Ruqayyah bint Muhammad

Ruqayyah bint Muhammad was a daughter of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) and Khadijah bint Khuwaylid. Her life falls almost entirely within the years of persecution at Mecca and the first two years in Medina, and she was the first of the Prophet's daughters to die.

Her biography must be approached with an acknowledgement stated plainly: the surviving record is thin. Ruqayyah appears in the early sources at three points — the ending of her first marriage arrangement, her migration to Abyssinia with Uthman ibn Affan, and her death during the Battle of Badr. Very little else is established. This article covers those episodes and their context and does not extend beyond them.

Her position among the four daughters is not established by the early sources, which give differing arrangements of the births. No age is given for her here, since every such figure depends on an order the evidence does not fix.

Family

Ruqayyah was born in Mecca before the beginning of the revelation. Her sisters were Zaynab, Umm Kulthum and Fatimah; her brothers al-Qasim and Abdullah died in childhood. The family as a whole is treated in the article on the children of the Prophet.

She accepted Islam in the earliest days of the revelation, as her mother and sisters did.

The Ending of the First Marriage Arrangement

A marriage arrangement bound Ruqayyah to Utbah ibn Abi Lahab. His father, Abu Lahab, was the Prophet's paternal uncle, so the match lay within the extended clan of Hashim in the ordinary manner of Qurayshi alliances. Her sister Umm Kulthum was bound in the same way to Utbah's brother Utaybah.

Both arrangements were ended when the Qur'an denounced Abu Lahab. Surah al-Masad, the hundred and eleventh chapter, condemns him and his wife in terms that made any continued alliance with the Prophet's household untenable from his side. The sources report that he instructed his sons to separate from the Prophet's daughters, and that they complied.

The episode establishes the social mechanism of the early persecution. Pressure on the Prophet operated through kinship: marriage alliances were made and broken as instruments of alignment, and his daughters were the point at which that pressure was applied.

Marriage to Uthman ibn Affan

Ruqayyah married Uthman ibn Affan, of the Umayyad clan of Quraysh, who had accepted Islam among the earliest converts and was a merchant of substantial means and standing. The marriage took place in the Meccan period, before the migration to Abyssinia.

The marriage carries significance in the history of the early community beyond the couple themselves. Uthman's epithet Dhu al-Nurayn — the possessor of two lights — refers to his having married two daughters of the Prophet in succession, Ruqayyah and, after her death, Umm Kulthum. No other Companion stood in that relation to the prophetic household, and the epithet is a standard element of his designation in the classical sources.

A son, Abdullah, was born to Ruqayyah and Uthman, and died in childhood.

The Migration to Abyssinia

As persecution in Mecca intensified, the Prophet directed a group of Muslims to seek refuge in Abyssinia, the Christian kingdom across the Red Sea whose ruler the sources call the Negus. This was the first organised movement of Muslims out of Mecca, some years before the Hijra to Medina.

Ruqayyah migrated to Abyssinia with Uthman. She is among the small number of named women in the accounts of the migration, and the only daughter of the Prophet to take part in it; Ibn Ishaq's list of the migrants, preserved in Ibn Hisham, includes them.

The migrants later returned to Mecca on a report that the Quraysh had accepted Islam, which proved false. Ruqayyah and Uthman are placed among those who returned and subsequently made their way to Medina after the Hijra. The wider episode is treated in the article on the Meccan period.

Medina and Death

Ruqayyah settled in Medina with the rest of the community. In Ramadan 2 AH she fell seriously ill.

That month, the Prophet led the Muslim force to Badr. Uthman did not go. He remained in Medina to care for his wife in her illness, and the sources are consistent that this was at the Prophet's direction. This is the reason Uthman is not counted among the participants at Badr — a matter of real significance given the standing that participation conferred in the early community, and one the biographical literature addresses directly because his absence required explanation.

Ruqayyah died in Ramadan 2 AH and was buried in Medina. She was the first of the Prophet's daughters to die. After her death, Uthman married her sister Umm Kulthum.

Assessment and the Limits of the Record

Four things are established. Ruqayyah was a daughter of the Prophet and Khadijah. Her first marriage arrangement was ended as a consequence of the revelation of Surah al-Masad. She married Uthman ibn Affan and was among the migrants to Abyssinia, the only one of the Prophet's daughters to make that journey. She died in Medina in Ramadan 2 AH during the Badr campaign, with her husband at her side rather than at the battle.

Beyond this, the early sources preserve very little. Her character, her role within the community at Mecca or Medina, her relationship with her sisters, her own account of the migration — none of this is recorded, and no statement is reliably transmitted from her. Descriptions of her personality found in later writing are not traceable to early attestation and are not carried here.

This is not unusual. The early Islamic biographical tradition preserved what was legally or historically consequential — chains of transmission, participation in campaigns, marriages, dates of death — and comparatively little of interior life, particularly for those who died young and left no surviving descendants through whom material would have been transmitted. Ruqayyah's son died in childhood and she left no line. The thinness of her record follows from that.

The honest presentation is therefore a short article that says what is known and stops. Readers should be cautious of longer accounts not anchored in the early material.

References and Further Reading

Primary Islamic Sources

• Qur'an, Surah al-Masad 111 — the denunciation of Abu Lahab, the immediate context in which Ruqayyah's first marriage arrangement was ended
• Qur'an, Surah al-Nahl 16:41 — on those who migrated for the sake of God, the category to which the Abyssinian migrants belong
• Qur'an, Surah al-Hajj 22:58 — on those who left their homes in the cause of God
• Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab al-Maghazi (Book of Military Expeditions) — the Badr campaign, during which Ruqayyah died; graded sahih
• Reports in the hadith and biographical literature on Uthman's absence from Badr, giving as its reason his attendance on Ruqayyah in her final illness

Classical Islamic Sources

• Ibn Sa'd, Muhammad. Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kubra. Vol. 8, the women. Edited by Eduard Sachau. Leiden: Brill, 1904–1940. [Compiled c. 845 CE] — the principal early notice on Ruqayyah
• 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. — the lists of migrants to Abyssinia
• Al-Tabari, Muhammad ibn Jarir. Tarikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk. Edited by M.J. de Goeje. Leiden: Brill, 1879–1901. [Completed c. 915 CE]
• Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani. Al-Isabah fi Tamyiz al-Sahabah. Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyyah, 1995. [Compiled c. 1449 CE] — entry on Ruqayyah
• 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. — on the Abyssinian migration and the mechanics of Meccan persecution
• Watt, W. Montgomery. Muhammad at Medina. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956.
• Raven, Wim. "Some Early Islamic Texts on the Negus of Abyssinia." Journal of Semitic Studies 33, no. 2 (1988): 197–218.
• Stowasser, Barbara Freyer. Women in the Qur'an, Traditions, and Interpretation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
• Robinson, Chase F. Islamic Historiography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. — on why the early tradition preserves some subjects in detail and others barely at all
• Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd edition. Leiden: Brill — entry on Ruqayya

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.
• Madelung, Wilferd. The Succession to Muhammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. — for Uthman's standing in the early community