Death of Umm Kulthum, Daughter of the Prophet

# The Death of Umm Kulthum

The Third Daughter

Umm Kulthum bint Muhammad was the third of the Prophet's ﷺ daughters by Khadijah bint Khuwaylid. She had been married in Mecca, before the Hijra, to Utba ibn Abi Lahab — a son of Abu Lahab, the Prophet's ﷺ uncle and one of the most implacable opponents of Islam. When Surah al-Masad was revealed condemning Abu Lahab and his wife Umm Jamil by name, Abu Lahab commanded his son Utba to divorce Umm Kulthum. Utba complied, returning the young woman to her father before the marriage was consummated. The divorce was itself an act of humiliation by Abu Lahab's family — a public rejection of the Prophet's ﷺ daughter — but it also freed Umm Kulthum from a household that had become one of the centers of active opposition to her father's message.

After the Hijra to Medina, Umm Kulthum was married to Uthman ibn Affan — who had previously been married to her older sister Ruqayyah. Ruqayyah had died in 2 AH, the day of the Battle of Badr, while Uthman remained with her through her illness at the Prophet's ﷺ command. Uthman's grief was compounded by his absence from Badr's victory; the Prophet ﷺ consoled him and assured him that he would receive the reward of a participant. When the prescribed waiting period after Ruqayyah's death had passed, the Prophet ﷺ gave Umm Kulthum in marriage to Uthman ibn Affan — the second of the Prophet's ﷺ daughters to marry the same man, giving Uthman the honorific title Dhu al-Nurayn (the Possessor of Two Lights) that he carries in Islamic tradition.

The Marriage to Uthman

The marriage of Umm Kulthum to Uthman was a bond between the Prophet ﷺ and one of his most devoted companions. Uthman was among the earliest converts in Islam, among the most generous — he had funded major projects including the expansion of Masjid al-Nabawi and the purchase of the well of Bir Rumah for public use — and among the most beloved to the Prophet ﷺ personally. The Prophet ﷺ is reported to have said: "If I had a third daughter I would give her to Uthman." The remark was preserved precisely because Umm Kulthum's death ended the possibility.

The marriage produced no children who survived, according to the seerah sources. Umm Kulthum was younger than Ruqayyah; she had been a child when her father's prophethood began and had grown up through the Meccan persecution, the Hijra, and the early Medinan battles. Her marriage to Uthman connected two of the most significant households of the early Muslim community: the household of the Prophet ﷺ and the household of Uthman ibn Affan, who would later become the third Caliph.

The Death in 9 AH

Umm Kulthum died in Sha'ban 9 AH, during the same year as the death of the Negus and the Expedition of Tabuk. The Prophet ﷺ washed her body with his own hands, or was present at her washing — the narrations preserve details of the funeral rites. She was buried in the Baqi cemetery in Medina, joining her sister Ruqayyah in that ground.

The Prophet ﷺ stood at her grave and his eyes filled with tears. Uthman ibn Affan stood beside him, also weeping. The Prophet ﷺ had now buried three daughters in Medina — Ruqayyah in 2 AH, Zaynab in 8 AH, and now Umm Kulthum — and only Fatimah, the youngest, remained. Among all his children, Fatimah would be the only one to outlive him, and only by six months.

The Sorrow of the Prophet

The deaths of the Prophet's ﷺ daughters in Medina represent one of the sustained personal griefs of his Medinan years. Khadijah had died in Mecca, then Abu Talib. In Medina, he buried Ruqayyah, then his grandson, then Zaynab, then Umm Kulthum, and later — after his own death — Fatimah. The grief the seerah records at these deaths is direct and human: the Prophet ﷺ wept, his voice changed when speaking of those he loved, he sat at gravesides and was moved. The Islamic tradition holds that the Prophet ﷺ was not stoic about grief but experienced it fully while trusting completely in Allah's decree — and that his weeping at graves, far from contradicting his tawakkul, expressed what the seerah understood as the highest human response to loss: feeling it honestly while surrendering it to Allah.

Uthman After Umm Kulthum

Uthman ibn Affan did not remarry quickly after Umm Kulthum's death. He had been married to two of the Prophet's ﷺ daughters, had lost both, and had been described by the Prophet ﷺ as one who would have received a third if there had been a third to give. The title Dhu al-Nurayn — Possessor of Two Lights — refers in the commentary of the classical scholars to the honor of having been husband to two daughters of the Prophet ﷺ, a distinction no other man in Islamic history holds. When Uthman stood weeping at Umm Kulthum's grave, he was standing at the culmination of a personal bond with the Prophet's ﷺ household that had lasted two decades and had run through the darkest and brightest chapters of the Muslim community's formation: the persecution in Mecca, the emigration to Abyssinia, the Hijra to Medina, the battles of Badr and Uhud and the Trench, and the Conquest of Mecca. The grief at Umm Kulthum's grave was the grief of a man who had stood with the Prophet ﷺ through all of it, and who now stood at one of the last moments of personal loss before the loss that would surpass all others: the Prophet's ﷺ own death, less than two years away. Uthman himself later described his years married to the Prophet's ﷺ daughters as among the most honored period of his life, a closeness to the Prophet ﷺ that no subsequent worldly honor — including the caliphate itself — could replace.

Sources: Sahih al-Bukhari (Kitab al-Jana'iz, Kitab al-Manaqib); Sahih Muslim; Ibn Hisham, al-Sira al-Nabawiyya; Ibn Kathir, al-Bidayah wan-Nihayah; Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabaqat al-Kubra