Captioning provided by MUHSEN (www.muhsen.org)
Assalamu 'Alaikum wa Rahmatu Allahi wa Barakatu everyone
Welcome back to the Firsts Shorts, where we are
covering some of the early biographies in Islam
that only have a paragraph or two about them,
but we want to relive their memory and revive their memory
inshaAllah Ta'ala
And the person we are speaking about today is
Atikah bint Zayd ibn Amr ibn Nufayl
May Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la be pleased with her
and her father, Allahumma Aameen.
And before I talk about her and what she encountered in this
life, I want to talk about the name Atikah,
because I know that a lot of people like to take these names
and inshaAllah Ta'ala,
consider them for names of their children.
As this is a tradition that we have in our Sunnah from the
Prophet, SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam,
to give good names and to consider the names of the Sahaba.
Atikah is an interesting name.
It technically means a person who puts on a lot of perfume.
There are other usages for it.
And it was a common name for women at the time of the
Prophet, SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam.
And there's a narration when the
Prophet, SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam,
was in Hunain, that the
Prophet, SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam, says
Ana ibnul Awatika min Sulaym
I am the son of the Awatik,
meaning the Atikahs, the plural of women named Atikah.
I am the son of the Awatik and in one narration,
the Prophet, SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam, says
Wa ibnul Fawatimah min Quraish
and a son of the Fatimahs of Quraish.
So I am the son of the Atikahs from Soulaim and from
the Fatimahs of Quraish.
And that is because when you look at the lineage of the
Prophet, SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam,
there were so many women named Atikah.
So you have Atikah, the mother of Abn Minaf.
Atikah, the mother of Hashem.
Atikah, his grandmother, SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam,
from Banu Zuhra.
So this is a name that was quite common
amongst the Arabs at the time.
And here you have Atikah bint Zayd,
radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
And when we talk about Atikah bint Zayd,
I want you to go way back to probably one of the most
definitive stories in the Firsts.
And that is the man who embraced
the way of Ibraheem Alayhi asSallam.
And the man who lived in accordance with the
way of Ibrahim Alayhi asSallam
before it was formalized through
the revelations of the Prophet, SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam,
The man who the Prophet, SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam,
said will stand on the Day of Judgment
as an Ummah by himself with two gardens,
Zayd Radiullah Ta'ala Anhu ibn Amr ibn Nufayl.
And Zayd Radiullah Ta'ala Anhu, you know,
we covered him in detail,
and we covered his desire for his son to be a companion of
the Prophet, SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam.
And that of course was Sa'id ibn Zayd.
So when Zayd ibn Amr ibn Nufayl passed away,
remember this was a man who was removed from the ways of
ignorance, who, you know,
gave his kids the best Tarbiyah, the best mentorship,
the best guide.
And that is that he would not only reject idol worship at
his time, but he rejected alcohol.
He rejected the burial of young daughters, at the time,
and he would take those girls that were to be buried in
female infanticide,
and he'd bring them into his own home
Radiullahu Anhu and raise them
to a point where they could get married instead.
And with Zayd Radiullahu Anhu,
he leaves behind only two children.
And that is Sa'id ibn Zayd,
who we have already covered extensively.
May Allah be pleased with him.
Who, of course, is one of the 10 promised Paradise and this
noble woman Atikah Radiullahu Ta'ala Anha.
Now, when we talk about Atikah,
she is known for a few things.
She's known for her beauty.
She's known for being an exceedingly beautiful woman.
She's known for being an exceedingly eloquent woman.
So she was a poet and this is where you see her,
you know, her biography is full of poetry,
lamenting the situation that she was put in, in, in,
in multiple cases.
She was known for her religion, her worship, her Ibadah.
As Ibn Kathir rahimahullah,
narrates that she was a woman of
great Ibadah, great devotion.
She was known for a complete character,
just a beautiful well-rounded character as well.
So she's everything that you could want in a woman.
And she is everything that you could aspire to as a human
being, right?
I mean, she has character, she has religion.
She has devotion, she's intelligent, she's wise.
She has all of these things radiAllahu ta'ala Anha.
And so we start to get to her story.
We find that the first person that she married is
Abdullah ibn Abi Bakr As-Siddiq radiAllahu ta'ala Anhuma.
Now, I can't tell you how many times
I've been corrected in a lecture.
When I say Abdullah ibn Abi Bakr.
And they say, are you sure?
Do you mean, Abdullah ibn Umar, no
I mean, Abdullah ibn Abi Bakr,
who is a son of Abu Bakr, who is not well-known,
but he did play a role in Islam.
Okay, and in fact, he played a role in the Hijrah.
If you remember, when we spoke about Asma bint Abi Bakr
radiAllahu ta'ala Anha,
she was the one who would bring the food and the drink to
the Prophet, SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam and Abu Bakr,
May Allah be pleased with them,
as they were on their way to Al Medina.
It was her brother, Abdullah,
who was the one that would, you know,
hear the news of Mecca and then relay it to the
Prophet, SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam and
Abu Bakr As-Siddiq radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu, on their way.
So Abdullah ibn Abi Bakr is also one of the first Muslims,
but he was very young, at the time.
Okay, so Abdullah is the first husband of Atikah bint Zayd
and the story of Abdullah and Atikah,
is that Abdullah fell madly in love with her, to a point
that he held back from doing any good deeds,
because he just wanted to be with his wife.
That's not a bad thing altogether, right?
But it was excessive.
It was excessive to the point that he, you know,
was holding back from serving alongside the
Prophet, SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam,
he's holding back from the Masjid.
He's virtually unseen in the community.
So the honeymoon phase was going way too long.
And because of how madly in love he was and how he was
holding back, Abu Bakr radiAllahu Anhu
wanted his family to be a family of service.
So Abu Bakr radiAllahu Anhu eventually pushed him
to divorce her.
And I want to make a serious disclaimer here,
that those of you that are parents, in laws,
you are not Abu Bakr.
This is a very unique situation.
You are not Abu Bakr, nor is your son Abdullah.
This is a very different scenario,
a very different situation.
We don't extract from this,
that anyone can force their children to get divorced or
things of that sort.
This is a very unique situation where
Abu Bakr radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
saw that this was an unhealthy attachment that he had.
And this was to teach him a, you know,
a sense of detachment from Duniya and
attachment to the Deen.
When that happens, when Abu Bakr radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu,
told him that he should part ways,
because his attachment is too much, he authors this poem.
And so you have all of this love poetry.
He says,
A Atiku, la ansaki ma Dharra shhariku
wa ma la Hanajmun fissamaaEE muHalliku
Oh Atikah,
I have to paraphrase, but he says,
I will never forget you, so long as anything appears in the
sky during the day, meaning the sunrises or any,
or any star or any bird flies through the sky at night,
I will never forget you, day or night.
I will always think about you oh, Atikah.
laHa khuluQun jazlun wa Ra'yun wa mansibun
And he praises her Akhlaq, her character.
He praises her intelligence.
He praises her status, her,
her, her nobility, right?
So he says, she's a woman of character,
a woman of intelligence,
a woman of character.
Wa lam ara mithli tallaqa yawman mithlaha
And I don't see that someone like me would divorce
someone like her on any day.
Wa la mithlaha fee ghairi shayee-in tutallaquu
And I don't see that her,
that she would be divorced in anything, that she would be
parted from in any situation right?
So subhan'Allah it's this serious love poetry,
the serious attachment that he has, so
Abu Bakr radiAllahu Anhu
says, go ahead, take her back.
You know, I'm not going to keep you away.
I'm not going to break your heart,
but he wanted him to be more active and more involved in the
service that was expected of the family of
Abu Bakr As-Siddiq radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu.
And indeed Abdullah would serve.
And it was in the siege of Taif,
later on, that Abdullah ibn Abi Bakr,
May Allah be pleased with him and his father,
was struck by an arrow and that arrow
eventually took his life and he passed away.
You know, sometime after, in Al Medina
due to that arrow, striking him
radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu wa an abi.
So also one of the firsts
When he passed away so he was martyred.
He's a Shaheed.
Atikah also loved him dearly.
So she said,
A'alaytu la tanfaqqu ayni hazeenatan 'alayka
I promise,
I take an oath that my eyes will never stop crying for you.
Wa la yanfaqqu jiddi adhbara
And that my skin will never touch,
my skin will always remain in dust.
Meaning it'll never touch any sweet sense.
It will never touch other than you.
So basically, I'm going to spend the rest of my life
mourning you, okay.
And subhan'Allah, he passes away.
And sometime after that Zayd ibn Al-Khattab,
radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu. Zayd, being the brother of
Umar and the brother of Fatimah bint Al-Khattab
Now think about the tree for a moment, okay.
Al-Khattab was the one who
persecuted Zayd ibn Amr ibn Nufayl
To the point that Zayd radiAllahu Anhu
could not be in Mecca anymore because of
the persecution he faced at the hands of Al-Khattab,
When he would call to monotheism,
Al-Khattab would beat him and would persecute him.
Now you have Sa'id, the son of Zayd,
who is married to who?
Fatimah bint Al-Khattab
Fatimah, being the famous sister of Umar
radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu wa anha
who of course, you know, was,
was instrumental to his initial embracing of Islam.
And we spoke about her.
So now Zayd ibn Al-Khattab, at some point marries her
and then Zayd ibn Al-Khattab
passes away as a Shaheed.
In what? In al-yamamah
Remember Umar radiAllahu Anhu said
that you proceeded me to Islam and you
proceeded me to martyrdom as well.
So both Fatimah and Zayd,
the brother and sister of Umar radiAllahu Anhu wa anhum,
became Muslim before him.
And here you have Zayd passing away.
So now she's been married to Abdullah ibn Abi Bakr,
she has been married to Zayd ibn Al-Khattab.
She's once again,
taking an oath that she will not get married
Umar radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
says to her do not make Haram for yourself
what Allah has made Halal.
Remember widows in particular,
especially the widows of Shuhadah.
The widows of martyrs would get married multiple times.
And this is something that we've already covered multiple
times with people like Asma bint Abi Umais
radiAllahu ta'ala Anha.
Who married Jaffar, and then Abu Bakr and then Ali.
So here you have Umar radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu who,
is proposing to the widow of her brother.
And she is, you know, in a situation where, you know,
she she's unsure about her oath,
but she doesn't want to turn down a person like Umar
radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu.
So Aisha radiAllahu Anha comes to her on
her wedding night and
reminds her of the poem that she once said about Abdullah,
who was the brother of Aisha, right?
Reminds her of the poem and changes the words for her, okay.
And says aa laytu la tanfaqqu ayni qareeratun
alayka wa la yanfaqqu jiddi asfara
That I have taken an oath.
I have promised that my eye,
will rest after you, that it will be pleased that, you know,
that I will be able to get there.
And instead of agbara
that my skin will never touch dust.
Asfara is a very particular type of
yellow perfume.
And so there's some wisdom in that,
that basically she's saying, look, you have a way out,
this was an oath that you didn't have to take upon yourself.
And that it's okay to be married once again.
So here she was now Atikah bint Zayd ibn Amr ibn Nufayl.
She has married now Abdullah,
the son of Abu Bakr.
She has married Zayd ibn Al-Khattab, and
she has married Umar ibn Al-Khattab
radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu as well.
So I just want you to think about this for a moment.
Al-Khattab, both of his sons, okay.
Both of his sons marry the daughter of Zayd,
and his daughter, Fatimah bint Al-Khattab,
marries the son of Zayd, right?
So, Sayid ibn Zayd and here Atikah bint Zayd.
Both of them will be married to the children of, Al-Khattab.
And in the case of Atikah,
two sons of Al-Khattab,
Umar radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu and Zayd
radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
and that just shows you the wisdom of Allah
Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la
Al-Khattab wanted to prohibit the spread of Iman
to prohibit the spread of faith
through the preaching of Zayd radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu.
And instead, what ended up happening his own children.
subhan'Allah, would be a part of bearing the seed
and the fruit of Iman for generations to come after him.
So here you have, now Atikah married to Umar.
There are multiple stories, obviously,
of her being married to Umar radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu,
that we spoke about some of them,
of how Umar radiAllahu Anhu feared the preference
to his family and some of the goods that would come to his
home and Umar radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
not wanting his family to,
in any way benefits from his position as the
Khalif of the Muslims.
You also find that Umar radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
was jealous of her going out to the Masjid,
but he didn't prohibit her because the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
prohibited that the women be prohibited from the Masjid.
And so Atikah was someone who insisted on
going to the Masjid
in the evenings on a regular basis,
then Umar radiAllahu Anhu was killed, okay.
So she has now lived to see three of her husbands become
Shuhada, Abdullah ibn Abi Bakr, Shaheed,
Zayd ibn Al-Khattab, Shaheed,
Umar radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu Shaheed.
And she cried.
And she authored poetry about,
about Umar radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu as well.
subhan'Allah, at this point, I mean,
who else is going to marry you, right?
I mean,
you've been married to those three people who comes next.
Az-Zubair radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
one of the ashar Mubasshireen,
one of the 10 promised Paradise.
And if you go back to the personality of Az-Zubair and his
stature, and you compare it to Umar radiAllahu Anhu,
his stature and his personality,
they were very similar.
Az-Zubair radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu was also a huge man,
grew up under very rough circumstances and had a very
similar personality to Umar radiAllahu Anhu
and shared with him in being from al-ashar al-mubasshireen.
Being from the 10 that were promised Paradise.
So Az-Zubair radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
marries Atikah radiAllahu Anha as well.
And then Az-Zubair radiAllahu Anhu
is martyred in the battle of Al-Jamal, okay.
Actually he left the battlefield.
And if you go back and you,
you watch the biography of Az-Zubair radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu.
that he was killed in his Salaah and,
and martyred in his Salaah radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu.
So now she has married Abdullah ibn Abi Bakr,
she has married, Zayd ibn Al-Khattab,
she has married, Umar ibn Al-Khattab.
She has married Az-Zubair
radiAllahu ta'ala Anhum ajma'een and they all
died as Shuhadah, they all died Shuhada.
So you have to imagine then what people are saying,
did they attach a bad omen to her?
Did they say, okay,
don't touch her.
Number one, she's been a widow four times now
Number two, everyone that marries her seems to die.
No, they actually said man aradas Shahadah
fal yatazawwaj bi Atikah
if a person wants to be a Shaheed,
let them marry Atikah because that's clearly the trajectory
here that Allah has given Shahada to every single person
that she was married to.
So subhan'Allah, who is the last person?
She got married again,
who is the fifth husband of Atikah?
None other than Al-Hussein,
radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu, subhan'Allah
whose martyrdom, whose Shahada
is one of the most tragic in history.
But of course at the same time, one of the,
one of the ways that a person leaves this Earth while they
are pleased, Hussein radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
of course, left this earth in a way
that he is pleasing to Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la.
May Allah be pleased with him,
but she did not live to see Al-Hussein radiAllahu
ta'ala Anhu martyred, rather she died before Al-Hussein
radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
So all five of this woman's husbands,
subhan'Allah, were Shuhada.
And they were considered from the greatest of the companions
of the Prophet, SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam.
the most beloved people to the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam.
So she lived her life about 72 years and passed away in the
Khilafah of Mu'awiyah
And she was known for her eloquence.
She was known for her poetry.
She was known for her knowledge.
She was known for her Ibadah.
She was known for her character.
And this is a woman radiAllahu ta'ala Anha,
that you can imagine, subhan'Allah,
what passed through her home was,
was truly precious.
May Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la be pleased with her
and on her father who, subhan'Allah,
wanted to see his children become companions and wanted to
see the seed of Islam thrive.
And look what came through his offspring.
radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
In both Sa'eed ibn Zayd and in Atikah
May Allah be pleased with them all
Allhumma Aameen. Jazakumullahu khairan, insha'Allahu Ta'ala
We'll see you next time.
As Salaam Alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuhu.
Captioning provided by MUHSEN (www.muhsen.org)