Tagged: polygamy

Harem tales: The merry wives of Muhammad

Almost to the day he died, Muhammad continued to add women to his harem, either as wives or concubines. Most married him voluntarily, others were taken as captives and had no choice in the matter. The following account of his love life is from It’s All About Muhammad, A Biography of the World’s Most Notorious Prophet:

ACCORDING TO THE STANDARD ACCOUNTS, MUHAMMAD HAD THIRTEEN wives and concubines, beginning with Khadija, his wealthy wife of twenty-five years who died three years before he fled Mecca to Yathrib. Then came Sauda, the stout, matronly woman he married several months after Khadija’s death as a caretaker for his children; Aisha, Abu Bakr’s daughter whom he married shortly after he arrived in Yathrib when she was nine years old; Umar’s daughter Hafsa, a twenty-year-old widow when he married her; Zaynab Khuzayma, who died eight months after the marriage; Umm Salama, an early convert and widow of one of Muhammad’s first cousins; Zaynab the daughter of Jahsh, a maternal first cousin previously married to Muhammad’s adopted son Zayd; Juwayriya, the Bedouin princess taken as booty after he conquered her Mustaliq tribe; Ramlah, the daughter of Muhammad’s foremost Meccan enemy Abu Sufyan; Rayhana, a Jewish woman enslaved after the massacre of the Qurayza Jews; Safiya, a seventeen-year-old Jewish girl taken as booty during the conquest of Khaybar; Maria the Copt, given to him as a slave by the ruler of Egypt along with her sister, a mule, and a eunuch; and Maymuna, the thirty-six-year-old half-sister of Zaynab Khuzayama. Read more »