In this same year there also died: Ḥafṣah bint ʿUmar (1) ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, Mother of the Believers. Before she married the Messenger of Allah ﷺ she had been the wife of Khunays (2) ibn Ḥudhāfah al-Sahmī, with whom she emigrated to Madinah. He passed away after the Battle of Badr, and when her waiting period ended her father offered her hand to ʿUthmān—whose wife Ruqayyah, the daughter of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, had just died—but he declined. ʿUmar then offered her to Abū Bakr, who gave no reply. Shortly thereafter the Messenger of Allah ﷺ proposed and married her. Later ʿUmar reproached Abū Bakr, and Abū Bakr said:

“Nothing kept me from responding to you except that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ had already mentioned her (3); had he left her, I would have married her myself (4).”

We transmit the ḥadīth that “the Messenger of Allah ﷺ divorced Ḥafṣah and then took her back” (5), and another wording states: “Jibrīl ordered him to take her back, saying, ‘She fasts often and stands long in prayer; she will be your wife in Paradise.’” (6)

The majority agree that she died in Shaʿbān of this year at the age of sixty. Some say her death occurred during the caliphate of ʿUthmān, but the first view is sounder, and Allah knows best.

[Then came the year forty-six.] During it the Muslims spent the winter campaigning in Byzantine territory for jihad under their commander ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Khālid ibn al-Walīd; others say their commander was someone else, and Allah knows best.

[That same year ʿUtbah ibn Abī Sufyān, the brother of Muʿāwiyah, led the people in the pilgrimage, and the provincial governors remained those mentioned earlier] (7).