The Female Companions (Sahabiyyat)

Usd al-Ghabah devotes significant attention to the women who were Companions of the Prophet, upon him be peace — the Sahabiyyat. Ibn al-Athir's commitment to comprehensiveness meant including not only the most prominent women of early Islam but also those whose names appear only briefly in the hadith literature, often in a single narration. The female section of his biographical dictionary stands as one of the richest early sources for the history of Muslim women in the first generation of Islam.

Khadijah bint Khuwaylid was the first Muslim. Before the revelation came to the Prophet, she was his wife and the woman in whom he confided his fears after the first encounter with the angel Jibril in the Cave of Hira. It was Khadijah who reassured him, who took him to her Christian cousin Waraqah ibn Nawfal, and who became the first person to believe in his message without hesitation. She stood by the Prophet through the years of early persecution, including the three-year economic boycott in the valley of Abu Talib, and she died in 619 CE — the Year of Sorrow — leaving a grief that the Prophet carried for the rest of his life. Ibn al-Kathir records that the Prophet would remember her often and speak of her with profound love even after her death, prompting the occasional jealousy of his later wives.

Aisha bint Abi Bakr, daughter of the first caliph, became the Prophet's wife in Medina and lived with him for approximately nine years until his death in 11 AH. She became the most prolific female narrator of hadith, responsible for transmitting over two thousand narrations. She was consulted by the senior Companions on matters of religious practice, and she corrected misunderstandings that had spread even among the greatest Companions. Her memory was extraordinary, and her knowledge of the Prophet's private practices — how he prayed at night, how he performed ritual purity, how he conducted himself in his household — constitutes an irreplaceable part of the Sunnah.

Fatimah bint Muhammad was the Prophet's youngest daughter and the wife of Ali ibn Abi Talib. She is one of the four women whom classical scholars considered the greatest women of all time, alongside Khadijah, Maryam the mother of Isa, and Asiyah the wife of Pharaoh. She died only months after her father, in 11 AH, and her grief at his passing was such that she reportedly said she could no longer smell the fragrance of the world without remembering him.

Umm Salamah, Hind bint Abi Umayyah, was among the earliest Muslims and endured the hardship of migration to Abyssinia before later migrating to Medina. After the death of her first husband Abu Salamah, she became a wife of the Prophet. She was known for her wisdom and sound judgment — the Prophet consulted her at the pivotal moment of Hudaybiyyah, when the Muslims were reluctant to shave their heads before the umrah was complete, and her advice proved decisive. She lived into the caliphate of Yazid, narrating over three hundred hadiths and serving as a reference for the early Muslim community for decades after the Prophet's death.