Kamil Ahmad – The Lives of the Sahabiyyat – 10 – Safiyyah bint Huyayy – ra
AI: Summary ©
The conversation covers the history of the Bible and the history of the Jews, including the deaths of leaders and their children, the actions of the prophet compelling men to kill their relatives and their children, and the multiple marriages and relationships with different cultures. The segment discusses the importance of giving clarifications when misunderstandings arise and avoiding evil thoughts of assumptions, as well as the importance of giving clarifications when misunderstandings arise and how to avoid them. The importance of Hilda's education and her qualities in explaining one's behavior is also discussed, as well as the importance of Hilda's education and her influence on shaping one's behavior.
AI: Summary ©
In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious,
the Most Merciful.
All praise is due to Allah, Lord of
the worlds.
And peace and blessings be upon the best
of Allah's creation, and upon his family, his
companions, and those who are guided by his
guidance, and who wait by his Sunnah until
the Day of Judgment.
O Allah, teach us what benefits us, and
benefit us with what You have taught us,
and increase us in knowledge, and show us
the truth as it is, and grant us
to follow it, and show us the falsehood
as it is, and grant us to avoid
it, and make us of those who listen
to the word, and follow the best of
it.
And after this, peace and blessings of Allah
be upon you.
We continue on with the lives of the
Sahabiyat, and basically we have been going through
the Ummahatul Mu'mineen, the mothers of the believers,
the wives of Rasulullah ﷺ.
And so, today we have with us another
of the wives of the Prophet ﷺ, and
that is Safiyyah bint Huyay.
Safiyyah radiallahu anha.
And so, her name is Safiyyah bint Huyay
ibn Akhtab.
And her ancestry basically traces back to Harun
ibn Imran, the brother of Musa ﷺ.
And so, her father was the chief of
the tribe of Banu Nadhir.
He was the chief of the tribe of
Banu Nadhir, one of the three Jewish tribes
of Medina.
And her mother, Barra bint Samawal, she was
from the tribe of Banu Qurayza, another of
the three tribes of Medina.
And her maternal uncle became a prominent Sahabi,
and that was Rifa'ah ibn Samawal al
-Quradi.
Rifa'ah ibn Samawal al-Quradi, her uncle,
the uncle of Safiyyah.
So we see how Safiyyah radiallahu anha came
from a Jewish background.
And it's important to understand how the Jews
ended up in Medina.
And so, when the Romans sacked Jerusalem in
the year 70, after Isa ﷺ, they suppressed
the Jews, causing them to leave and disperse
all over the world.
So, some of them, they decided to come
to Arabia in search of the promised land
where an awaited prophet would be sent, and
he would migrate too.
So basically, they knew based on the knowledge
they had from their scriptures that a prophet
is going to come, and they had descriptions
of the place where he would settle.
So, some of them, they followed those signs
and descriptions, and it led them to Yathrib.
Yathrib, which was the name of Medina before
the prophet ﷺ made hijrah there.
And these Jews, they basically comprised of these
three tribes.
Banu Nadhir, Banu Qurayza, and the third, Banu
Qaynuqa.
And these are the three tribes who would
later interact with the prophet ﷺ when he
migrated to Medina.
Now, Safiyyah was born in Medina some three
years after the prophethood.
So, at the time, Rasulullah ﷺ started giving
da'wah publicly in Mecca, and he started
having followers.
Then, later on, Rasulullah ﷺ migrates to Medina,
so we're talking about some ten years later.
The prophet ﷺ migrates to Medina when Safiyyah
is about ten years old.
Now, the Jews were upset when the prophet
ﷺ arrived.
And this was sensed after a conversation between
two leaders of the Jews of Medina.
Huyay ibn Akhtab, the father of Safiyyah, and
his brother, Abu Yasir.
So, the father of Safiyyah and her uncle.
And so, Safiyyah narrates the incident.
She says that she was the favorite child
of her father and uncle.
And whenever they would see her, they would
play with her and give her special attention.
She says, none of the children of my
father or my uncle were more popular than
I was.
Any of their children who wanted attention, it
was always me who they would put first.
Then, when Rasulullah ﷺ came to Quba, my
father and my uncle went to him early
in the morning and only came back at
sunset.
So, she says that when the news came
that the prophet ﷺ had reached Medina, everyone
went out to meet him, including her father
and her uncle, and they were both Jews.
And she says they only came back once
the sun had set that day.
She said they were so tired they could
barely walk.
And I raced over to greet them, as
was my habit, but I swear neither of
them looked at me.
So, she wasn't used to that.
She was used to them coming to her
and hugging her and basically giving her attention.
But she says, neither of them looked at
me.
And then I heard my uncle Abu Yasir
ask my father, was that him?
So, basically, he was asking if the prophet
ﷺ who they just met, if he is
the one who is mentioned in their scriptures,
is he the promised prophet?
So, the father of Safiya, he says yes,
and I swear by Allah, it's him.
So, Abu Yasir, he says, do you recognize
him from his character and his description?
Huyay ibn Akhtab, the father of Safiya, he
says, I certainly do in the name of
Allah.
So, then Abu Yasir says, so what are
you going to do?
How are you going to be with him?
How are you going to treat him?
Look at the answer of Huyay, the father
of Safiya.
He says, by Allah, I will be his
enemy for as long as I live.
And so, first he recognizes that Muhammad ﷺ
is indeed the prophet of Allah, and he's
sure that it's him.
Rather than saying that he's going to follow
him, he says that he's going to be
his enemy for the rest of his life.
Why?
The reason is because of envy and jealousy,
as Allah ﷻ has mentioned to us in
the Qur'an.
And so, the prophet ﷺ ended up being
from the Arabs, rather than from Bani Israel,
as the Jews had wanted.
So this led to envy, and that envy
led to kufr.
And here we're dealing with the worst type
of kufr.
And that is disbelieving in the truth when
you know that it is a truth.
Some people, they disbelieve because they don't think
that Islam is true.
They think this is all made up.
Then you have some people who know that
Islam is the truth, nevertheless, they still reject
it.
And this was the case with Huyay ibn
Akhtab, the father of Safiya.
As Allah ﷻ mentions in the Qur'an
that once the prophet had come, they disbelieved.
The same Jews who were expecting him, who
recognized him, they disbelieved after recognizing him.
Now, Huyay, he ended up living to his
vow.
And he showed enmity to Rasul Allah ﷺ
all the way until the end.
And so, we mentioned he was the leader
of Banu Nadir, who were later on expelled
from Medina.
Basically, the prophet ﷺ had a treaty with
the three tribes of the Jews when he
arrived in Medina.
And he made a treaty with them, and
basically, they broke that treaty.
The first tribe to break that treaty, or
one of the tribes to break that treaty,
was Banu Nadir.
They broke the treaty, and so they were
expelled to Khaybar.
And their leader is Huyay.
And it was he who went to the
last tribe of the Jews who remained in
Medina, Banu Qurayza.
And he rallied them to betray the prophet
ﷺ and join the Ahzab.
So, the battle of Ahzab in the fifth
year of the Hijrah was when all the
Arabs and the tribes and everyone came and
laid siege to the prophet ﷺ in Medina.
And they were on the outside, and this
last remaining Jewish tribe, Banu Qurayza, they were
inside Medina.
And they still upheld their treaty.
But now, Huyay comes all the way from
Khaybar, and he rallies them to break the
treaty and to attack the prophet ﷺ, to
basically join the Ahzab.
So, although he was expelled from Medina, Huyay,
with his tribe Banu Nadir, he continues conspiring
against Rasulullah ﷺ.
And because of how Banu Qurayza betrayed the
prophet ﷺ and helped the Ahzab, as soon
as the war was over, the prophet ﷺ
ordered all of their men to be executed,
and with them at this time was Huyay.
Huyay ibn Akhtab happened to be with them,
and so he was executed.
And so this was the end of Huyay
ibn Akhtab, the father of Sufiyah.
So anyways, now Sufiyah ends up growing up
with her family in Khaybar.
First she was married off to Salam ibn
Mishkam, who later divorced her.
Then in the 7th year of the Hijrah,
Rasulullah ﷺ had set out with his companions
to put an end to the menace of
the Jews, who did not leave the Muslims
alone, but kept on conspiring against them all
the way from Khaybar.
And around this time, Sufiyah ended up marrying
one of her relatives, Kinana ibn Ar-Rabi
'a.
So the Muslims, they came to Khaybar, they
attacked Khaybar, the prophet ﷺ easily defeated the
Jews of Khaybar.
And now all that they had, all of
their possessions, came into the hands of the
Muslims, and their women and their children were
taken as captives.
And among these captives was Sufiyah.
And so when the prophet ﷺ distributed the
captives, the companion Dihya al-Kalbi, and he
was a very beautiful or handsome companion.
In fact, when Jibreel ﷺ would come down
in the form of a man, he would
resemble Dihya.
He would resemble this companion.
This shows how beautiful and handsome he was.
So he came asking the prophet ﷺ for
one of the slaves, one of the captives,
to take for himself, because he participated in
that battle.
So the prophet ﷺ told him, go and
choose one.
So Dihya al-Kalbi went and he chose
Sufiyah.
He went and he chose Sufiyah.
Now, when some of the other companions noticed
this, they noticed that this is the daughter
of the leader of Banu Nadir.
So they came to the prophet ﷺ and
they told him that, look, a noble woman
from the Jews has ended up with Dihya,
and he is just another one of the
Muslims.
She is not suitable for anyone except you,
O Messenger of Allah.
So they were saying that, you know, Sufiyah
is the daughter.
She's from the elite.
She deserves better.
She deserves to be in your possession.
So the prophet ﷺ agreed and he told
Dihya to choose someone else.
In some narrations, the prophet ﷺ gave him
seven slaves to choose in exchange.
So now, Sufiyah was with Rasool Allah ﷺ.
Now what did the prophet ﷺ do with
her?
This is the daughter of one of his
staunchest enemies.
And he has been executed.
He was executed right until the very end.
He did not give up in his war
against the prophet ﷺ.
So he said to her, O Sufiyah, if
you choose Islam, I will keep you for
myself, meaning, I will marry you.
By the way, the husband of Sufiyah, who
she had just recently married, was killed among
the men who were killed in the battle
of Khaybar.
So, you know, she doesn't have her husband.
So the prophet ﷺ said, O Sufiyah, if
you choose Islam, I will keep you for
myself, meaning, I will marry you.
But if you prefer to remain a Jew,
then I can free you, and you can
go back to your family.
And so here the prophet ﷺ was giving
her a choice.
And this is very similar to the story
of Juwayriyah, who we mentioned last week, who
also fell as a captive, and the prophet
ﷺ also gave her a similar choice.
So what was the response of Sufiyah?
She said, O Messenger of Allah, I admire
Islam, and I believed in you before you
invited me to Islam.
I believed in you before you invited me
to Islam.
And when I came to your tent, I
had no desire for Judaism, nor did I
have any father or brother among them.
I have been given the choice now between
kufr and Islam, and Allah and His Messenger
are more beloved to me than freedom or
returning to my people.
And so here you have Sufiyah, her father,
her uncle, her husband, were all killed by
the prophet ﷺ.
And she saw the complete annihilation of her
people.
The remaining men from among the Jews, they
were told to leave Hijaz, and they basically
left and went to Asham, to Syria.
And all of these events unfolded in front
of her eyes, in her lifetime.
And she was young at the time.
So she must have had some hard feelings
because of that.
So look at what she says.
Sufiyah, she says, Rasulullah ﷺ was of the
most despised and hated of people to me.
He killed my husband and my father, but
he kept on apologizing to me.
Basically, Sufiyah told the prophet ﷺ that you
did this to my father.
She basically mentioned how she had these hard
feelings for him.
But then she says, he kept on apologizing
to me, telling me that your father was
the one who mobilized the Arabs against me,
and he is the one who did such
and such, and he did such and such,
he conspired in this way and in that
way.
She says, until all of the pain in
my heart went away.
All of that hatred for the prophet ﷺ
went away.
And so in this way, we see how
the prophet ﷺ gained the respect and the
love of Sufiyah.
And we can see it was all due
to how the prophet ﷺ dealt with her,
with compassion and dignity.
He did not go harsh on her.
Rather, as he was known, he was, as
Allah ﷻ describes him, وَمَا أَرُسَلْنَاكَ إِلَّا رَحْمَةٍ
لِّلْعَالَمِينَ We have not sent you except as
a mercy for mankind.
Anas ibn Malik, رضي الله عنه, he narrates
the story of the marriage.
And this is in Sahih al-Bukhari.
He says the prophet ﷺ came to Khaybar
and when Allah gave him victory and he
conquered the town by breaking the enemy's defense,
the beauty of Sufiyah bint Huyay ibn Akhtab
was mentioned to him.
And her husband had been killed while she
was a bride.
Allah's messenger ﷺ selected her for himself and
he set out in her company until he
reached Sad al-Rawha.
So basically, all of this transpired while they
were still at Khaybar where the prophet ﷺ
told her what he told her.
And then the entire army started making their
way back to Medina.
On the way, it's mentioned in other narrations
that Sufiyah happened to have been in her
menses.
So the prophet ﷺ waited until she was
done.
And so on the way, she had completed
her menses.
So on the way, Anas, رضي الله عنه,
says, At this place, Sad al-Rawha, this
is where her menses were over and he
married her.
So basically, this is where the prophet ﷺ
had the Nikah.
And then, Anas says, the prophet ﷺ started
asking the companions to bring whatever they had
of food.
So the prophet ﷺ wanted to now have
the Walima.
So everyone brought whatever they had and then
they made a kind of meal, which is
known as Hays, which is made of dates
and honey and other things.
Anas, رضي الله عنه, says, then Hays was
prepared and served on a small leather sheet.
The messenger of Allah ﷺ then said to
me, inform those who are around you about
this Walima.
And so everyone came and they had that
meal and that food.
Anas, رضي الله عنه, goes on to say,
so that was the Walima given by Rasulullah
ﷺ for Sufiyah.
After that, we proceeded to Medina and I
saw that the messenger of Allah ﷺ was
covering her with a cloak while she was
behind him.
Then he would sit beside his camel and
let Sufiyah put her knee on his knees
to get on to ride the camel.
So this again shows us the humility of
the prophet ﷺ.
Even though he was the leader of the
Muslims, he did not act like an arrogant
king.
Look at how he lowered himself for his
wife Sufiyah and he allowed her to put
her feet on his knees to get up
and to get on to the camel.
Now, the prophet ﷺ, as we can see,
did not leave Sufiyah as a slave, but
rather he freed her and then he married
her.
So this means that she is one of
the Ummahatul Mu'mineen, one of the wives of
the prophet ﷺ, one of the mothers of
the believers, and not a slave.
So she did not remain a slave of
his.
And this is similar, as I mentioned, to
the story of Juwayriyyah that we covered last
week.
Now, we've already mentioned previously the reasons for
the multiple marriages of the prophet ﷺ, refuting
the claim that he would marry for his
personal desires.
And so the same can be said about
his marriage to Sufiyah.
And so yes, although the prophet ﷺ did
take her from Dihya, it does not mean
he did that to satisfy some personal desires.
But rather, as other narrations mention, the companions
came, complaining to the prophet ﷺ that, you
know, here is a noble woman from the
Jews, and she has ended up with just
another man from the Muslims, and she is
not suitable except to be with you, O
Messenger of Allah.
And so in this way, the prophet ﷺ
actually honored Sufiyah by taking her for himself.
And we can also add to this, that
the prophet ﷺ may have married her as
he would marry women of different tribes, to
bring those tribes closer to Islam.
So perhaps he hoped that this marriage would
lessen the enmity and the hostility of the
Jews towards him.
And just like what happened in the case
of Juwayriyah, once they had learnt that the
prophet ﷺ married the daughter of their leader,
all of the companions who had them in
their hands, they released all those captives, freed
them, and in this way all of them
ended up becoming Muslim.
Anyways, now the prophet ﷺ is with Sufiyah,
and he notices some blue marks on her
face.
So he asks her about that.
And so she says to the prophet ﷺ,
One day, I was sleeping with my head
in the lap of my husband, and I
saw a dream.
I saw that the moon was falling from
the direction of Yathrib, of Medina, and it
was falling into my lap.
When I woke up, I told my husband
about this dream.
So we notice that this was a similar
dream that Juwayriyah had, where she
also saw something similar.
And so she says, When I woke up,
I told my husband about this dream.
And so he slapped me on the face,
and he said, You desire the king of
the Arabs?
So he interpreted this dream to mean that
she wanted to marry Muhammad ﷺ.
But it wasn't a desire, rather it was
something from Allah showing her what would happen
in the future.
And it ended up happening as it was
interpreted that she would marry the prophet ﷺ.
Now the next morning, when Rasulullah ﷺ woke
up after that night, he found Abu Ayyub
al-Ansari ﷺ having spent the night awake,
and he had his sword in his hand.
So the prophet ﷺ asked him, What are
you doing up?
Why didn't you go to sleep?
So Abu Ayyub, he said, O Messenger of
Allah, she was a young woman who only
recently got married.
Meaning, she was a bride, she had just
recently gotten married, and basically at this time
she was 17 years old.
She was 17 years old.
He said, O Messenger of Allah, she was
a young woman who only recently married, and
you had killed her father, her brother, and
her husband.
So I did not feel safe leaving her
alone with you.
Meaning that Abu Ayyub was afraid for the
safety of Rasulullah ﷺ, that maybe somebody will
take revenge, maybe somebody from the Jews will
come and try to do something.
So then the prophet ﷺ laughed and he
said, O Allah, Abu Ayyub spent the night
protecting me, so protect him and his family.
Now as we have seen in many other
instances, the wives of the prophet ﷺ would
often show what is known as al-ghayrah,
or protective jealousy.
So how they would show jealousy for the
prophet ﷺ.
And so now that Safiyyah had joined them,
it was only expected that she experiences some
of their bitterness towards her.
And it didn't take long for that to
start.
As soon as Rasulullah ﷺ returned from Khaybar
with Safiyyah, the women of the Ansar, hearing
of her beauty, they came to see her.
And guess who comes with them?
Aisha.
And by now the hijab was legislated, so
Aisha came with a niqab covering her face.
And so she entered with these women, and
then she was leaving.
She came to see Safiyyah, she heard what
everyone was hearing about her being very beautiful.
And she got jealous, she wanted to see
what everyone was talking about, so she came.
But she didn't want the prophet ﷺ to
notice her, so she was wearing a niqab,
and then she left.
So the prophet ﷺ already recognized her, he
knew it was her.
So when she left, he followed her, and
he asked her, O Aisha, what did you
think?
What did you think of her?
So look at the response of Aisha, she
says, رَأَيْتُ يَهُوْدِيَةً I saw a Jew.
What I saw is a Jewish woman.
So the prophet ﷺ said, do not say
that, for she has embraced Islam.
Do not say that, for indeed she has
embraced Islam.
Now one day, the prophet ﷺ came home
to find Safiyyah crying.
He asked her what happened.
She said, Hafsa called me the daughter of
a Jew.
Hafsa called me the daughter of a Jew.
So you can see how all the different
wives are taking shots at Safiyyah.
And so the prophet ﷺ said, you can
go and say to her, my father is
a prophet, my uncle is a prophet, and
my husband is a prophet.
So what makes you think that you are
better than me?
So what was the prophet ﷺ talking about
when he said to Safiyyah, go and tell
Hafsa that my father is a prophet.
Basically what did we mention in the very
beginning?
That her ancestry goes back to Harun.
Her ancestry goes back to Harun.
So go and tell Hafsa that my father
is a prophet, meaning Harun, and my uncle
is a prophet, meaning Musa ﷺ.
And my husband is a prophet, meaning Muhammad
ﷺ.
So if you do that, you have something
to be proud of over Hafsa.
And then the prophet ﷺ went to Hafsa
and told her to fear Allah.
And so we can see how, although the
wives of the prophet ﷺ were doing this,
the prophet ﷺ did not remain silent.
It's not permissible to take such shots at
our Muslim brothers and sisters, and this showed
their jealousy.
However, even though the prophet ﷺ understood where
it was coming from, he did not remain
silent.
In both cases, he condemned both Aisha and
Hafsa.
On another occasion, Aisha said to the prophet
ﷺ, it is enough for you and Safiyyah
that she is such and such.
Again, she's trying to take a shot at
Safiyyah.
She said, basically, in another version, she described
the height of Safiyyah as being short.
So she criticized Safiyyah for being short.
So the prophet ﷺ condemning her, he said,
you have said a word which would pollute
the sea if it was mixed in it.
So again, we see how the prophet ﷺ
knew where this was coming from, but he
did not just remain silent.
Then we have the famous incident in which
the jealousy of Aisha led to her breaking
the dish of Safiyyah.
Aisha narrates a story.
She says, I never saw any woman who
made food like Safiyyah.
So basically, Safiyyah was known for making delicious
food.
She says, I never saw any woman who
would make food like Safiyyah.
So one day she sent a dish to
the prophet ﷺ in which there was some
food, and I could not keep myself.
I couldn't control myself.
Because this was the day of Aisha.
And here you have food coming from Safiyyah.
So she basically broke the dish.
And she made the food to just basically
fall on the ground.
So then, later on, she came back to
her calm, and she asked the prophet ﷺ,
what is the expiation for what I did?
What can I do?
What is the penalty for what I did?
What is the kaffarah?
And so the prophet ﷺ said, a dish
like that dish, and food like that food.
A dish like that dish, and food like
that food.
And so look at how the prophet ﷺ
just closed the curtains on this problem.
He just drew the curtains.
He just closed the door.
He understood that this is all coming from
the natural jealousy that women have.
And he didn't get upset.
He could have easily have done what other
men might do in such a situation, and
just lose his temper, but he didn't.
But at the same time, we see how
the prophet ﷺ did not allow Aisha to
do such a thing, and just get away
with it.
There are the rights of others.
So he didn't just let her off the
hook.
He said, that dish, you have to return
a dish that is similar to that, to
what you broke, to Safiyyah.
Now when the prophet ﷺ was in his
final days, and he was extremely ill and
in pain, this was his final sickness before
his death, all of his wives were gathered
around him.
And so Safiyyah, showing her profound love and
affection for the prophet ﷺ, she looked at
him, and she said, Imagine, imagine, all of
the wives are there, sitting around the prophet
ﷺ.
And Safiyyah looks at him and says, Oh
messenger of Allah, I wish that your suffering
and pain is given to me, and you
are free and healthy, and you're free of
any pain and suffering.
Basically, I want to be in your place,
so that you don't have to go through
what you're going through.
Now when she said this, all the other
wives started looking at each other, basically saying,
you know, who does she think she is?
So the prophet ﷺ, noticing their jealousy, he
said to them, By Allah, she is truthful
in what she is saying.
Meaning that, you know, Safiyyah is not just
saying this to put on a show, you
know, to have an advantage over the rest
of you.
She actually means it, right?
She actually means it.
She's not just trying to show her love
and affection for me, but she actually means
it.
Alright, we'll conclude with some of the virtues,
the fada'il of Safiyyah.
Like all of the other wives of the
prophet ﷺ, Safiyyah, she had the qualities of
a righteous, pious Muslimah.
And again, whenever we go over these qualities
of the Ummahatul Mu'mineen, the mothers of the
believers, and the other noble sahabiyyat, we should
take an example of it, and we should
try to follow in their footsteps.
And so Safiyyah was an avid worshipper.
She would worship Allah, she would make a
lot of dhikr.
She narrates that one day, and this narration,
it's weak, it's a weak narration, in terms
of the chain, it's considered da'if.
But nonetheless, she says, One day, the prophet
ﷺ entered upon me, and in front of
me were 4,000 date seeds.
And I was making tasbih with them.
I was making tasbih with them.
Basically, like how some people make tasbih with
dhikr beads, she was using these date seeds,
and she had 4,000 of them in
front of her.
So the prophet ﷺ said, You made tasbih
with all of these?
Shall I not teach you that which is
more than what you have made tasbih with?
I said, yes, teach me.
So the prophet ﷺ said, Say, subhanAllahi adada
khalqihi.
SubhanAllahi adada khalqihi.
Glory be to Allah according to the number
of His creation.
According to the number of His creation.
And obviously, the creation of Allah is far
more than 4,000.
We also see how generous Safiyyah was.
When she arrived in Medina, she had some
gold jewelry.
And so she divided it among some of
the wives of the prophet ﷺ and his
daughter Fatima.
And she was also very generous.
She happened to have a relative, a nephew
who remained a Jew.
And she was basically encouraging him to accept
Islam, but he didn't.
And in her wasiyyah, in her will, she
basically wrote that he should have a certain
amount of what she's leaving behind.
And Safiyyah left behind a lot of wealth,
a lot of inheritance.
And before she passed away, she basically wanted
this relative, this nephew, to have a part
of that, of the will.
And this was because she wanted him to
accept Islam.
She wanted him to accept Islam, and so
this shows us her generosity.
We also see how Safiyyah had the quality
of hilm.
Hilm is a term that describes someone who
is patient, tolerant, and forgiving and forbearing.
Someone who does not hold resentment in his
heart towards those who have hurt them.
And so one day, in the khilafah of
Umar ibn al-Khattab, a slave girl of
Safiyyah went to Umar, complaining about Safiyyah.
She told Umar ibn al-Khattab that Safiyyah
loves As-Sabt, Saturday, and she keeps relations
with the Jews.
So Umar ibn al-Khattab went to Safiyyah
and said, I've been informed that you love
Saturday, and you keep relations with the Jews.
So Safiyyah said, as for Saturday, I have
not loved it ever since Allah replaced it
for me with Friday, with Jumu'ah.
And we have a hadith in which the
Prophet ﷺ tells us that Allah gifted us
with Jumu'ah, with Friday.
And he guided us to it while Ahlul
Kitab, the Christians and the Jews, they missed
it.
Allah did not guide them to it.
And so in another narration, the Prophet ﷺ
says that the Jews do not envy us
over anything more than they envy us for
having taken Friday.
So anyway, she says, as for Saturday, As
-Sabt, I have not loved it ever since
Allah replaced it for me with Friday, with
Jumu'ah.
Why would I love it?
And then she said, as for the Jews,
I have blood ties with them.
So I maintain the ties of kinship, Surah
al-Rahim.
So she explained herself to Amir al-Mu'minin
Umar ibn al-Khattab.
Then she turned to the girl, and she
asked her, what made you do that?
Why did you do this?
So the girl, she said, Shaytan.
Shaytan made me do this.
So what did Sufiyah do?
She didn't discipline her.
Someone did something really bad to her.
She said, then in that case, I free
you for the sake of Allah.
I free you for the sake of Allah.
She freed this slave girl.
And freeing a slave is a huge good
deed in Islam.
Sufiyah also spared no effort in advising and
guiding people and reminding them of Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala.
An example is when one day a group
of people gathered in her apartment.
And they were engaging in dhikr and reciting
the Qur'an.
And when they recited one of the verses
that has a sajda, they all went down
in sujood.
So she called out to them from behind
the curtain.
And she said, this is the prostration, this
is the sujood, and this is the recitation
of the Qur'an.
But where is the crying out of the
fear of Allah?
Where is the crying out of the fear
of Allah?
Now although Sufiyah did not go on to
narrate as many ahadith as some of the
other wives of the Prophet ﷺ.
We mentioned the example of Aisha and Umm
Salama.
Sufiyah, it's mentioned that she only narrated some
ten ahadith.
However, some of these ahadith are extremely important.
Because scholars have derived rulings from them that
couldn't have been known without her narrating them
to us.
An example is a hadith in Bukhari and
Muslim.
A hadith in Bukhari and Muslim.
Sufiyah narrates it.
She says, I came to visit the Prophet
ﷺ while he was in I'tikaf in Ramadan.
And her apartment was the furthest from the
Prophet ﷺ, from the masjid.
It was the furthest.
So she says, after I sat there, we
had our conversation, I got up to go
back home.
The Prophet ﷺ also got up with me
and accompanied me a part of the way.
So as they're walking and it's nighttime, she
says, two men from the Ansar pass by.
When they saw the Prophet ﷺ, they hurried
up.
So they quickly made their way.
They quickened their pace.
The Prophet ﷺ called out to them.
He said, do not hurry.
She is Sufiyah, the daughter of Huyay.
She is my wife.
So the two men, they turned to the
Prophet ﷺ and said, SubhanAllah, Ya Rasulullah, SubhanAllah.
What they meant is, SubhanAllah, are you thinking
that we are having some evil suspicions about
you?
That you're out there with some other woman?
So then the Prophet ﷺ said to them,
Shaytan circulates in a person like blood circulates
in the veins.
And I feared that Shaytan may drop some
evil thoughts in your minds.
And so what we learn from this hadith
is the importance of giving clarifications whenever misunderstandings
may arise, in order to basically cut off
these evil thoughts of suspicion that Shaytan may
put in our hearts.
Another important hadith in which we actually learned
one of the rulings of Hajj.
And because of this, because of this narration
that Sufiyah narrated to us, all Muslim women
until Yawm al-Qiyamah, they owe it to
Sufiyah.
They owe it to Sufiyah.
Basically when you go for Hajj, at the
very end, after you've made your Hajj, before
leaving Mecca, you're supposed to make one last
tawaf.
And this is known as tawaf al-wida
'ah, the farewell tawaf.
So in the farewell Hajj of the Prophet
ﷺ, we know that, all of the wives
accompany the Prophet ﷺ on that journey.
So on the last day, after they were
done with their Hajj, and it was time
to leave and return to Medina, the Prophet
ﷺ was told that Sufiyah had not performed
her farewell tawaf.
And this was because she was in her
menses.
She was in her menses.
So the Prophet ﷺ said, if she is
menstruating, then the farewell tawaf is not obligatory
on her.
And we can leave.
And we can go.
So from that day onwards, we have a
ruling, a hukm in our shari'ah, for
all Muslim women, in a similar circumstance, if
they go for Hajj, they can leave Mecca
without performing the farewell tawaf.
And they don't have to offer any expiation
for that.
That farewell tawaf is mandatory.
But if a woman is in such a
situation, there's nothing upon her.
And this is because of this hadith.
And this is because of what Sufiyah went
through.
Now Sufiyah went on to live through the
Khilafah of Umar.
And then Sufiyah went on to live through
the Khilafah of Ali.
And then in the Khilafah of Muawiyah, she
ended up passing away.
And this was in Medina, at the age
of 60, in the year 50 or 52
of the Hijrah.
And she was buried in Al-Baqir.
And so this is the life of Sufiyah
bint Huyayy radiAllahu anha.
As we can see, the Prophet ﷺ has
now added another, one of the Ummahatul Mu'mineen
to his family.
And as we can see, she once again
is not from Quraysh.
We mentioned last week that Juwayriyah was the
first woman to not be from Quraysh.
And now we have the first woman who
is not from the Arabs.
She is from the Jews.
And that did not prevent the Prophet ﷺ
from marrying her.
He didn't keep her as a slave, even
though he could have.
But he freed her and he married her.
And she became one of the Ummahatul Mu'mineen.
May Allah be pleased with her and with
all of the Ummahatul Mu'mineen.
We'll conclude here.
We'll stop here.
And inshaAllah next week, we'll move on to
another one of the mothers of the believers.
Subhanak Allahumma wa bihamdik.
Ashahadu an la ilaha illa anta.
Astaghfiruka wa atubu ilayka.
Wa sallillahumma wa sallimu ala nabiyyina Muhammad wa
ala alihi wa sahbihi ajma'in.
Wassalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.