The Prophet's Daughters

The Prophet Muhammad had four daughters who survived to adulthood — Zaynab, Ruqayyah, Umm Kulthum, and Fatimah — all born to Khadijah. Each experienced the transformation from a childhood in pre-Islamic Arabia to adulthood in the rapidly changing world of early Islam, and each made her own distinct contribution to the prophetic legacy. Qutb's treatment of the Prophet's daughters conveys both the historical detail of their lives and the spiritual significance they hold in Islamic consciousness.

Zaynab, the eldest, was married to Abu al-As ibn al-Rabi — a man the Prophet loved and respected — before the revelation. When her husband refused to convert to Islam, they were separated according to Islamic law (which prohibits a Muslim woman being married to a non-Muslim man). She migrated to Madinah without her husband, and the subsequent events of her life — including the capture and release of Abu al-As during the Battle of Badr and his eventual conversion to Islam, after which the Prophet reunited them — constitute one of the most moving love stories of the seerah. Zaynab died in the sixth or seventh year of the Hijra, mourned deeply by the Prophet.

Ruqayyah and Umm Kulthum were both married successively to Uthman ibn Affan — the only man to marry two daughters of a prophet in succession, earning him the title Dhul-Nurayn. Ruqayyah's death, which occurred on the day of Badr while the battle was being fought, was particularly poignant: Uthman had remained in Madinah to care for her at the Prophet's direction, and when the victory news arrived, it was tempered by the news of her death.

Fatimah, the youngest and most beloved, is treated in greatest detail. Her special position in the Prophet's heart — expressed in the hadith 'Fatimah is a part of me; whoever angers her angers me' — gave her a spiritual significance that transcends biography. Her marriage to Ali, her role as mother of Hasan and Husayn, and her death six months after the Prophet, reportedly of grief at his loss, make her life arc a complete story of devotion, sacrifice, and union in death as in life.

The Prophet's treatment of his daughters — his expressed love, his public displays of affection, his insistence on their dignity and rights — was itself a teaching about the worth of daughters in a society that had practiced female infanticide. The man who stood when his daughter entered the room and kissed her forehead in public was dismantling the cultural structures of female devaluation through the most personal and practical means possible. His daughters, by simply being publicly loved, participated in a social revolution whose ripples are still felt today.