A Verse for Women, and the Last of the Mothers

Umm Salamah was not shy to ask. She once said to the Prophet ﷺ that she heard men mentioned in the Qur'an but not women. Not long after, she heard him calling from the pulpit, reciting the verse that names women alongside men in every virtue: ﴿إِنَّ الْمُسْلِمِينَ وَالْمُسْلِمَاتِ وَالْمُؤْمِنِينَ وَالْمُؤْمِنَاتِ﴾ (“Indeed, the Muslim men and Muslim women, the believing men and believing women…”) ending with Allah's promise of forgiveness and a great reward for all of them (33:35).

In the decades after the Prophet ﷺ died, her house in Madinah became a place people came to learn. She narrated a large number of hadith, and Companions and the generation after them asked her about the Prophet's ﷺ practice at home, about prayer, fasting and family life. Her judgement was trusted, as it had been at Hudaybiyyah.

She outlived all the other wives of the Prophet ﷺ, and lived to hear of the killing of his grandson al-Husayn at Karbala', which grieved her deeply. She died in Madinah, in her eighties by most accounts, and was buried in al-Baqi'. With her passing, the last of the Mothers of the Believers was gone.