It is also said that he would remain in prostration until the soil had eaten into his forehead; and when he died he was seen in a dream, the very spot where he had prayed now shining with light. He was asked, “Where is your abode?” He replied, “In a house whose inhabitants neither depart nor die.”
[al-Nuʿaymān ibn ʿAmr] (1) (2): son of Rafāʿah ibn al-Ḥārith (3). He fought at Badr and in every battle thereafter. It is said that he was the man who used to be brought before the Prophet for drinking wine, and the Prophet ﷺ would have him flogged (4). On one occasion a man remarked, “May Allah curse him—how often he is brought here!” The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “Do not curse him, for he loves Allah and His Messenger.” (5)
Sawdah bint (6) Zamʿah (7), a Qurayshite woman of the clan of ʿĀmir and Mother of the Believers. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ married her after Khadījah; before him she had been the wife of as-Sakrān ibn ʿAmr, the brother of Suhayl ibn ʿAmr. When she grew old, the Prophet ﷺ considered divorcing her. It is said that he in fact divorced her, whereupon she asked him to keep her among his wives and offered to yield her allotted day to ʿĀʾishah. He accepted and retained her, and Allah the Exalted revealed: “If a woman fears from her husband disdain or desertion…” (Qurʾān 4:128). (8)
She was devoted to worship, pious, and ascetic. ʿĀʾishah said, “There is no woman whose place I would rather occupy than Sawdah’s—except that she was quick-tempered, yet she just as quickly relented.” (9)
(1) Omitted in manuscript A.
(2) Sīrat Ibn Hishām (vol. 1, p. 703); Ṭabaqāt Ibn Saʿd (vol. 3, p. 493); al-Maʿārif (pp. 328–29); al-Maʿrifa wa-al-Tārīkh (vol. 1, pp. 365–66); al-Ishtiqāq (p. 450); al-Jarḥ wa-al-Taʿdīl (vol. 8, p. 507); al-Istiʿāb (vol. 4, p. 1526); Asad al-Ghāba (vol. 5, p. 351); Mukhtaṣar Tārīkh Dimashq (vol. 26, p. 169); al-Iṣāba (d. 878 AH); Ḥayāt al-Ṣaḥāba by al-Kandahlawī (vol. 3, p. 185).
(3) In the printed edition the word al-Hārith was misprinted as al-Hurr.
(4) Omitted in editions Ṭ and B.
(5) See al-Bukhārī no. 6775 (hadith of ʿUqba b. ʿĀmir) and no. 6780 (hadith of ʿUmar).
(6) In the printed edition it reads “bin,” which is incorrect.
(7) Ṭabaqāt Ibn Saʿd (vol. 8, p. 52); Ṭabaqāt Khalīfa (p. 335); Musnad Aḥmad (vol. 6, p. 429); al-Tārīkh al-Ṣaghīr (pp. 50, 109); al-Maʿārif (pp. 133, 284); al-Istiʿāb (vol. 4, p. 1867); al-Ikmāl li-Ibn Makūlā (vol. 4, p. 397); Jāmiʿ al-Uṣūl (vol. 9, p. 145); Asad al-Ghāba (vol. 7, p. 157); Tahdhīb al-Kamāl (p. 1693); Tārīkh al-Islām (vol. 2, p. 66); Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ (vol. 2, p. 265); al-Kāshif (vol. 3, p. 428); Majmaʿ al-Zawāʾid (vol. 9, p. 246); al-Iṣāba (vol. 12, p. 323); Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb (vol. 12, p. 426); Khulāṣat al-Khazarajī (p. 492); Shadharāt al-Dhahab (vol. 1, pp. 179, 255); Aʿlām al-Nisāʾ li-Kaḥḥāla (vol. 2, p. 267).
(8) Narrated by Abū Dāwūd no. 2135; it is a ḥadīth ṣaḥīḥ (authentic).
(9) Recorded by Muslim no. 1463 in the Book of Suckling under the chapter “On the permissibility of gifting her turn to her co-wife.” The term al-maslakh ("skins") refers to the outer coverings, implying she wished to be treated in the same manner and with the same gift.