The life of the Prophet Muhammad (8/11): the Prophet's House

By Michel Abdallah Grimbert · December 27, 2022 · 8 min read

Contents

By Michel Abdallah Grimbert, disciple of the tariqa Qadiriya Boutchichiya.

The expression ‘the House of the Prophet of God’ designates a very vast and complete set of realities which, in truth, mirror the Prophet of God’s own reality, which, as we have already noted, accords with all the worlds encompassed by his merciful presence, as the sacred Text grants him: (Qur’an XXI, 107) ‘We sent thee only as a mercy to the worlds’. The subject addressed here bears essentially, and eminently, on the constitution and development of the umma, right down to what will appear as its lines of fracture: between the ‘people of the Sunna’ (Sunnism), the ‘seceders from the compromise of the Battle of the Camel’ (Kharijism) and the ’partisans of ‘Ali’ (Shi’ism).

Bayt and ahl al-bayt: the two Qur’anic senses of the House

In this regard, it is worth specifying that the term ‘house’ (bayt) is employed in the Qur’an in two senses. On the one hand for the sacred House at Mecca, the Ka’ba: bayt Allah, which is the ancient (immemorial) House, al-bayt al-’atiq, object of a pilgrimage both outward, open to all along the broad way of the shari’a¹, and inward: al-bayt al-ma’mur², which demands prior detachment from this world along the narrow way of the tariqa³. And on the other hand the term is employed for the people of the House: ahl al-bayt⁴; this latter expression concerning, firstly, his noble lineage (ala)⁵, which is very specifically his descent from Adam through Ishmael, the son of Abraham; and secondly, more precisely, his ‘family’, understood as the ‘excellent model’ (uswatun hasanatun)⁶ for the constitution and perpetuation of the umma, on the basis of universal criteria bound up with faith, and hence dependent on no outward consideration of rank or race, in accordance with the Islamic model. A family which thus extends as far as the emblematic case of the companion Salman the Persian, and of all those who, in his time and later until the end of time, are spiritually attached to him and so constitute his true progeny, that is, his ‘family’; well beyond, then, the shurafa’ alone and the restrictive position represented, in this instance, by Shi’ism⁷. For the Prophet Muhammad did not, in his recommendations concerning his succession, give precedence to his prophetic ‘lineage’ (ala), of which he is the seal, and which therefore closes the field of that aspect, over his spiritual ‘family’⁸.

The Prophet’s wives, ‘Mothers of the believers’

The Prophet of God’s wives are called, by the believers, ‘Mothers of the believers’, after the Qur’anic verse at XXXIII, 6, where it is said: ‘The Prophet is closer to the believers than they are to one another; his wives are their mothers’. Which confirmed the situation made permanent by sayyidatina Khadija. Wives with whom, consequently, the believers could not contemplate marriage. After Khadija’s death, the Prophet married again, which a Qur’anic verse authorised him to do: (XXXIII, 50) ‘O thou Prophet! We have made lawful for thee… (there follows an enumeration conforming to the customs of the time)… as well as any believing woman who gives herself to the Prophet, provided the Prophet wishes to marry her. This is a privilege granted to thee, to the exclusion of the other believers’. A harem which was thus, in truth, an emanation, an expression of the person of Lalla Khadija, who had opened up to the Prophet of God the whole field of feminine reality; and who, beyond her earthly presence, became, in a manner of speaking, the guarantor of the harem’s unity⁹.

And it was either from necessity, so as to keep his household, as was the case with Sawda; or out of personal affinities, both with ’A’isha, the daughter of his companion Abu Bakr, who had destined her for him¹⁰, and with Zaynab bint Jahsh, formerly the wife of his adopted son Zayd¹¹; or out of generosity towards the isolated and destitute widows of his companions killed in battle; or from the necessity of political alliances, that these eleven marriages came about in the course of time. Eleven unions, indeed, expressed this reality and became a source of teachings for the nascent Muslim community. The succession of these various unions, whether for private reasons, out of generosity towards companions killed in battle, or by way of alliances of a political character, is as follows: Sawda, a widow persecuted for her beliefs, who came to look after the house and the children after Khadija’s death; ’A’isha, the ‘Mother of the believers’, bint Abi Bakr; Hafsa bint ’Umar ibn al-Khattab, who could read and write and in that capacity played an important part in establishing the Qur’anic vulgate in the time of ’Uthman ibn ’Affan; Zaynab bint Khuzayma, widow of a fighter who died at Badr, nicknamed umm al-masakin; Umm Salama, widow of a fighter who died at Uhud; Zaynab bint Jahsh, divorced from his adopted son Zayd (Qur’an XXXIII, 37); Juwayriyya, a convert, bint al-Harith; Umm Habiba, daughter of Abu Sufyan, chief of the Meccans; Safiyya, a Jewish convert, bint Huyayy; Maymuna, a widow, sister of al-’Abbas, the interpreter of the Qur’an; and finally Rayhana, a Jewish convert to Islam, and Maria, of Coptic origin, who retained their status as concubines even though the Prophet had offered them the bond of marriage.

A verse then came down which required the Prophet to align his House with the rules laid down by God for His community, limiting the number of wives to four: (XXXIII, 52) ‘It is no longer permitted to thee to change wives nor to take other women… even if thou art charmed by the beauty of some of them’. He then proposed to his wives, who at that moment numbered nine, including two concubines, Rayhana of Jewish origin and Mariya the Copt, to whom he had offered marriage, to restore their freedom to them on equitable and generous terms: not one of them wished to leave him.

’A’isha and Fatima, the two figures of transmission

It must be specified here that the harem was then dominated, though she was very young, by the strong and many-faceted personality of ’A’isha, the Mother of the believers, who, through astonishing personal gifts, collected and transmitted, and was herself both learned and expert in the domain of hadith. She unquestionably possessed, to a sublime degree, the quality of fityat (masc. fata)¹², which made her apt to answer questions of a theologico-juridical order with competence and discernment. And this even in the domain of household affairs, over which she reigned. ’A’isha, the Mother of the believers, the Prophet of God’s favourite wife, was in the habit, according to Ibn Sa’d’s report, of answering those who asked what sort of man the Prophet of God was, and indeed had always been, at home: ‘He acts like an ordinary man. He sweeps the floor of the house, mends his own clothes and repairs his sandals. It is he who gives the camels drink and who milks the goats; he helps the servants in their work and eats with them. If we need something at the market, it is he who goes. Any sick person usually had a right to his visit, and he was to be found among the mourners following a coffin in the street. And if a slave invited him to dinner, he answered the invitation’.

Another woman of the Prophet of God’s House was to bear, quite especially, the charge of transmitting the lineage (ala): his daughter Fatima, wife of ’Ali ibn Abi Talib, the future fourth caliph, and mother of al-Hasan and al-Husayn, who, as is known, could only very briefly accede to the caliphate and are at the origin of the Shi’ite line.