Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

THE PRINCE OF MEDINA t 83
cousin, a polygamous one. The Quran addressed this custom and,
for reasons that are not clear to us, though the context is one of
equitable treatment of orphans, it limited the number of wives a
Muslim might have to four (4:3). It is not a commandment, at any
rate; it is a permission, and the very next line of the Quran warns
that unless a husband can be equitable toward his wives, then it is
better to be monogamous. But Muhammad had more than four,
and we can sense something in the wonder this may have caused in
Quran 33:50, which explicitly states that Muhammad—“and only
you, and not the Believers”—may have as many as he and the
women in question may wish. The other issue that perplexed Muslims—and
provided additional ammunition for the later Christian
enemies of Islam—was the fact that he married Zaynab, the wife
of Zayd ibn Haritha, the Prophet’s own former freedman and
much favored adopted son. Adoption created consanguinity among
the Arabs, and custom frowned on such near-kin marriages; there
may also have been talk about the unseemliness of the divorce. It is
clear from Quran 33:37–38 that Muhammad feared public opinion
about this marriage, and not until he received an exculpatory
revelation did he dare go through with it.
Muhammad was first married to the already twice widowed
Khadija, and to her alone, for perhaps fourteen years, and she bore
him all his children save one. There was first the boy Qasim, who
died in infancy, and then the girls Zaynab (whose husband never
converted to Islam), Ruqayya (who was married to the third caliph,
Uthman—she accompanied him to Abyssinia with that early
group of émigrés—until her death in Medina in 624), Umm
Kulthum (first married to a son of Abu Lahab, Muhammad’s archenemy
at Mecca—Quran 111 deals with him—and then, after Ruqayya’s
death, to Uthman), and Fatima (who married Muhammad’s
cousin, and the fourth caliph, Ali). Khadija died in 619 and
soon afterward, while still in Mecca, Muhammad married Sawda,
the widow of one of his fellow Muslims. Also at Mecca, he became
betrothed to Aisha, the then six-year-old daughter of his close associate
Abu Bakr. The marriage was not consummated, however,
until after the Hegira, presumably when Aisha reached puberty.