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THE WIVES OF MUHAMMAD.
APRIL, 1878.]
time of her marriage with Muhammad this lady was the widow of 'Ubaidu-l-lah bin Jalsh, by whom she had become the mother of one child, a girl. 'Ubaidu-l-lah was, in the first instance, a Muhammadan; but, in consequence of the growing persecution of Muhammad and his adherents in Makka before the Hajira, he removed to the Christian province of Abyssinia, where he gave up Islâm and embraced the religion of the country, and at length died a Christian. This man was one of the Four Inquirers,' so called,-that is, persons who are said in Moslim legend to have been in a state of expectancy of a prophet just prior to the time when Maḥammad announced his mission. 'Ubaidu-1-lâh was a maternal cousin of Muḥammad's,-his mother having been a daughter of 'Abdu-l-Muttalib, Muhammad's grandfather; he was also a brother of Zainab bint Jahsh, the divorced wife of Zaid. On hearing of his death, Muḥammad sent for his widow, and took her in marriage. This event took place at Madina in the seventh year of the Hajira, in the autumn of 628 A.D.,-their ages being respectively fifty-six and thirty (or, as some say, thirty-five). This lady had no issue by the second marriage; she lived to see the good age of sixty-four, dying in the fortieth year of the Hajira (=652 A.D.)-thus surviving Muḥammad about thirty years, and dying during the Khilafat of her brother Muavia.
11. The lady who is generally believed to have been the last of his married wives was Maimuna, daughter of Hârith, and maternal aunt of Ibn Abbas. This was the third marriage of Maimûna, her former husbands having been Mas'ûd bin 'Umar, and the second Bûraham, from the first of whom, from some cause not now ascertainable, she had become separated. She was joined in marriage to Muḥammad in the seventh year of the Hajira (=629 A.D.), his age and hers being respectively fifty-eight and twenty-six. This lady Maimuna, together with Umm Salama and Zainab bint Khuzaima, are the three who are said to have bestowed themselves, unsolicited and of their own will and request, upon the apostle of God' to be his wives. Some of the authorities do not allow to Maimuna a place among his lawfully-married wives, maintaining that in this instance there was no formal
It is proper to observe in this p'ace that facts, figures, and names regarding this person are stated by different Moslim
marriage. At the time of his marriage to her, Muḥammad had already in his haram eight wives, besides ladies of other descriptions: Khad ja and Zainab bint Khuzaima were the only two who had died. Maimuna lived just fifty-five years after the celebration of her third marriage, and was childless in all her marriages. Surviving, as she did, to the sixty-third year of the Hajira, and to the advanced age of eighty-one, Maimuna was thus not only the last of Muhammad's wives, but also the oldest, and the one who survived him the longest.
II. We come now, in the second place, to the case of those of Muhammad's womenfolk who do not fail under the above description of lawfully-married': these cases arrange themselves naturally under two heads :
1. Those ladies with whom he shared connu
bial rites, but to whom he was not formally married.
In most of these cases the revolting nature of the details must be our excuse for giving no more than the bare names. The women were some of them slaves of Muhammad's household, and others were captives taken by him among the spoils of war, and appropriated for himself; others, again, were given to him as presents by persons who desired his favour and good-will. The numbers in this list do not indicate the chronological order in which the women were introduced to his acquaintance,-that is a point which it seems impossible to settle with any degree of certainty.
(1) Khaula, daughter of Hakim. (2) Rihana the Jewess.
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(3) Salama. widow of Hamza. (4) Umm-Râ fi'.
(5) Rizwa.
(6) Amima.
(7) Um m-Zamir.
(8) Agima.
(9) Umm-Iman (also called Barkat). (10) Umaima.
(11) Mariam Qabti (Mary the Egyptian).
(12) Shirin (sister of Mary the Copt).
The two last-named persons were slaves, the property of Maqa u qas, king of Egypt: they had been selected by him on account of their extreme beauty, for presentation to the prophet authorities with such exceptionally strange diversity that what we give below must be received with some reservation.
