Takhrij Hadith 536: "I was married to Habib…"

I was married to Habib ibn Azhar, a brother of the Banu Janab, and I bore him daughters, but then he passed away, whereupon Athwab ibn Azhar, the girls' paternal uncle, snatched my daughters away from me, so I went out at the dawn of Islam seeking a companion to travel with me to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and one of my daughters, named Juwayriyah—who was a humpbacked girl and the youngest of them, having been afflicted by a disease affecting her limbs—wept for me while wearing a small woolen garment, so out of mercy I took the girl along with her, and while we were riding our camel, a hare suddenly puffed itself up in front of us, causing the humpbacked girl, who was sharp-witted and intelligent, to exclaim: "No, by Allah! Your heel shall always remain higher than the heel of Athwab regarding this matter forever!" and then a fox crossed our path sideways, and she called it by a name other than "fox" (which Abdullah ibn Hassan, the sub-narrator, forgot) and said about it the same as she had said about the hare, and while we were riding along, the camel suddenly knelt down and began to tremble, so the humpbacked girl said: "By Allah, the spell of Athwab has overtaken you!" to which I said, out of sheer desperation: "Woe to you! What should I do?" and she said: "Turn your garments inside out, roll your own body over from back to front, and turn your camel’s saddle-pads inside out," so she took off her woolen garment, turned it inside out, and rolled herself over from back to front, and when I did what she commanded me, the camel shook itself, stood up, stretched its legs, and urinated, whereupon the humpbacked girl said: "Put your gear back on," and I did what she told me and put it back on, then we set off riding again, but suddenly Athwab was on our tracks, unsheathing a drawn sword, so we took refuge in a large encampment of tents, and he circled it until the submissive camel crashed into the veranda of the middle tent, and I burst inside with the young girl, but he caught up with me with his sword, and the tip of its blade struck a portion of the braids of my hair, and he shouted: "Hand over my brother's daughter to me, O filthy woman!" so I threw her to him, and he placed her on his shoulder and walked away with her, and as I knew him better than the residents of that tent did, I proceeded to a sister of mine who was married among the Banu Shayban, still seeking a companion to travel to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ in the early days of Islam, and while I was at her place one night, thinking my eyes were asleep, her husband came back from the nightly gathering and said: "By your father, I have found a true and honorable companion for Qaylah!" so my sister asked: "Who is he?" and he replied: "Hurayth ibn Hassan al-Shaybani, who is heading as an envoy of Bakr ibn Wa'il to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ tomorrow morning," whereupon my sister exclaimed: "Woe to me! Let not my sister hear of this, lest she goes out with the brother of Bakr ibn Wa'il across the vast open land without any man from her own people with her!" and he said: "Do not mention it to her, for I certainly will not tell her," however, I had heard what they said, so the next morning I went out, fastened the saddle onto my camel, and found him nearby, and when I asked him for companionship on the journey, he replied: "Yes, with pleasure and honor," and his mounts were already knelt near me, so I set out with him, and he proved to be a true and honorable companion until we reached the Messenger of Allah ﷺ while he was leading the people in the morning prayer, which had been established just as the dawn broke, while the stars were still intertwined in the sky, and men could hardly recognize one another due to the darkness of the night, so I, being a woman fresh out of the days of Ignorance, lined up in the row along with the men, and the man next to me in the row asked: "Are you a woman or a man?" to which I replied: "No, a woman," so he said: "You have almost tempted me! Go pray among the women," and I saw that a row of women had formed near the apartments, which I had not noticed when I entered, so I stood among them, and when the sun rose, I drew near, and whenever I saw a man wearing a fine cloak or elegant garments, my eyes would stretch toward him, expecting to see the Messenger of Allah ﷺ looking grander than everyone else, until a man came after the sun had risen high and said: "Peace be upon you, O Messenger of Allah," and the Messenger of Allah ﷺ replied: "And upon you be peace, and the mercy of Allah," and he was wearing two worn-out pieces of a garment that had once been dyed with saffron but were now faded, and in his hand he held a stripped palm branch, peeled clean of its leaves except for two leaves at its very top, and he was sitting in the squatting posture, and when I saw the Messenger of Allah ﷺ in such a state of profound humility in his sitting posture, I began to tremble out of awe and fear, so a man sitting near him said: "O Messenger of Allah, the poor woman is trembling!" and without looking at me—as I was behind his back—the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: "O poor woman, upon you be tranquility," and as soon as the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said those words, Allah removed all the terror that had entered my heart, and my companion, Hurayth ibn Hassan, stepped forward as the first man to pledge allegiance to him for Islam and on behalf of his people, then he said: "O Messenger of Allah, write a decree for us concerning the land of Al-Dahna, ensuring that none of the Banu Tamim may cross over it to us except as a traveler or passerby," so the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: "Write down Al-Dahna for him, O boy," but when he ordered it to be given to him, it distressed me, for it was my homeland and my residence, so I said: "O Messenger of Allah! He did not ask you for a fair or just matter when he made this request; this Al-Dahna is where your camels are tethered and where the sheep graze, and the women and children of Banu Tamim are just beyond it," so the Prophet ﷺ said: "Stop, O boy; the poor woman has spoken the truth; a Muslim is the brother of a Muslim; water and trees are wide enough to accommodate them both, and they should assist one another against distress," and when Hurayth saw that he was prevented from getting his written decree, he struck one hand against the other and said: "You and I are just as the saying goes: 'A sheep carries its own destruction upon its hooves,'" to which I said: "By Allah, I always knew you to be a guide in the darkness, a generous leader, and chaste toward your female traveling companion until we reached the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, but do not blame me for asking for my share when you asked for yours," so he said: "And what is your share in Al-Dahna, may you have no father?" and I said: "The place to tether my camel, which you are trying to take away for your own wife's camel!" to which he said: "Indeed, I call the Messenger of Allah ﷺ to witness that I am a brother and a companion to you as long as I live, since you praised me for that in his presence," and I said: "Since you have initiated this, I will never let it go to waste," then the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: "Is the son of this woman to be blamed for settling a matter decisively and defending his rights from behind the apartment?" upon hearing this, I wept and said: "By Allah, O Messenger of Allah, I did give birth to a son, but he was free-born, and he fought alongside you on the Day of al-Rabalthah, but later he went to fetch provisions for me from Khaybar, where he was afflicted by its fever and died, leaving me alone with daughters," so the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: "By the One in Whose Hand is my soul, if you were not a poor woman, we would have dragged you on your face"—or he said: "you would have been dragged on your face," as the sub-narrator Abdullah ibn Hassan was unsure which phrase the two women related to him—"Can any of you women not bear companionship in this world with kindness? Then, when a barrier is placed between her and the one who is dearest to her, she says: 'To Allah we belong, and to Him we shall return'? Then she should say: 'O Lord, comfort me for what has passed, and assist me in what remains;' by the One in Whose Hand is the soul of Muhammad, when one of you weeps, her companion joins her in weeping; O servants of Allah! Do not torment your dead," and then he wrote for me a decree on a piece of red tanned leather: "For Qaylah and the women of the daughters of Qaylah: Let no right of theirs be wronged, nor let them be coerced into marriage, and every believer and Muslim is a helper to them; do good, and do no wrong".