1 of 2 · 2 AH · after Badr · Makkah and Madinah
Zaynab bint Muhammad رضي الله عنها
A Necklace Sent to Madinah
Before Islam, Zaynab had married her mother's nephew, Abu al-'As ibn al-Rabi', a trusted merchant of Makkah. When her father ﷺ began to call people to Islam, she accepted it; her husband did not, but he refused Quraysh's pressure to divorce her. When the Prophet ﷺ emigrated, she remained in Makkah with him.
At Badr, Abu al-'As fought with Quraysh and was taken captive. When the Makkans sent ransoms for their prisoners, Zaynab sent wealth for her husband, and among it was a necklace her mother Khadijah had given her on her wedding day.
When the Prophet ﷺ saw the necklace, he was overcome with tenderness for her. He asked his Companions whether they would be willing to free her captive and return to her what was hers, and they did. He made one condition of Abu al-'As: that he let Zaynab come to Madinah (Sunan Abi Dawud 2692).
A single object from Khadijah carried years of love across a battlefield; the Prophet ﷺ was not ashamed to be moved by it.
What do you hold onto that carries the love of someone you have lost?
- Sunan Abi Dawud 2692 Graded by Al-Albani: Hasan · Muhammad Muhyi Al-Din Abdul Hamid: Hasan · Shuaib Al Arnaut: Hasan · Zubair Ali Zai: HasanHasan
- Ibn Hisham, al-Sirah al-NabawiyyahHistorical report
- Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabaqat al-KubraHistorical report
What the hadith grades mean
- Sahih (authentic): an unbroken chain of trustworthy, precise narrators, free of hidden flaws or contradiction. It is acted upon.
- Hasan (good): like sahih, but a narrator's precision is slightly lighter. It is also accepted and acted upon. "Hasan sahih" means it reaches sahih by its routes.
- Da'if (weak): a break in the chain or a narrator who is not reliable enough. It is not used to establish beliefs or rulings.
- Very weak (munkar, matruk): a seriously flawed chain or a narrator accused of lying. It is not relied on at all.
- Mawdu' (fabricated): falsely attributed to the Prophet ﷺ. It may not be narrated as his words except to warn against it.
- The two Sahihs: every hadith with a full chain in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim is accepted as sahih by the scholars of hadith.
- Historical report: biographies and histories (Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabari) record events with chains that are often incomplete. They are used for the story, not for rulings.
- Hadith scholars grade a narration; the four madhhabs do not. Where a hadith carries a ruling, the page shows which schools act on it.
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