Muhammad Series

Muhammad was a man who loved and needed women. Muhammad genuinely enjoyed women’s company and needed affection and intimacy. His gentleness and apparent leniency with the women in his life perplexed some of his closest companions. Muhammad was not the perverse lecher of Western legend: he needed a woman as a beloved friend as well as a lover.

City life often gives certain women a chance to flourish in business and commerce. Khadija had been married twice and had born a number of children. In about 595, Khadija asked Mohammed to take some merchandise to Syria for her.

Khadija proposed marriage to Muhammad. Despite the disparity in their ages, she needed a new husband and Muhammad was an appropriate choice. Tradition has it that Khadija was forty at the time, but, as she went of to bear Muhammad at least six children, she was probably somewhat younger, though still significantly older than her new husband.

It has been common in the West for people to sneer at this marriage to the elderly, wealthy widow. It has been implied that Muhammad agreed to the match for cynical reasons. This was no marriage of convenience: Muhammad gave a large proportion of the family income to the poor and made his own family live very frugally. He was known in particular for his kindness to the poor and to slaves.

He had been propelled into a sphere that he had never imagined and had somehow to explain to himself. In his isolation and terror, he turned instinctively to his wife. All the sources emphasize Muhammad’s profound dependence upon Khadija. Khadija was not just a consoling mother figure; she was also Muhammad’s spiritual advisor.

In the early years of his prophetic mission, he could not have managed without her support and her spiritual counsel. Whenever Muhammad was attacked by his enemies or shaken by the power of his mystical experience, he always went straight to his wife for comfort and for the rest of her life Khadija, the first person to recognize her husband’s exceptional ability, ‘strengthened him, lightened his burden, proclaimed the truth.’ Muhammad was a passionate man but he never took another, younger wife while he was married to Khadija – a fact that should be noted by those who criticize him for his polygamy in later years.

Muhammad’s Year of Sadness: 619

Six Nineteen was Muhammad’s Year of Sadness. Shortly after the end of the ban, Khadija died: she had been in her sixties. She had been Muhammad’s closest companion and after her death nobody would replace her.

Polygamy and the Koran

Muhammad’s harem of wives has excited a lot of lurid and prurient speculation in the West as well as a good deal of ill-concealed envy. Later the Koran decreed that a Muslim could have only four wives by Muhammad, as the Prophet, was allowed many more. In a tribal society, polygamy tends to be the norm.

There was a shortage of men in Arabia, which left a surplus of unmarried women who were often badly exploited. After the defeat, the revelation came down to Muhammad that allowed Muslims to take four wives. In seventh-century Arabia, when a man could have as many wives as he chose, to prescribe only four was a limitation,

The Koran resorted to polygamy as a way enabling all the girls who had been orphaned to be married. A man could take more than one wife only if he promised to administer their property equitably. It also stipulates that no orphan girl should be married to her guardian against her will, as though she were simply a moveable property. The Koran also makes provision for divorce. The dowry was to be given directly to the women herself. In the event of divorce, a man is not allowed to reclaim the dowry, so a woman’s security is assured. To this day, women are allowed to do whatever they choose with this money. In seventh-century Arabia, it was revolutionary. In the pre-Islamic period, female infanticide was the norm and women had no rights at all. Like slaves, women were treated as an inferior species, who had no legal existence. In such a primitive world, what Muhammad achieved for women was extraordinary.

Muhammad’s Wives

When Muhammad wedded Aisha, she was still only nine years old, so there was no wedding feast and the ceremonial was kept to minimum. She was so young that she stayed in her parents’ home and the marriage was consummated there later when she reached puberty.

In January 626, he approached Umm Salamah, a sister of one of the leading members of the powerful Meccan clan of Makhzum. Muhammad’s marriage to Umm, joining Sawdah, Aisha and Hafsah [beautiful and accomplished], introduced a rift among his wives Umm represented the more aristocratic group of Emigrants, while Aisha and Hafsah, daughters of Muhammad’s two closest companions, represented the more plebian party in power. These factions among Muhammad’s wives reflect crucial factions that would become extremely serious after the Prophet’s death and which still divide Muslims today.

It was not long after Umm’s wedding that a new wife, Zaynab, entered the harem who would frequently ally herself with the aristocratic party. Muslims deny that Muhammad married Zaynab out of lust and, indeed, it seems most unlikely that a woman of 39, who had been living on the brink of malnutritution all her life and exposed to the merciless sun of Arabia would inspire such a storm of emotion in anybody’s breast, let alone that of a cousin who had known her since she was a child.

Muslim women are required, like men, to dress modestly, but women are not told to veil themselves from view, nor to seclude themselves from men in a separate part of the house. These were later developments and did not become widespread in the Islamic empire until three or four generations after the death of Muhammad.

Muhammad’s Jewish Wife

Muhammad married the beautiful seventeen-year-old Safiyyah, the daughter of his old enemy Huyay. The Jewish girl was extremely lovely. She is said to have foreseen the Jewish defeat by Medina in a dream and was quite willing to convert to Islam.

Muhammad's Christian Concubine

Egypt sent Muhammad a beautiful curly-haired Egyptian slave girl, a Coptic Christian called Maryam, and Muhammad took her as his concubine. He used to visit her daily, spending more and more time with her, probably finding it a relief to escape the jealous atmosphere of the harem. Maryam became pregnant, and, when his son was born the following year, Muhammad called him Ibrahim.

As one might expect, his wives were extremely jealous of the little nobody who was carrying the Prophet’s child. Aisha and Hafsah organized a protest and a rebellion in the harem which caused a major crisis and involved more than meets the eye. Muhammad’s marriages were political alliances which had been carefully planned. The wives sneered at Maryam and continued squabbling and feuding with one another. Finally the atmosphere became so unpleasant that Muhammad withdrew from all his wives for a month.

Verses of the Choice

They were given the Verses of the Choice: they could either accept his terms and live a decent Islamic life or he would give them an amicable divorce. It may have been more about the growing materialism than about sexual jealously. The wives were squabbling over some booty that had recently been acquired and were insisting that Muhammad give a bigger share to his own family than to the rest of the umma.

The women agreed to the conditions and from that point Muhammad’s wives became even more important in the umma. The Koran gave them the title ‘Mothers of the Faithful’ and decreed that they should not marry again after Muhammad’s death because such marriages could breed dynasties and cabals that would split the umma.