Beside the honourable mother of Nabi Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam we find that there are four other women who breastfed Nabi Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam . Namely: Thuwaybah RA, Halima Sa’diah RA – the most prominent lady to have breastfed Nabi Muahmmad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam , Khawlah bint Munthir RA and Barakah also known as Umme Aymin RA – an African woman.
Barakah Umme Ayman RA – was described by Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam as the “mother after my own mother. She is the rest of my family” and was held in very high regard by Nabi Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam . She was the first person to hold him in her arms when he was born and the only person who knew him from that point until his death. She was one of the few Muslims who the Prophet assured of a place in Paradise.
“Be a mother to him, Barakah RA. And don’t ever leave him,” Amina RA instructed her about her son as she lay dying. Umm Ayman did not fail in her responsibility.
Her beginnings were more than humble. In her youth, the black Abyssinian girl was put up for sale in Makkah as a slave. In pre-Islamic Arabia, slavery was no shame, and slaves were treated like animals.
But Barakah RA was blessed to be treated with kindness. She was bought by the noble and gentle Abdullah RA, the son of Abdul Muttalib, Nabu Muhammad’s sallallahu alayhi wa sallam father. Umme Ayman RA not only took care of Abdullah’s affairs as a servant in his home, but after he married Amina RA, she looked after Amina RA also.
It was Umm Ayman RA who slept at the foot of Amina’s RA bed and comforted her when, only two weeks after her wedding, her husband was instructed to leave for that journey to Syria, after which he never came back. It was Umm Ayman RA who took care of Amina RA during her pregnancy.
It was Umm Ayman who gave Amina RA the news of Abdullah’s RA death at Yathrib, what was later to be known as Madinah. As Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam faced tragedy upon tragedy, Umm Ayman RA was there for him. From the time when his mother died when he was six, to when his grandfather Abdul Muttalib died when he was eight, Umm Ayman RA stayed with the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam .
It was only after the Nabi Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam married Khadija RA that she married Ubayd ibn Zayd RA, on their insistence. They had a son named Ayman, thus her name Umm Ayman.
When Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam received the Prophethood, Umm Ayman RA was among the first Muslims, and like the others, bravely faced the punishments of the Quraish for those who dared to believe in Islam.
During the Battle of Uhud she gave out water to the thirsty soldiers and took care of the wounded. She tied her well-being to that of Islam. During a visit from Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam , he asked: “Ya Umme! Are you well?” and she would reply: “I am well, O Messenger of Allah so long as Islam is.”
Umm Ayman’s RA husband died not very long after their marriage. When she was in about her 50s, Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam , when speaking to his companions said, “Should one of you desire to marry a woman from the people of Paradise, let him marry Umm Ayman RA.”
It was Zayd RA who stepped forward and agreed to marry her. They had a son named Usamah who was described as “the beloved son of the beloved.”
She travelled with Nabi Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam across the burning desert through sandstorms on foot from Makkah to Madinah. Despite the harshness of the journey she persisted, and was given good news when she reached her destination. Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said to her, “Ya Umm Ayman! Ya Umme! (O Umm Ayman! O my mother!) Indeed for you is a place in Paradise!”
When Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam passed away she wept profusely. Sayyidina Abu Bakr RA and Sayyidina Umar RA visited her and asked her, “is Nabi Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam not gone to a better place?” She replied, “By Allah, I knew that the Messenger of Allah would die but I cry now because the revelation from on high has come to an end for us.” Umm Ayman died when Uthman RA was Khalifa. |
Article by a Muslimah
One night, when I was about 15 years old, I thought I was going to die. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, I just went to bed and was overcome with an overwhelming feeling that I was going to die. I tossed and turned, afraid that it was going to happen at any second. It was an unexplainable, perhaps irrational, kind of fear. But the fear kept me up praying that it not happen that night, too scared to shout out to anyone and tell them what I was thinking, or ask them to stay with me during my last moments, I can amusingly admit.
As if death only visits after hours, I gave in to sleep when light broke. There’s no fear – or less fear – when you are surrounded by light.
Everything that has life comes with an expiry date. Your death clock is ticking. The very moment Allah SWT commanded an angel to blow your soul into your body – just a developing foetus housed inside your mother’s womb, the countdown to your body’s last breath began.
Death’s inevitability is probably the only subject of life’s reality that humanity agrees on. As Muslims we are aware of what happens after death, despite some denying that there is a definite state of Barzakh, an interval between death and resurrection.
In a Hadith relayed upon the authority of al-Bara’ ibn `Aazib, the Sahaabah RA went with Nabi Muhammad SAW to a burial of a man from the Ansaar until they arrived at the grave and the man had still not been placed inside it. The Messenger of Allah SAW sat down and the Sahaabah sat around him.
“You would have thought that birds were upon our heads from our silence and in the hand of the Messenger of Allah SAW was a stick which he was poking the ground with. Then he started looking at the sky and looking at the earth and looking up down three times. Then he said to us, ‘Ask Allah for refuge from the torment of the grave’, he repeated this command two or three times. Then he said O Allah I seek refuge in you from the torment of the grave (three times).”
Rasulullah SAW warned us to prepare for death and seek refuge in Allah SWT from the torment of the grave. Yet it has become something we take lightly. Nowadays we chat about death casually, even flippantly. Like many other of life’s aspects, we speak about it knowledgeably but our actions demonstrate incompetency.
Just like the Ihram places everyone on equal terms, so does the grave. From lofty mansions, luxury apartments or mud huts, our eventual place of residence is the same – a rectangular hole, six feet in the ground. In that confined space, either a garden from heaven or a hole from hell, we’ll lay draped in a sheet of white inexpensive cloth, the only thing to separate us from a blanket of sand.
You could say we’re living by the YOLO (You Only Live Once) slogan. But then again you only die once also. Many think death is a bridge they’ll cross when they get there. The bridge comes after, and it’s as thin as a strand of hair, as sharp as a sword and its length spans over Hell fire.
“Every soul shall taste death,” Allah SWT repeats this aayah in different chapters in the Quraan. The word taste is used to express that death is just the beginning of something. It isn’t the complete experience or the end of life. It is merely the movement from one reality to another, the start to a new beginning. The dead are buried among us, living in their own realm. Driving pass cemeteries still doesn’t make it easy to envisage.
Knowing the scary reality of the Hereafter we spend the present lost in life’s luxuries. We openly justify wrongs and delude ourselves into a false sense of intellect and understanding. We scold anyone who speaks or writes truth only because we choose to idle away in disobedience.
And sadly disobedience is taken for granted. Obedience is brushed away as being conservative, disobedience regarded as open minded. And the new rule propagated through shaytaan’s social media is that life’s pleasures can and must be enjoyed.
Instead of asking ourselves if we are ready to taste death were it to visit us in the next five minutes or whether death in disobedience bodes well for us, we scold anyone who exposes our collective flaws. We cloak ourselves in labels of intellect and knowledge yet our actions don’t separate us from the disbelievers, only our names do.
In the hereafter every soul shall experience its own reality and come to intimately understand its true condition and where it stands in relation to the nature, purpose, and greater realities of existence. There are two resurrections that take place after death, the first is in the Barzakh and the second is at the final judgment. A person’s life is likened to a book – with each thought, word, and action, they are writing on the pages of their soul, the state of their nafs is impacted by what they occupy themselves with in this world.
Some might incorrectly perceive me to be writing this self righteously. What Taqwa does an article like this inspire, others will question. Accusations of this being an “uneducated opinion” or a misunderstood acceptance of the truth as though it is based on fabrication will be thrown around. It’s written in the hope that it serves as a reminder – to myself first. There are many verses in the noble Quraan and Ahadith that speak of life after death. Rasulullah’s SAW advice to us, mentioned above, and his own urgent seeking of refuge in Allah SWT, is that not enough evidence?
Reminding ourselves of death is a painful necessity. Especially since there is much we condone as acceptable in our daily lives. Life is a beautiful scene. But it is temporary. If we get too engrossed in the comforts it offers, we lose focus of the final destination because we can’t see it or feel it or comprehend it. Islam does not teach us to live life according to the immoral system of YOLO but to worship Allah SWT and devote our thoughts, actions, words and life to seeking His Pleasure, and only so we may be rewarded with the ultimate prize.
We can never go back and make a new beginning or change things, but we can struggle to make a better ending. We can do our best to add up our good deeds. We can strive for piety and the pleasure of Allah SWT because to Allah do we belong and to Him is our return.
Death is scary. It is inescapable. It is real. But there is no fear when you are shrouded in light. |