👉🏼Why did Prophet married multiple times?

👉🏼Why did Prophet have eleven wives?

👉🏼How could He have more than four?

👉🏼Is there any solid reason behind this?

👉🏼Is there any wisdom behind these marriages?

Why did Prophet (Pbuh) Married Multiple (11 Wives) | Reason & Wisdoms behind these marriages

Why did Prophet (Pbuh) Married Multiple times (11 Wives) | Reason & Wisdoms behind these marriages

One of the examples of Islam-bashing that we see on the TV and the internet these days is the one liner statement like: “Muhammad was a womanizer; he had nine wives.” For Muslims who have studied the books of the Orientalists and the Crusade-minded missionaries, such statements are not new. It is the same old wine packaged with a new label!

 

Study the life of Prophet Muhammadﷺ and you will see that the Prophet was a man of highest character even long before he started preaching Islam. At the age of twenty-five, Prophet Muhammadﷺ married a famous and a highly respected lady of Mecca, by the name of Khadija bint Khuwaylid, who was older than him in age. According to the popular opinion, she was 15 years older than the Prophet. 

The important thing is that he remained married to her for twenty-five years until she passed away in Mecca. Two years after her death, the Prophet migrated from Mecca to Medina where he founded the first Islamic society.

So for the first 50 years of his life, the Prophet had only one wife, Lady Khadīja, whom he loved dearly and who was one of the strongest pillars of support in promoting his cause. During the last 13 years of his life, he married other wives.

Prophet Muhammadﷺ👇🏼

▪️From birth to age 25: Single.

▪️From age 25 to age 50: Married to one wife, Khadija.

▪️From age 50 to age 63: married ten wives

The Other Wives:

During the last thirteen years of his life, the Prophet married ten wives. This has become an easy target for anti-Muslim writers and speakers who would like to tarnish the image of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and portray him as someone who was driven by lust and passion.

 

If Prophet Muhammadﷺ was a man of lust, then why did he not marry any other woman when he was young and wealthy and lived in a society that accepted unlimited polygamous relationships? Why did he not marry any other woman as long as Lady Khadija was alive even though it was the prime time of his youth?

 

And so the question comes, what was the rationale behind the other marriages of the Prophet during the last thirteen years of his life.

 

All the marriages of the Prophet, other than that with Lady Khadija, had a good political or religious rationale. We may divide these marriages into four categories, and some marriages had double purpose or reasons.

 

◼️First - Providing Protection & Dignity to Widows So That Others May Follow That Example:-

1) Lady Sawdah bint Zam‘ah: a Muslim lady whose husband had died in Abyssinia. When she returned to Mecca, she was a widow; and her father and brother were not only infidels but also enemies of Islam. She could not seek shelter with them; they were so much opposed to Islam that they could even torture her to death.

The Prophet, now a widower himself, married Sawdah in order to provide protection to her as well as to forge important link of kinship with his opponents.

 

2) Lady Zaynab bint Khuzaymah: a widow for the second time when her second husband ‘Abdullah bin Jahsh was martyred in the Battle of Uhud. She was known for her generosity, and was famous as “Ummul masãkīn, mother of the poor”. Now she herself faced hard times. The Prophet wanted to maintain her prestige, and so he married her in the 3rd year AH. She died less than a year after this marriage.

3) Lady Umm Salamah. She was first married to ‘Abdullah Abu Salamah. She migrated to Abyssinia with her husband. She was known for her piety and wisdom. When she became a widow and had orphan children, the Prophet married her in the 4th year A.H. She was also the sister of the chief of a powerful Meccan tribe of Makhzum. This marriage had the element of forging the link of kinship with his opponents in Mecca.

 

◼️Second - To Set the Slaves Free:-

4) Lady Juwayriyyah bint al-Hãrith. After the Battle of Banu Mustaliq in the 5th year AH, the Muslims took two hundred families of that tribe in slavery. Juwayriyyah, the daughter of the chief of that tribe, had become a widow. The Prophet set her free and married her.

 

Why? The Muslims, who had made the two hundred families of Banu Mustaliq their slaves, realized that by Juwayriyyah’s marriage to the Prophet, all these two hundred families were now related to the Prophet by marriage. Out of courtesy to the Prophet, the Muslims set them free.  Impressed by this nobility, the whole tribe of Banu Mustaliq became Muslim. By this marriage, the Prophet was able to transform a hostile tribe into an ally.

◼️Third - To forge friendly relations for the sake of Islam:-

5) Lady ‘Ãisha bint Abi Bakr, she came into the household of the Prophet after his migration to Medina. She was the youngest wife of the Prophet. This marriage sealed the alliance with Abu Bakr As-Siddique and developed more better relationships with his whole family. 

 

6) Lady Hafsah bint ‘Umar ibn al-Khattãb. She became a widow after her husband was killed in the Battle of Badr. The Prophet married her in the 4th year AH. This marriage was also done to seal the Prophet’s alliance with ‘Umar Bin Al-Khattab and his whole family, which resulted in positive consequences. 

 

7) Lady Umm Habibah, daughter of Abu Sufyan. She was married to ‘Ubaydullah ibn Jahsh and had migrated to Abyssinia. He became a Christian; while she continued the Islamic faith and separated from him. Her father, Abu Sufyan, was a bitter enemy of Islam in early years and planned battles after battles against Muslims. When she returned to Medina, the Prophet married her in order to provide protection for her and also to soften the heart of Abu Sufyan and to develop better relations with Banu Ummayya. 

 

8) Lady Safiyyah bint Huyaiy ibn Akhtab. She was the daughter of the chief of Banu Nadhir, a Jewish tribe of Khaybar. She became a widow when her husband was killed in the Battle of Khaybar. She was taken as a captive by the Muslim forces. The Prophet married her in the 7th year AH to maintain her noble status and also to establish marriage ties with her Jewish tribe.

◼️Fourth - The Desire to be Related to the Prophet

 9) Lady Maymunah bint al-Hãrith al-Hilaliyyah. Her second husband died in 7 AH. She came to the Prophet and “gifted” herself to him if he would accept her. She only desired the honour of being called “the wife of the Prophet”. The Prophet (based on verse 33:50 of the Qur’ãn) accepted her as his wife.

◼️Fifth - To Break a Taboo & Show an Example:-

 10) Lady Zaynab bint Jahsh. She was a cousin of the Prophet; and she was a widow and a divorcee. The circumstance of her marriage to the Prophet was very unusual.

 

Islam had come to end all the material and social criterion of distinction. Every Muslim was equal to the other. While preaching this equality, the Prophet, as an example, gave his three female relatives in marriage to persons of so-called low birth or status. Among those three relatives was Zaynab bint Jahsh. She was given in marriage to Zayd son of Hãritha, an Arab slave whom the Prophet had freed and then adopted as a son. After that adoption, Zayd was being called, Zayd bin Muhammad – Zayd the son of Muhammadﷺ.

 

The marriage of Zaynab to Zayd soon turned sour. Zaynab could not overcome the fact she was of nobler descent than her husband. No matter how much the Prophet counseled them, Zaynab’s attitude did not change. So finally Zayd divorced her. At the same time, verses 4 and 5 of Chapter 33 (Surah al-Ahzaab) were revealed which declared that adoption was not recognized in Islam.

After these verses, the people started calling Zayd by his real father’s name: Zayd bin Hãritha.

But in order to fully abolish the system of adoption, Almighty God ordered the Prophet to marry Zaynab, the divorcee of Zayd. In the pre-Islamic society of Arabia, an adopted son was considered to be like a real son: with the same rights and duties: for example, an adopted son’s wife was considered like a real daughter-in-law with whom marriage was forbidden forever. And so to break that taboo, the Prophet married Zaynab, the divorcee of his former adopted son.

Both the marriages of Zaynab bint Jahsh served to enforce two important social principles of Islam: First, equality among Muslims irrespective of their ethnic or social distinctions; and second, it demonstrated the fact that a fostering or adoptive relationship was not a tie of blood and should not be a barrier in marriage.

◼️Conclusion:-

When Prophet Muhammadﷺ was young and wealthy, he had only one wife. But in the last thirteen years of his life when he was over fifty, he married different wives –– with the exception of one, all were widows and old.

 

It is a fact that even when Prophet Muhammad had these other wives, his love for his first wife, Lady Khadija, never diminished. Al-Bukhãri, quotes the youngest of his wives, Lady ‘Ã’isha, as follows:

 

“I did not feel jealous of any of the wives of the Prophet as much as I did of Khadījah…because the Prophet used to (remember and) mention her very often. And whenever he slaughtered a sheep, he would send (the choicest parts) to Khadījah’s friends. When I sometimes said to him, ‘It appears that Khadījah was the only woman in the world,’ the Prophet would say, ‘Khadījah was such-and-such, and from her I had children.’” [Al-Bukhãri, Sahīh, vol. 5 (Arabic with English) p. 104] 

The Prophet became visibly upset, and he said: “By Allãh, I do not have anyone better than Khadījah. She believed in me when others were steeped into infidelity. She testified to my truth when other rejected my claim. She helped me with her wealth when others deprived me. And Allãh gave me children by her.” [Musnad of Ahmad bin Hanbal, vol. 6, p. 117-118, 150; Sahih of Tirmidhi, and Ibn Kathir] 

These sentiments of the Prophet, expressed to the youngest of his wives, clearly show that for him, Lady Khadījah was still the First Lady of Islam. All the other marriages had some social, political or religious reasons behind them. These marriages were not based on lust and passion, as many enemies of Islam would like to say!

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