Hafsah bint Umar

The fasting, praying wife to whom the ummah entrusted the only master copy of the Qur'an.

The account

Daughter of Umar, widowed young after Badr, Hafsah was offered by her anxious father to Abu Bakr and Uthman before heaven resolved the matter better: the Prophet ﷺ married her, and Jibril himself testified for her when a divorce nearly proceeded: "Take Hafsah back, for she is given to much fasting and much prayer, and she is your wife in Jannah."

Her rank in the ummah's history is custodial and immense. When the first collection of the Qur'an was completed under her father's counsel, the sheets passed from Abu Bakr to Umar, and from Umar not to a caliph but to Hafsah: the master copy of the Book of Allah lived in a wife's room. Years later Uthman borrowed those sheets to copy the unified mushaf and returned them to her hand. She fasted the day she died, as Jibril had described her. Between her keeping and Aisha's narrating, the two young widows of the Prophet's house held the Book and the Sunnah for the generations, and no shelf in Islam is more honored than the chest where her sheets lay.

The facts

FatherUmar al-Faruq
Jibril's wordFasting, praying, his wife in Jannah
CustodyThe master sheets of the Qur'an
Lent toUthman's committee, then returned

The narrations

Take Hafsah back, for she fasts much and prays much, and she is your wife in Jannah.

al-Hakim (sahih isnad) · cf. Abu Dawud 2283

Read beside it

The words

On the Path

People beside it

BeforeUmm Ayman (Barakah)AfterSafiyyah bint Huyayy

On the Companions page The Path