Safiyya bint Abd al-Muttalib: The Aunt Who Took Up a Club at Khandaq

Safiyya bint Abd al-Muttalib was a paternal aunt of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, a daughter of Abd al-Muttalib, and the full sister of Hamza ibn Abdul Muttalib. She was the mother of Zubayr ibn al-Awwam, making her the grandmother of Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr. Two episodes preserved in the classical sources give a clear sense of her character: her killing, with her own hands, of an armed man found scouting the fortress sheltering Medina's women and children during the Battle of Khandaq, and her response — grief expressed openly, but met with declared patience — to the news of her brother Hamza's death and mutilation at the Battle of Uhud.

Family

Safiyya's connection to the Prophet ran through both of her siblings' lines and her own. As Abd al-Muttalib's daughter she was the Prophet's paternal aunt; as Hamza's sister she was linked to one of the earliest and most prominent martyrs of the young Muslim community; and as the mother of Zubayr ibn al-Awwam, she was the grandmother of a man who would later contend for the caliphate from Mecca. Zubayr's own account of watching his mother during the Battle of Uhud, discussed below, is preserved in the sources in his own words.

The Killing of an Intruder at Khandaq

During the Battle of Khandaq (627 CE / 5 AH), when a confederate army besieged Medina, the city's women and children were sheltered in a number of small fortresses away from the fighting. Safiyya was among those sheltering in one such fortress, together with the poet Hassan ibn Thabit, who was the only man present.

Sword of Allah, citing Ibn Hisham and al-Waqidi, records that Safiyya, looking down from the fortress, saw an armed Jewish man moving stealthily along the base of the wall as though searching for a way around it. She concluded that he was a scout sent by the Banu Qurayza to find a route by which they might lead an attack against the settlement from its unprotected rear, at a time when the Prophet and the fighting men of Medina were fully occupied at the front and could spare no one to defend the fortress. She went to Hassan and told him the man had to be killed, and asked him to do it. Hassan replied, "May Allah bless you, O daughter of Abd al-Muttalib, you know that such work is not for me."

Safiyya then took up a club, tied a waist-band around herself, and went down to confront the man alone. She killed him, leaving him where he fell, and returned to the fortress to tell Hassan what she had done, instructing him to go down and take whatever the man had been carrying, since it was not proper for a woman to strip a dead man's body. Hassan again declined, telling her he had no need of it.

The incident, once reported to the wider Muslim camp, removed any remaining doubt about the Banu Qurayza's intention to break their treaty with the Muslims during the siege — a suspicion that had already been building, and that bore directly on the tribe's fate once the siege was lifted.

The Death of Hamza at Uhud

At the Battle of Uhud (625 CE / 3 AH), Safiyya's brother Hamza was killed and his body mutilated. Several distinct reports, preserved in Hayatus Sahabah on the authority of Ibn Sa'd, Abu Nu'aym, al-Hakim and al-Bayhaqi, describe what followed.

Abdullah ibn Abbas reports that when Hamza was killed, Safiyya, not yet aware of what had happened, went looking for him. She met her nephew Ali ibn Abi Talib and her son Zubayr, and asked after Hamza; each urged the other to tell her, and neither did, giving her no clear answer. She went instead to the Prophet himself, who is reported to have said he feared for her state of mind if she learned the full truth. He placed his hand on her chest and prayed for her, and then told her what had happened. She wept, and said, "To Allah we belong and to Him shall we return."

A further statement is attached to this scene in some accounts of the Prophet's reaction to his uncle's mutilated body — that he said he would have left it for the wild animals and birds, had it not been for the grief this would cause Safiyya specifically. This statement is addressed in the article on Hamza ibn Abdul Muttalib, where it is traced to Jami' at-Tirmidhi 1016 and graded da'if (weak) by Darussalam. It is noted here on the same basis: as a weak transmission, with no conclusion resting on it.

A separate narration, transmitted through Ibn Ishaq, describes Safiyya coming in person toward the place where the dead lay. Zubayr met her and told her that the Prophet had specifically instructed that she should turn back. She refused, telling him plainly, "Why should I? I have already heard that my brother's body has been mutilated. This has taken place for the sake of Allah, and we are pleased with it. I shall exercise patience and look to the reward from Allah." When Zubayr reported this answer to the Prophet, he said, "Let her go." She went to Hamza's body, prayed for his forgiveness, and the Prophet then gave the order for him to be buried.

Zubayr's own account of the same battle, preserved separately, describes a woman running toward the fallen during the fighting itself, whom the Prophet called back, saying, "Stop! The woman!" — disliking that women should see the bodies of the dead. Zubayr, recognising the running woman as his mother, reached her before she could see them. She struck him in the chest, telling him to get out of her way, until he told her that the Prophet himself had forbidden her from going further. She then stopped, and produced two shrouds she had brought for her brother Hamza, having already heard news of his death. The two men found beside Hamza's body a slain man of the Ansar who had no shroud of his own, and — finding it difficult to use both cloths on Hamza alone while the Ansari had none — they measured the two shrouds, found one larger than the other, and drew lots to decide which man would be wrapped in which.

Legacy

Safiyya bint Abd al-Muttalib appears in the sources at two of the most dangerous and grief-laden moments of the early Medinan period, and in both her recorded conduct is the same: direct, undeceived by attempts to spare her feelings, and prepared to act — with a club in her own hands at Khandaq, and with declared patience in the face of her brother's mutilation at Uhud. The date and circumstances of her death are not established in the sources consulted for this article, and none is supplied here.

References and Further Reading

Primary Islamic Sources

• Ibn Hisham, recension of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah, Vol. 2, pp. 221, 228 — the account of Safiyya and the intruder at the fortress during Khandaq
• Al-Waqidi, Muhammad ibn Umar. Kitab al-Maghazi, p. 292 — the same episode
• Ibn Ishaq, as transmitted in Hayatus Sahabah — the account of Safiyya's approach to Hamza's body at Uhud and the Prophet's instruction that she be let through

Classical Islamic Sources

• Ibn Sa'd, Muhammad. Al-Tabaqat al-Kubra. [Compiled c. 845 CE]
• Al-Bayhaqi, Ahmad ibn al-Husayn. Dala'il al-Nubuwwah, as cited in Hayatus Sahabah
• Al-Hakim, Muhammad ibn Abdullah. Al-Mustadrak, as cited in Hayatus Sahabah
• Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani. Al-Isabah fi Tamyiz al-Sahabah

Academic and Scholarly Sources

• Akram, A.I. The Sword of Allah: Khalid bin al-Waleed, His Life and Campaigns. Karachi: National Publishing House, 1970.
• Zakaria, Muhammad, compiler. Hayatus Sahabah. Karachi: Zam Zam Publishers.
• Watt, W. Montgomery. Muhammad at Medina. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956.

Further Reading

• Lings, Martin. Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources. Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1983.
• Guillaume, Alfred, trans. The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955.
• Great Women of Islam. Riyadh: Darussalam.