that it occurred in 5 AH; and when the Messenger of Allah ﷺ consummated the marriage with her, the command concerning ḥijāb was revealed, as is recorded in the two Ṣaḥīḥs (1) on the authority of Anas. She was the one who rivalled ʿĀʾishah bint al-Ṣiddīq in beauty and favour. Devout, God-fearing, devoted to worship and abundant in charity, she was the woman to whom the Messenger of Allah ﷺ alluded when he said, “The quickest of you to join me will be the one whose hand is the longest” (2)—that is, the most generous in almsgiving. She was a skilled craftswoman who earned with her own hands and gave to the poor. ʿĀʾishah (3) said, “I have never seen a woman who was better in religion, more God-fearing, more truthful in speech, more dutiful to kin, or more trustworthy and charitable than Zaynab bint Jaḥsh.”

After the Farewell Pilgrimage neither she nor Sawdah performed ḥajj again, for the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said to his wives, “This ḥajj, and then remain upon your mats” (4). The rest of the Prophet’s wives, however, would go out for ḥajj. Zaynab and Sawdah declared (5), “By Allah, no mount shall carry us after him.”

It is related that ʿUmar sent her annual stipend of twelve thousand, and she distributed all of it in charity among her relatives. She then prayed, “O Allah, let the grant of ʿUmar not reach me again after this.” She died in 20 AH, and ʿUmar led her funeral prayer. She was the first woman for whom a concealed bier was prepared (6) (7), and she was buried in al-Baqīʿ.

Ṣafiyyah bint ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib (8), the aunt of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, was the mother of al-Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwām and the full sister of Ḥamzah, al-Muqawwim and Ḥajl; their mother was Hālah bint Wuhayb ibn ʿAbd Manāf ibn Zuhrah. There is no dispute regarding her Islam. She was present at the Battle of Uḥud and grieved deeply for her brother Ḥamzah. On the Day of the Trench she killed a Jewish man who kept circling the fortress (9) in which she and others were sheltering—the upper part of the fortress of Ḥassān. She said to Ḥassān, “Go down and kill him,” but he refused; so she went down herself and killed him, then said, “Come down and strip him; were he not a man I would have stripped him myself” (10). He replied, “I have no need of what he has.” She was thus the first woman to kill a man from among the idolaters.

There is disagreement about whether any of the Prophet’s other paternal aunts became Muslim. Some say that Arwā and ʿĀtikah accepted Islam. Ibn al-Athīr and our teacher, the ḥāfiẓ Abū ʿAbd-Allāh al-Dhahabī, however, hold that the sound view is that none of them embraced Islam apart from her. She was first married to al-Ḥārith ibn