Mothers of the Believers

A Qur'anic title for the Prophet's wives, from His word "and his wives are their mothers"; he contracted thirteen women, consummated with eleven of them, and died leaving nine ¹.

The Prophet married Khadija bint Khuwaylid when he was twenty-five and she forty — the first woman he married; he took no other wife while she lived, and had sons and daughters by her ². The Prophet was distinguished from his umma by the licence to marry more than four wives for many purposes; the women he contracted numbered thirteen — he died leaving nine of them, two died in his lifetime (Khadija and Zaynab bint Khuzayma, Mother of the Poor), and two he did not consummate with ¹. The eleven are: Khadija; Sawda bint Zam'a in Shawwal of year ten of the prophethood; A'isha bint Abi Bakr in Shawwal of year eleven; Hafsa bint Umar in 3 AH; Zaynab bint Khuzayma, Mother of the Poor, in 4 AH — who died two or three months after the marriage; Umm Salama Hind bint Abi Umayya in Shawwal 4 AH; Zaynab bint Jahsh in Dhu al-Qa'da 5 AH; Juwayriyya bint al-Harith in Sha'ban 6 AH; Umm Habiba Ramla bint Abi Sufyan in al-Muharram 7 AH; Safiyya bint Huyayy ibn Akhtab after Khaybar's conquest in 7 AH; and Maymuna bint al-Harith in Dhu al-Qa'da 7 AH during the umra of consummation ³.

Al-Mubarakpuri explains this number was not from lust: the Prophet spent some thirty years of his youth's prime confined to one wife; the purposes were kin-by-marriage to Abu Bakr, Umar, Ali and Uthman; breaking the tribes' enmity to Islam, as with Makhzum, Banu al-Mustaliq and Banu al-Nadir; educating the umma's women so they would carry the call to women where men do not mix with them; and breaking the Jahili rule of adoption by the marriage to Zaynab bint Jahsh ⁴. They did great service transmitting his home life to people — especially the longest-lived of them like A'isha, who related much of his deeds and words ⁵.