- Zaynab bint Jahsh ibn Riab, Mother of the Believers—may Allah be pleased with her—was the Prophet’s ﷺ first cousin.
Her mother was Ummaymah bint ʿAbd al-Muttalib ibn Hashim. She was the sister of Hamnah and Abu Ahmad, and one of the earliest emigrants. Before her marriage to the Prophet she had been the wife of Zayd, the Prophet’s freedman. Concerning her Allah says:
“When you said to the one on whom Allah had bestowed favor and you had bestowed favor, ‘Keep your wife to yourself and fear Allah,’ while you were concealing within yourself what Allah was going to reveal, and you feared people, whereas Allah has more right that you fear Him. Then, when Zayd had finished with her, We gave her to you in marriage.” (al-Ahzab 37) (1)
Thus Allah—exalted is He—gave her in marriage to His Prophet by the explicit wording of His Book, without guardian or witnesses. She used to boast of this over the other Mothers of the Believers, saying, “Your families gave you in marriage, whereas Allah married me from above His Throne.” (2)
(*) Musnad Ahmad 6/324; Ibn Saad, Tabaqat 8/101, 115; Khalifa, Tabaqat 332; Khalifa, Tarikh 149; Ibn Qutayba, al-Maarif 215, 457, 555; al-Fasawi, Tarikh 2/722 and 3/233; al-Hakim, al-Mustadrak 4/23-25; Ibn Abd al-Barr, al-Istiyab 4/1849; Ibn al-Athir, Usd al-Ghabah 7/125; al-Mizzi, Tahdhib al-Kamal 1683; al-Dhahabi, Tarikh al-Islam 2/34; idem, al-Ibr 1/5, 24; al-Haythami, Majma al-Zawaid 9/246-248; Ibn Hajar, Tahdhib al-Tahdhib 12/420-421; idem, al-Isabah 12/257; al-Khazraji, Khulasat Tadhhib al-Kamal 491; al-Muttaqi al-Hindi, Kanz al-Ummal 13/700; Ibn al-Imad, Shadharat al-Dhahab 1/10 and 31.
(1) What the Prophet ﷺ concealed was the divine disclosure that she would one day become his wife. He kept this to himself for fear that people would say, “He has married his son’s former wife.” God willed to abolish the pre-Islamic rules of adoption in the most decisive way—by having His Messenger marry the woman who had been called the son’s wife—so that the community would more readily abandon those customs. Al-Tirmidhi transmits, through Dawud b. Abi Hind, from al-Shabi, from Aishah, that she said: “Had the Messenger of God ﷺ been inclined to hide anything of the revelation, he would have hidden this verse.”
(2) Reported by al-Bukhari 13/347-348, in the Book of Tawhid, chapter “And His Throne was upon the water,” through the chain of Anas: Zayd b. Harithah came to complain, and the Prophet ﷺ kept saying to him, “Fear God and keep your wife…"