Companions · Umm al-Mu'minin · Daughter of Harun's line
صفية بنت حيي
Safiyyah bint Huyayy
“My father is Harun and my uncle is Musa.” The Prophet ﷺ taught her the answer that silenced every taunt.
The account
Daughter of Huyayy ibn Akhtab, chief of Banu Nadir of the line of Harun, Safiyyah dreamed before Khaybar of a moon falling into her lap, and carried the slap-mark her husband gave her for it into the day the dream landed. Widowed at Khaybar, she was freed by the Prophet ﷺ, who made her emancipation her dowry and married her, seating her on his own mount with his knee for her step.
Madinah's tongues tested the newcomer's lineage; one day she came to the Prophet weeping from a taunt of Jewish daughterhood. His reply armed her forever: "Why did you not say: my father is Harun, my uncle is Musa, and my husband is Muhammad?" In his final illness she said before the wives: I wish it were I in your place, and when some smiled he ﷺ defended her sincerity: by Allah, she is truthful. She lived into the fitnah lowering food by rope to besieged Uthman, and died in Madinah, a bridge of the two covenants in one woman: prophet's daughter by blood, prophet's wife by choice, buried in al-Baqi among the mothers of the believers.
The facts
- LineageThe line of Harun
- DowryHer freedom
- The answerHarun · Musa · Muhammad
- FitnahFed Uthman by rope
The narrations
Why did you not say: my father is Harun, my uncle is Musa, and my husband is Muhammad?
Tirmidhi 3892 (hasan)
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