in prayer; when he prostrated he would set her down, and when he rose he would lift her again. Perhaps this was after her mother’s death, in the eighth year after the Hijrah, as related by al-Wāqidī (1), Qatādah, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Bakr ibn Ḥazm, and others—she must still have been a small child, and Allah knows best.

ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib later married her after Fāṭimah’s death, as will be mentioned, and Zaynab herself died in the year eight. This was the view of Qatādah, on the authority of ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Bakr ibn Ḥazm, and of Khalīfah ibn Khayyāṭ, Abū Bakr ibn Abī Khaythamah, and many others; Qatādah also reported from Ibn Ḥazm that she died at the very beginning of that year.

Hammād ibn Salamah (2) narrated from Hishām ibn ʿUrwah, from his father, that when she emigrated a man jostled her, she fell upon a rock and miscarried, and she remained in pain until she died; they therefore regarded her as a martyr.

As for Ruqayyah, she was first married to her cousin ʿUtbah ibn Abī Lahab, while her sister Umm Kulthūm was married to his brother ʿUtaybah (3) ibn Abī Lahab. Both brothers divorced them before the marriages were consummated, out of spite toward the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—after the revelation of:

“Perish the hands of Abū Lahab, and perish he!
Neither his wealth nor what he has earned shall avail him.
He will burn in a Fire of blazing flame,
And his wife—the carrier of firewood—
Around her neck a rope of palm-fiber.”
(Sūrat al-Masad, 111:1-5)

ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān then married Ruqayyah, and she emigrated with him to Abyssinia; it is said that he was the first person to do so. They later returned to Mecca, as noted above, and then emigrated to Madinah. There she bore him a son, ʿAbd Allāh; he lived to the age of six, when a rooster pecked him in the eyes and he died. ʿUthmān was at first given the kunya Abū ʿAbd Allāh, but thereafter adopted Abū ʿAmr (4).

Ruqayyah passed away while the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—was victorious at Badr, the Day of Criterion when the two hosts met. When the bearer of glad tidings—Zayd ibn Ḥārithah—reached Madinah, he found that they had just leveled the earth over her grave. ʿUthmān had remained behind to nurse her on the Prophet’s instruction, and the Prophet allotted him his full share of the spoils and of the reward. On his return he married him to her sister Umm Kulthūm as well, and for that reason ʿUthmān was called “the Possessor of the Two Lights.” Umm Kulthūm died in his house in Shaʿbān of the ninth year and bore him no children.

The Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—said, “Were I to have a third daughter, I would have married her to ʿUthmān.” In another wording he said: “Had I ten daughters, I would have married them all to ʿUthmān.”

As for Fāṭimah, her cousin ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib married her in Ṣafar of the second year, and she bore him al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn, and—according to some—Muḥsin (5), as well as Umm Kulthūm and Zaynab. During his caliphate ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb married Umm Kulthūm, daughter of ʿAlī and Fāṭimah, and honored her greatly, giving her a dowry of forty thousand dirhams because of her lineage from the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him. She bore him Zayd ibn ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb. After ʿUmar was killed, her cousin ʿAwn ibn Jaʿfar married her; when he died, his brother Muḥammad married her; he too died, and then their brother