Women Companions in Jihad and Service

The participation of women Companions in the military campaigns of early Islam represents one of the most striking departures from the assumption that Islamic women were confined to a purely domestic sphere. While Islamic law does not impose military service as an obligation on women (as it does on men), the women Companions of the Prophet participated in military expeditions as nurses, water carriers, cooks, and in some cases active combatants, establishing a historical precedent for women's service in the cause of Islam that Qutb examines in detail.

The most comprehensive source for women's military participation is Umm Atiyya al-Ansariyyah, who narrated her own participation in seven expeditions with the Prophet: 'I went on seven expeditions with the Messenger of Allah; I stayed in the camp, prepared food, treated the wounded, and cared for the sick' (Muslim). This narration demonstrates that women's presence in military expeditions was not exceptional but regularized — organized service that the Prophet welcomed and directed.

Nusaybah bint Ka'b (Umm Umarah), discussed in previous chapters, represents the most dramatic example of direct female combat. At Uhud, she fought alongside the Prophet and received multiple wounds defending him when the Muslim lines broke. The Prophet specifically acknowledged her combat role, and her subsequent participation in campaigns including the Riddah wars confirmed that her conduct at Uhud was not an emergency anomaly but a reflection of genuine martial commitment. Her son Habib ibn Zayd was martyred in the wars against Musaylimah, making the family one of extraordinary sacrifice.

The nursing role deserves particular attention. Women Companions traveled with Muslim armies to provide medical care — cleaning and dressing wounds, transporting the injured, and providing water and food. Rufaydah al-Aslamiyyah is identified in biographical sources as establishing a medical tent near the mosque in Madinah during campaigns, where she treated the wounded under the Prophet's direction and observation. This represents, in effect, the first field hospital in Islamic history, and Rufaydah its first director.

Al-Khansa, the poet whose four sons were martyred at Qadisiyyah, represents the dimension of women's spiritual support for the military enterprise. Her role was not to fight but to inspire — through her pre-Islamic elegies she had demonstrated the power of poetry to honor sacrifice, and her Islamic poetry and exhortation channeled that power in service of the Muslim cause. Her famous encouragement of her sons before Qadisiyyah, and her response to their martyrdom, demonstrate a form of contribution to jihad that Islamic tradition has always honored alongside the physical forms.

Qutb's conclusion reflects on why this history matters for contemporary Muslim women. The women Companions did not participate in the building of Islamic civilization as passive recipients of male guidance; they were active agents whose scholarship, sacrifice, nursing, combat, poetry, and counsel were integral to the enterprise. Recovering their history is not an exercise in feminist revisionism but an act of historical fidelity — restoring to visibility a dimension of the prophetic community that the sources clearly document but popular imagination has often obscured.