He goes on to say: “His rooms were nothing more than hair-cloth hangings fastened to poles of juniper wood.”

He further remarks: “Al-Bukhārī records in his History that the Prophet’s ﷺ door was knocked with fingernails, which shows that no metal knockers were fixed to its doors.”

He also notes: “After the wives of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ passed away, all of those chambers were annexed to the mosque.”

Al-Wāqidī, Ibn Jarīr, and others relate that when ʿAbd Allāh ibn Urayqiṭ al-Duʾalī returned to Mecca, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and Abū Bakr sent with him Zayd ibn Ḥārithah and Abū Rāfiʿ, the two freedmen of the Prophet, to bring their families from Mecca. They provided them with two camel-loads of supplies and five hundred dirhams with which to buy additional camels at Qudayd. The party set out and came back with the Prophet’s two daughters Fāṭimah and Umm Kulthūm, his two wives Sawdah and ʿĀʾishah, ʿĀʾishah’s mother Umm Rūmān, the rest of the Prophet’s household, and the family of Abū Bakr, escorted by ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Bakr. On the journey a camel bolted, carrying off ʿĀʾishah and her mother. Umm Rūmān kept crying, “O bride! O daughter!” ʿĀʾishah said, “I heard a voice say, ‘Loosen its rein.’ When she loosened it, the camel halted by Allah’s leave, and Allah kept us safe.”

They reached Madinah and encamped at al-Sunḥ. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ consummated his marriage with ʿĀʾishah in Shawwāl, eight months later, as will be detailed. With them also came Asmāʾ bint Abī Bakr, the wife of al-Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwām, who was in the last stage of pregnancy with ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr, as will be explained at the end of this year’s events.

Section: What befell the Emigrants—may Allah be pleased with them all—of the fever of Madinah

The Messenger ﷺ was spared from it by Allah’s power and might; he prayed to Allah, and the fever was removed from his city.

Al-Bukhārī reports: ʿAbd Allāh ibn Yūsuf told us, Mālik related to us from Hishām ibn ʿUrwah, from his father, from ʿĀʾishah who said:

“When the Messenger of Allah ﷺ arrived in Madinah, both Abū Bakr and Bilāl fell ill. I went in to see them and asked, ‘My father, how do you feel?’ and, ‘Bilāl, how do you feel?’ Whenever the fever seized Abū Bakr he would say—

Every man greets the morning among his people,
Yet death is nearer than the strap of his sandal.”