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slept, she drank from their water carrier and poured the rest over her.
When they awoke,, they suspected her, but she invented another story, upon
which they said. "if you are truthful, then your religion is better
than ours. " They found the water carrier as full as they had left it,
and in accordance with their own argument, her persecutors converted to
Islam.
Another - such woman is' Umm Kulttrum Bint*Uqbah bin AbT Mu I ay-it
whose father was one of the noblemen of Quraysh.
Her half brother on her mother's side wascUthman bin AffA.
She converted to Islam in Mecca before the Hijra, the only one
in her family to do so. She left her family and her home and travelled
alone, unafraid, in the middle of the night across the desert and
mountains all the way from Mecca to al-Madinah for the sake of her
religion. As she approached al-Madinah, she found that the truce
had been agreed between I the Prophet and the idolators of al-Hudayybl. ýah.
The idolators stipulated to the Prophet on the day of al-Huddaybiyah
'Who ever comes from our side and is of your religion, you return to
us, and who ever comes from your side, we return to you. ' So when
Umm KaltZm arrived,, her brothers. al-WalTd andcAmmar, sons of Uqbah,
cam
Ie to the Prophet to reclaim her, they said to him, 'Muhammad, fulfil
our conditions and the pact we made. But I Umm Kulttrum said, 10 Prophet,
I am a woman. and the status of women is weak as you know, so you would
return me to pagans, so that they would undermine my religion but not
tolerate. " 3
1. See Ibn Vajar, op. cite, Vol. 8. P. 248.
2. wAfifi. op. cit., P. 90
3. Ibid & Ibn A'A,
op. cit., Vol. 8, P. 167 & Ibn Hajar, op. cit., P., 274
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