The Children of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him)

According to the majority of the early Muslim historians, Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) had seven children: three sons and four daughters. All three sons died in childhood. Three of the four daughters died during his lifetime. Only Fatimah outlived him.

Six of these children were born in Mecca to Khadijah bint Khuwaylid, his first wife. The seventh, Ibrahim, was born in Medina to Mariya al-Qibtiyya. None of the Prophet's other marriages produced children.

The four daughters each have separate articles — Zaynab, Ruqayyah, Umm Kulthum and Fatimah — and this account is intended to be read alongside them.

A note on the evidence is necessary. The early record on the Prophet's children is uneven. Fatimah is documented in detail. The other three daughters are recorded thinly, chiefly through their marriages and their deaths. The sons appear as names attached to notices of birth and death. This article states what the sources establish and stops there. Where a detail is not established — including, in several cases, dates and ages that later writers supply — it is omitted rather than given with qualifications.

The Household in Mecca

Muhammad married Khadijah bint Khuwaylid before the beginning of the revelation. Khadijah was a widow of the Quraysh and a merchant of independent means, and she had been married before and had children from those marriages. Her son Hind ibn Abi Halah is known in the biographical literature as a Companion.

For the whole of Khadijah's life the Prophet took no other wife, and all the children born to him during those years were hers. This is not disputed in the sources.

Six children were born to them in Mecca: four daughters and two sons. The births spanned the years before the revelation and the period after it began.

The order of the daughters' births is not established. The early sources give differing arrangements, and no reconstruction can be preferred on the available evidence. This article therefore does not assign an order, and readers should treat any confident sequence found elsewhere with caution. For the same reason, no ages are given for the daughters at the time of their marriages, their migrations or their deaths, since every such figure depends on the unestablished order.

The Sons

Al-Qasim

Al-Qasim was born in Mecca before the revelation and died there in childhood. From him the Prophet took the kunya, the patronymic by which a man was commonly addressed: Abu al-Qasim, the father of al-Qasim.

That kunya is attested widely in the hadith literature, and a prophetic statement concerning its use by others is transmitted in both Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim in their chapters on names. It is a small detail carrying real weight: for the remainder of his life the Prophet was addressed by a name recalling a son who had died as a child.

Abdullah

Abdullah was born in Mecca and died there in childhood. He is also referred to in the sources by the epithets al-Tayyib, the pure, and al-Tahir, the clean.

Ibrahim

Ibrahim was the last of the Prophet's children and the only one not born to Khadijah. His mother was Mariya al-Qibtiyya, and he was born in Medina.

The Four Daughters

Each daughter is treated in her own article. What follows places them in the family.

Zaynab

Zaynab married Abu al-As ibn al-Rabi, her maternal cousin, before the revelation. She accepted Islam while her husband remained outside it for years. She remained in Mecca after the migration to Medina and joined her father there later. Her husband subsequently accepted Islam and the marriage resumed. She died in 8 AH. Her daughter Umamah survived into the later community. See the article on Zaynab.

Ruqayyah

A marriage arrangement between Ruqayyah and Utbah, a son of Abu Lahab, was ended after the revelation of the Qur'anic denunciation of Abu Lahab. She then married Uthman ibn Affan and migrated with him to Abyssinia during the Meccan persecution, later joining the community in Medina. She died in Ramadan 2 AH, while her father was absent at Badr. See the article on Ruqayyah.

Umm Kulthum

A marriage arrangement between Umm Kulthum and Utaybah, another son of Abu Lahab, was ended in the same circumstances. After Ruqayyah's death she married Uthman, from which comes his epithet Dhu al-Nurayn, the possessor of two lights, in reference to his marriage to two daughters of the Prophet in succession. She died in Sha'ban 9 AH. See the article on Umm Kulthum.

Fatimah

Fatimah was the only child to survive her father. She married Ali ibn Abi Talib and was the mother of Hasan, Husayn, Zaynab and Umm Kulthum. The Prophet's surviving line of descent runs through her. She died in 11 AH, some months after her father. Her life is treated in the article on Fatimah.

Zayd ibn Harithah and the Question of Adoption

No account of the Prophet's household is complete without Zayd ibn Harithah, who was raised in it and for a period was called Zayd ibn Muhammad — Zayd, son of Muhammad.

Zayd came into the household as a boy, having been enslaved after capture in a raid, and was freed and then adopted by the Prophet according to the custom of pre-Islamic Arabia, in which an adopted son took the adoptive father's name and inherited from him. He was known by that name publicly for years.

Two passages of the Qur'an ended the practice. Surah al-Ahzab 33:4–5 directs that adopted sons be called by the names of their own fathers, as being more just before God, while affirming the bond of care and brotherhood that remains. Zayd accordingly reverted to Zayd ibn Harithah. Later in the same surah, 33:40 states that Muhammad is not the father of any of the men among the believers, but the Messenger of God and the seal of the prophets.

The distinction this establishes matters for understanding the family. Zayd was raised in the household and was beloved within it, and he is the only Companion mentioned by name in the Qur'an. But he was not among the Prophet's children, and the Qur'an itself is the authority for that. Islamic law preserved both halves of the ruling: the care of orphans and dependent children is strongly enjoined, while the fiction that adoption creates biological descent, with its consequences for lineage, inheritance and marriage prohibition, was abolished.

Zayd's own life is treated in the article on Zayd ibn Harithah.

The Family in Sequence

The following states only what the sources establish. No birth dates are given for the children born in Mecca, because the early sources do not establish them.

Al-Qasim, son of Khadijah. Born in Mecca; died in Mecca in childhood. The eldest child, and the source of the Prophet's kunya Abu al-Qasim.

Abdullah, also called al-Tayyib and al-Tahir, son of Khadijah. Born in Mecca; died in Mecca in childhood.

Zaynab, daughter of Khadijah. Born in Mecca; died in Medina in 8 AH.

Ruqayyah, daughter of Khadijah. Born in Mecca; died in Medina in Ramadan 2 AH, during the Badr campaign. The first of the daughters to die.

Umm Kulthum, daughter of Khadijah. Born in Mecca; died in Medina in Sha'ban 9 AH.

Fatimah, daughter of Khadijah. Born in Mecca; died in Medina in 11 AH, some months after her father. The only child to survive him.

Ibrahim, son of Mariya al-Qibtiyya. Born in Medina. The last of the Prophet's children and the only one not born to Khadijah.

The losses in Medina

The Medinan years contain a concentrated series of family deaths. Ruqayyah died in Ramadan 2 AH, in the same days as the victory at Badr. Zaynab died in 8 AH. Umm Kulthum died in Sha'ban 9 AH. Within roughly eight years the Prophet buried two adult daughters, in a community that was simultaneously at war, absorbing migrants, and receiving the revelation that would become much of the Qur'an.

The reports of prophetic conduct at these deaths are consequently among the most heavily transmitted material on death and mourning in Islam, and much of the evidentiary basis of Islamic funerary law is drawn from them. It is a striking feature of the tradition that this body of law rests so largely on the Prophet's own bereavements.

By the time of his death in 11 AH he had buried three sons and three daughters.

Legacy

The line of descent

The Prophet left no surviving son. His line continued through Fatimah, whose sons Hasan and Husayn are the ancestors of the sayyid and sharif families found across the Muslim world. The consequences for Islamic history are considerable: claims of descent from the Prophet through Fatimah shaped the legitimacy of dynasties, the standing of scholars, and the structure of social prestige in many Muslim societies for well over a millennium.

The absence of a surviving son also removed one possible model for the succession to the Prophet's leadership. The question of who should lead the community after him was contested in terms of kinship, precedence in Islam and consultation, but not in terms of a son's inheritance, because there was no son.

Coverage in this encyclopaedia

Readers seeking the family in more detail should consult the articles on the four daughters, on Khadijah, on Zayd ibn Harithah, and on the Prophet's life. The article on Uthman contains material on his marriages to Ruqayyah and Umm Kulthum, and the articles on Hasan, Husayn and Zaynab bint Ali carry the line into the following generation.

References and Further Reading

Primary Islamic Sources

• Qur'an, Surah al-Ahzab 33:4–5 — on calling adopted sons by the names of their own fathers
• Qur'an, Surah al-Ahzab 33:40 — "Muhammad is not the father of any of your men, but the Messenger of God and the seal of the prophets"
• Qur'an, Surah al-Masad 111 — the denunciation of Abu Lahab, the context in which the marriage arrangements of Ruqayyah and Umm Kulthum with his sons were ended
• Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, chapters on names — the prophetic statement concerning the kunya Abu al-Qasim; graded sahih

Classical Islamic Sources

• Ibn Sa'd, Muhammad. Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kubra. Vols. 1 and 8. Edited by Eduard Sachau. Leiden: Brill, 1904–1940. [Compiled c. 845 CE] — the fullest early notices on the Prophet's children
• Ibn Hisham. Al-Sirah al-Nabawiyyah, recension of the Sirah of Ibn Ishaq. Edited by Mustafa al-Saqqa et al. Cairo: Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi, 1955. [Ibn Ishaq d. c. 767 CE; Ibn Hisham d. c. 833 CE]
• Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani. Al-Isabah fi Tamyiz al-Sahabah. Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyyah, 1995. [Compiled c. 1449 CE] — biographical entries on the daughters
• Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani. Fath al-Bari bi-Sharh Sahih al-Bukhari. Cairo: al-Matba'ah al-Salafiyyah — the commentary on the funeral reports concerning the Prophet's family
• Al-Dhahabi, Shams al-Din. Siyar A'lam al-Nubala'. Beirut: Mu'assasat al-Risalah, 1981–1988. [Compiled c. 1348 CE]
• Ibn Kathir, Ismail. Al-Bidaya wa al-Nihaya. Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyyah, 1994. [Compiled c. 1373 CE]

Academic and Scholarly Sources

• Watt, W. Montgomery. Muhammad at Mecca. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953.
• Watt, W. Montgomery. Muhammad at Medina. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956.
• Madelung, Wilferd. The Succession to Muhammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
• Peters, F.E. Muhammad and the Origins of Islam. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994.
• Robinson, Chase F. Islamic Historiography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. — on the character and limits of the early biographical record
• Schoeler, Gregor. The Biography of Muhammad: Nature and Authenticity. Translated by Uwe Vagelpohl. London: Routledge, 2011.

Further Reading

• Lings, Martin. Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources. Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1983.
• Ibn Kathir, Ismail. Al-Sira al-Nabawiyya. Translated by Trevor Le Gassick as The Life of the Prophet Muhammad. Reading: Garnet Publishing, 1998–2000.
• Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd edition. Leiden: Brill — entries on Fatima, Khadija and Ruqayya