Umm Qirfa, Fatima bint Rabi'a ibn Badr al-Fazariyya

Umm Qirfa, Fatima bint Rabi'a ibn Badr, an old woman of great age from the Banu Fazara, of a noble house among her people. She was the wife of Malik ibn Hudhayfa ibn Badr. Ibn Ishaq says that the Arabs used to say: "If you were more honoured than Umm Qirfa, you would have added nothing" ^{1 2}.

In the second raid of Zayd ibn Haritha against the Banu Fazara, at Wadi al-Qura, she was taken captive. Zayd ordered Qays ibn al-Musakhkhar to kill her, and he killed her with great violence: he tied a rope between her legs, then tied it between two camels, then drove them on, and they tore her apart ². Her daughter and her son Abd Allah ibn Mas'ada were taken captive, and Salama ibn al-Akwa' took her daughter. The Prophet asked him for her, and he gave her to his maternal uncle Hazn ibn Abi Wahb ².

This report is one of those to be reviewed in the first round of review. The manner of her killing was not commented on by Ibn Ishaq, and later biographers and modern historians differ in how they receive it. The report is set out as Ibn Ishaq transmitted it, with all its parallels, in the entry on the raid ².

• The account of her killing is Ibn Ishaq's own, without a chain of transmission. The proverb cited above, "if you were more honoured than Umm Qirfa", is likewise from him ².