Umm Salamah · a Light

Her advice saved the treaty at Hudaybiyyah

In 628 at Hudaybiyyah the Prophet ﷺ accepted terms his companions found humiliating: no pilgrimage that year, a ten year truce, and a clause returning defectors to Quraysh. He told the men to slaughter their animals and shave their heads, which would end the state of pilgrimage. Nobody moved. He went into his tent and Umm Salamah, who was travelling with him, advised him to say nothing further to them, to go out, slaughter his own camel and call his barber. He did. When they saw it they got up and did the same, some of them shaving one another. The episode is preserved in Bukhari's account of the treaty, with her advice named as the thing that broke the deadlock.

Umm Salamah bint Abi Umayyah · Hudaybiyyah, 628