Khawla bint Manzur

Khawla belonged to Banu Fazara, a branch of the wider Ghatafan confederation. Genealogical works name her father as Manzur ibn Zabban ibn Sayyar al-Fazari and her mother as Malika bint Kharija ibn Sinan al-Murriyya. The same works preserve a longer Fazari ancestry and identify her clearly enough to distinguish her from other women named Khawla in early Islamic literature.

Her first documented marriage was to Muhammad ibn Talha ibn Ubayd Allah of Banu Taym. Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani, drawing on al-Zubayr family genealogy, records that she bore him Ibrahim, Dawud and Umm al-Qasim. Muhammad was killed at the Battle of the Camel in 36 AH, corresponding to 656 CE, leaving Khawla a widow with children connected to the Talhid branch of Quraysh.

She subsequently married Imam Hasan ibn Ali. Reports differ in their narrative details: one account says Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr arranged the marriage, while another says Khawla entrusted her decision to Hasan during her father’s absence and that Manzur initially objected to being bypassed. These are transmitted family narratives rather than a basis for questioning the marriage itself, which is consistently preserved in genealogical sources.

From this marriage she bore Hasan ibn Hasan, later known as Hasan al-Muthanna. Khalifa ibn Khayyat and the Alid genealogist Sahl al-Bukhari both identify Khawla as his mother. Through Hasan al-Muthanna, she became an important maternal ancestor within the Hasanid line, while her children from Muhammad ibn Talha also connected her to a prominent Taymid family.

Literary and adab reports remember Khawla for beauty, eloquence and strong feeling. A report transmitted through Umar ibn Shabba describes her restraint during the first year of marriage until she bore a son, and preserves verses attributed to her father consoling her after Hasan’s death. Such reports are useful for the history of literary memory but should not be treated as securely dated autobiography.

The sources do not preserve a reliable year or place of her death, nor do they establish a specific grave. Her biography is therefore best grounded in her attested lineage, both documented marriages and her children, while later literary anecdotes remain explicitly attributed. Her earlier marriage to Muhammad ibn Talha and subsequent marriage to Imam Hasan are independently preserved in genealogical and adab sources, but the evidence does not permit certainty about her death or burial.