which was to enable him to display and assert, in continuity with his ancestors, both his moral authority and his spiritual ascendancy over his contemporaries. For the Qurayshites could not agree when, having finished rebuilding the Ka’ba, they came to replace in its corner pointing towards ’Arafat the Black Stone (al-hajar al-aswad), descended from heaven, which symbolises the descent of the divine Presence and hence the axis of the Ka’ba’s four pillars3. Now it was at that decisive moment that Muhammad, the future Prophet, appeared. He was welcomed by all, who knew his ascendancy, under the name of al-Amin, meaning ‘the trustworthy man’, ‘the guarantor’; and after carrying the Black Stone on a cloth held at its four corners by the representatives of the different clans, they charged him with setting it, raised up, in its corner designating ’Arafat, the place of knowledge as its etymology indicates, the supreme station of the pilgrimage to the ancient sanctuary4.
For his own part, the Prophet was aware of what he was being prepared for, which he summed up in answering his interlocutors: ‘that he was already a Prophet when God was on the point of breathing a soul into Adam’s body; and he would add: I am the first man of creation and the last of the prophets’5.
Thus during this period the events belonging to private life alone, as can readily be understood, do not yet carry in themselves the weight of a teaching for the community, which would later attach itself, with the most absolute trust, to the person of the one sent.
By Michel Abdallah Grimbert, disciple of the tariqa Qadiriya Boutchichiya.
Further reading
- The life of the Prophet Muhammad (2/11): early childhood
- The life of the Prophet Muhammad (4/11): the Revelation
Footnotes
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The Prophet of God’s eldest daughter, Zaynab, was married to Abu-l-’As, who long persisted in unbelief and whom she had to leave to return to her father; after various vicissitudes he finally converted to Islam. His second daughter Ruqayya became the wife of the future third caliph ’Uthman ibn ’Affan. His third daughter Fatima married the future fourth caliph ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, whose two surviving sons, Hasan and Husayn, are the ancestors of the shurafa’ (sing. sharif). Lastly, his fourth daughter Umm Kulthum, after a dissolved marriage to one of the sons of Abu Lahab, the embittered enemy of Islam, married, after the death of her elder sister Ruqayya, ’Uthman ibn ’Affan, who was thenceforth nicknamed Dhu al-Nurayn (‘the possessor of the two lights’), for he had married two of the Prophet of God’s daughters. ↩
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In the sense here of a total fulfilment of human potential in this world, as expressed by Shaykh ’Abd al-Wahid Yahya in chap. XXXIX, ‘Great mysteries and little mysteries’, of his Aperçus sur l’initiation, ed. Traditionnelles. ↩
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According to Ibn ’Abbas, the Messenger of God said: ‘By Allah! On the day of resurrection Allah will raise up the Black Stone with two eyes by which it will see, and a tongue by which it will speak; it will bear witness in favour of those who, during the tawaf, touched it with true faith.’ The reason for this touching is very deep and exceeds the outer planes. According to a hadith reported by Ibn Khuzayma: ‘the Black Stone is the right Hand of God, by which He makes or renews the covenant with His creatures.’ This connects directly with verse XLVIII, 10, concerning the pact made with the Prophet of God, where it is said: ‘Those who swear allegiance to thee swear allegiance only to God. The Hand of God rests upon their hands.’ ↩
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A prophetic hadith states very clearly, in redoubled fashion: ’The pilgrimage is ‘Arafat!’, mount of supreme knowledge, the place of a pure standing (wuquf) without ritual, gesture or speech. This state corresponds directly to the unconditional station of ihsan. ↩
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Michel Chodkiewicz, chap. IV, ‘La réalité muhammadienne’, in Le sceau des saints, coll. Tel Gallimard. ↩
