Umm Kulthum bint Muhammad

Umm Kulthum bint Muhammad was a daughter of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) and Khadijah bint Khuwaylid. She lived through the Meccan persecution, migrated to Medina, married Uthman ibn Affan after the death of her sister Ruqayyah, and died in Sha'ban 9 AH, some months before her father.

Of the Prophet's four daughters, hers is the thinnest record. She appears in the early sources at four points: the ending of her marriage arrangement, her migration, her marriage to Uthman, and her death and burial. Even her personal name is not preserved: Umm Kulthum is a kunya, a name of the form "mother of", and the early sources do not record a separate given name for her. This article states what is established and stops where the evidence does.

A caution on identification is necessary. Several prominent women in early Islamic history bore this name, including a daughter of Fatimah and Ali ibn Abi Talib — this Umm Kulthum's own niece — as well as Umm Kulthum bint Uqbah. Reports are frequently conflated between them in later literature. Where this article states something, it concerns the Prophet's daughter.

Her position among the four daughters is not established by the early sources, which give differing arrangements of the births, and no age is given for her here.

Family

Umm Kulthum was born in Mecca before the beginning of the revelation. Her sisters were Zaynab, Ruqayyah 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 period of the revelation, along with the rest of her mother's household.

The Ending of the Marriage Arrangement

A marriage arrangement bound Umm Kulthum to Utaybah ibn Abi Lahab, as her sister Ruqayyah was bound to Utaybah's brother Utbah. Their father, Abu Lahab, was the Prophet's paternal uncle, and the two matches were alliances within the wider clan of the kind that ordinarily bound Qurayshi families together.

When Surah al-Masad, the hundred and eleventh chapter of the Qur'an, denounced Abu Lahab and his wife, he ordered both sons to separate from the Prophet's daughters, and they did so.

The episode illustrates how the persecution of the Prophet operated. It was not only violent; it worked through the ordinary institutions of Meccan society, and marriage alliances were among the first instruments used. Two of his daughters were returned to him within a short period as a deliberate social sanction.

Migration to Medina

Umm Kulthum migrated to Medina. The sirah literature places her among the members of the Prophet's household who made the journey after the Hijra of 622 CE, travelling in the group that followed the Prophet rather than with him.

Unlike Ruqayyah, she did not take part in the migration to Abyssinia. Unlike Zaynab, she did not remain behind in Mecca. Beyond her presence in Medina, the sources record nothing of her activity during the Medinan years until her marriage.

Marriage to Uthman ibn Affan

Ruqayyah died in Ramadan 2 AH. Umm Kulthum married Uthman in 3 AH.

The marriage is the reason Uthman is known in the tradition as Dhu al-Nurayn, the possessor of two lights: he married two daughters of the Prophet in succession. No other Companion stood in that relation to the prophetic household, and the epithet became a fixed part of his designation in the biographical literature. It is worth being clear about what the epithet does and does not tell us. It attests the fact of the two marriages, which is firmly established. It tells us nothing about Umm Kulthum herself.

The couple had no children. This is stated consistently in the sources, and it is one reason so little material about her was transmitted: she left no descendants through whose lines reports would have been preserved.

Death and Burial

Umm Kulthum died in Medina in Sha'ban 9 AH. She was the third of the Prophet's daughters to die during his lifetime, leaving only Fatimah, who would survive him by a few months.

Her burial is the point at which she enters the canonical hadith literature. Anas ibn Malik reported being present at the burial of a daughter of the Messenger of God, describing the Prophet seated at the graveside, and reported that he asked which of those present had not committed sin that night, appointing Abu Talha to descend into the grave. The report is in Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab al-Jana'iz, and is graded sahih. Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, in his commentary Fath al-Bari, identifies the daughter in this report as Umm Kulthum.

Assessment and the Limits of the Record

What is established: Umm Kulthum was a daughter of the Prophet and Khadijah; her marriage arrangement with a son of Abu Lahab was ended following the revelation of Surah al-Masad; she migrated to Medina; she married Uthman ibn Affan in 3 AH after Ruqayyah's death, giving rise to his epithet Dhu al-Nurayn; she had no children; and she died in Sha'ban 9 AH, her burial being the occasion of a sahih report on prophetic practice at the graveside.

What is not established: her given name; her age at any point in her life; her character; her role, if any, in the life of the community at Medina; and her own words. No statement is reliably transmitted from her, and she is not counted among the women who transmitted hadith. Descriptions of her disposition that appear in later writing rest on thin transmission and are not carried here.

This should be stated without apology. The early Islamic biographical tradition recorded what was legally consequential and what descendants preserved. Umm Kulthum was consequential at her burial, where prophetic practice was established in the presence of witnesses who transmitted it, and she left no descendants. That combination produced the record we have: a life visible chiefly at its end.

Readers will encounter longer accounts of her life. Those accounts are, in the main, expansions built from the general circumstances of the period rather than from evidence about her.

References and Further Reading

Primary Islamic Sources

• Qur'an, Surah al-Masad 111 — the denunciation of Abu Lahab, the immediate context in which Umm Kulthum's marriage arrangement was ended
• Qur'an, Surah al-Ahzab 33:59 — addressed in part to the Prophet's daughters in Medina
• Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab al-Jana'iz (Book of Funerals) — the report of Anas ibn Malik on the burial of a daughter of the Prophet, identified by Ibn Hajar as Umm Kulthum; graded sahih
• Reports in the hadith and biographical literature establishing Uthman's epithet Dhu al-Nurayn by reference to his two marriages into the prophetic household

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
• 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 Hajar al-Asqalani. Fath al-Bari bi-Sharh Sahih al-Bukhari. Cairo: al-Matba'ah al-Salafiyyah. [Compiled c. 1428 CE] — the identification of the daughter in the burial report of Anas ibn Malik
• Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani. Al-Isabah fi Tamyiz al-Sahabah. Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyyah, 1995. [Compiled c. 1449 CE] — entry on Umm Kulthum, and the distinction of women bearing the same name
• Al-Dhahabi, Shams al-Din. Siyar A'lam al-Nubala'. Beirut: Mu'assasat al-Risalah, 1981–1988. [Compiled c. 1348 CE]
• Al-Nawawi, Yahya ibn Sharaf. Al-Minhaj: Sharh Sahih Muslim. Beirut: Dar al-Ma'rifah — the commentary tradition on the funeral reports concerning the Prophet's family

Academic and Scholarly Sources

• Watt, W. Montgomery. Muhammad at Mecca. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953.
• Watt, W. Montgomery. Muhammad at Medina. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956.
• 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 the selectivity of the early biographical record
• Madelung, Wilferd. The Succession to Muhammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. — for Uthman's position in the community
• Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd edition. Leiden: Brill — entries on Umm Kulthum and on Uthman ibn Affan

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.
• Bewley, Aisha, trans. The Women of Madina (from Ibn Sa'd's Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kubra). London: Ta-Ha Publishers, 1995.