Maymuna bint al-Harith

Maymuna was Maymuna bint al-Harith ibn Hazn al-Hilaliyya of Banu Hilal ibn Amir. Ibn Abd al-Barr and other biographers name her mother as Hind bint Awf, while recording a minor variation in the mother's more distant tribal attribution. Her full sister Lubaba al-Kubra, known as Umm al-Fadl, was the wife of al-Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib; Maymuna was therefore the maternal aunt of Abd Allah ibn Abbas. Through another sister she was also an aunt of Khalid ibn al-Walid. These relationships placed her inside a remarkable network of early Muslim households.

Classical biographies state that she had been married before the Prophet, first to Masud ibn Amr al-Thaqafi and later to Abu Rahm ibn Abd al-Uzza, who died and left her widowed. A report preserved by al-Dhahabi says that her earlier name was Barra and that the Prophet named her Maymuna. Because the name report is transmitted through later biographical material rather than a universally uniform early account, it is best retained as a reported former name rather than an uncontested fact.

The Prophet married her in 7 AH during the journey connected with Umrat al-Qada, and the marriage was completed at Sarif outside Makkah. The sources preserve a well-known disagreement over whether the contract was concluded while the Prophet was in the state of pilgrimage consecration. Ibn Abbas reported that he was in that state, while Maymuna's relatives, Abu Rafi and Yazid ibn al-Asamm, reported that both bridegroom and bride were outside it. Al-Dhahabi weighs these lines of transmission without erasing the disagreement. The secure historical core is the marriage in 7 AH and the connection with Sarif.

As a wife of the Prophet, Maymuna held the Qur'anic communal status of Mother of the Believers. Her household also became a place of observation and learning. Ibn Abbas, her nephew, spent a night in her home and carefully observed the Prophet's night prayer, ablution and recitation; Sahih Muslim preserves this detailed report. The episode shows how knowledge passed through family hospitality, direct observation and later teaching.

Maymuna herself transmitted practical details that became important in Islamic law. Sahih al-Bukhari preserves her account of the Prophet's ritual bath after major impurity, including the order of washing and ablution. Such reports are historically valuable because they record aspects of private worship that most public observers could not witness. Her students and transmitters included Ibn Abbas, Yazid ibn al-Asamm, Kuraib, Sulayman ibn Yasar, Ata ibn Yasar and others.

Another authenticated report illuminates both her generosity and the ethics of family responsibility. She freed a slave-girl and later informed the Prophet. He accepted the act but taught that giving her to one of Maymuna's maternal uncles would have brought a greater reward through maintaining kinship. Al-Dhahabi also preserves a report from Aisha describing Maymuna as among the most God-fearing of the Prophet's wives and among the strongest in maintaining family ties. These reports explain why later memory joined her name with devotion and kinship.

After the Prophet's death, Maymuna continued as a respected transmitter within the Medinan and Meccan scholarly network. The securely documented material does not present her as a leader of later political conflict; her most traceable public influence lies in hadith, household law, worship and the education of relatives and Successors. Her historical profile should therefore be built from the reports she transmitted and from the students who carried them, rather than from unsupported dramatic stories.

The burial tradition is unusually strong in its identification of place. Sahih al-Bukhari records that Ibn Abbas attended her funeral at Sarif and instructed the bearers to move her bier gently because she was a wife of the Prophet. Al-Dhahabi also preserves the report that she was buried at the shelter where married life with the Prophet had begun. The most widely preferred date is 51 AH, supported by Khalifa ibn Khayyat and judged by al-Dhahabi more plausible than the late report of 61 AH because Maymuna died before Aisha. Other dates exist, so the year remains qualified even though burial at Sarif is strongly attested.