Zayd ibn Ḥāritha al-Kalbī () (), was an early Muslim, Sahabi and the former adopted son of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad. He is commonly regarded as the fourth person to have accepted Islam, after Muhammad's wife Khadija, Muhammad's cousin Ali, and Muhammad's close companion Abu Bakr. Zayd was a slave that Hakim ibn Hizam, Khadija's nephew, bought for her at a market in Ukaz. Zayd then became her and Muhammad’s adopted son and took his lineage. His lineage was later restored just before he had his second wife Zaynab bint Jahsh divorced and married to Muhammad. He later went on to marry into Muhammad's family.

Zayd was a commander in the early Muslim army and led several early military expeditions during the lifetime of Muhammad. Zayd led his final expedition in September 629 CE, when he set out to raid the Byzantine city of Bosra. However the Muslim army was intercepted by Byzantine forces and Zayd was subsequently killed at the Battle of Mu'tah.

Childhood

Zayd is said to have been ten years younger than Muhammad, suggesting a birth-year of 581. He is also said to have been 55 (lunar) years old at his death in 629, indicating a birthdate of 576. Zayd's mother, Suda bint Thaalaba, was from the Maan branch of the Tayy tribe. Zayd ibn Amr, an outspoken monotheist, replied, "I do not eat anything which you slaughter in the name of your stone idols. I eat none but those things on which Allah's Name has been mentioned at the time of slaughtering." After this encounter, said Muhammad, "I never stroked an idol of theirs, nor did I sacrifice to them, until God honoured me with his apostleship."

  1. Humayma bint Sayfi (Umm Mubashshir), the widow of Al-Baraa ibn Maarur,</blockquote>

By contrast, Montgomery Watt points out that Zayd was high in Muhammad's esteem.

<blockquote>She can hardly have thought that he was not good enough. She was an ambitious woman, however, and may already have hoped to marry Muhammad, or she may have wanted to marry someone with whom Muhammad did not want his family to be so closely allied.

Divorce from Zaynab

The marriage lasted less than two years.

A story rejected by Muslim scholars, was later proposed by the 9th-century historians Ibn Sa'd and al-Tabari, in which Muhammad paid a visit to Zayd's house: the hairskin curtain that served as Zayd's front door was blown aside, accidentally revealing Zaynab dressed only in her shift. Zaynab arose to dress herself, advising Muhammad that Zayd was not at home but he was welcome to visit. However, he did not enter. He exclaimed to himself, “Praise be to Allah, who turns hearts around!” and then departed.

After this, they report there having been a conflict between the couple, and Zaynab shut Zayd out of the bedroom. Zayd divorced Zaynab in December 626. mainly because of its lack of having any chain of narration and its complete absence from any authentic hadith. Some commentators have commented it being absurd that Muhammad would suddenly become aware of Zaynab's beauty one day after having known her all her life; if her beauty had been the reason for Muhammad to marry her, he would have married her himself in the first place rather than arranging her marriage to Zayd.

According to the translator Fishbein:

<blockquote>Zaynab, who was Muhammad's cousin, had been married by Muhammad's arrangement to Muhammad's freed slave Zayd b. Harithah, who lived in Muhammad's household and came to be regarded as his adoptive son - so that he was regularly addressed as Zayd, son of Muhammad. Whether the marriage between Zayd and Zaynab was a mesalliance from the beginning is speculation, though the account maintains that Zayd was not reluctant to divorce his wife and allow her to marry Muhammad. Muhammad is portrayed as reluctant to proceed with the marriage because of scruples about whether marrying one's adopted son's former wife violated the prohibited degrees of marriage. Arab customary practice recognized kinship relations not based on blood ties: fosterage (having nursed from the same woman) was one such relationship; the question whether adoption fell into this category must have been unclear among Muslims. The marriage did not take place until after a Qur'anic revelation was received, giving permission for believers to marry the divorced wives of their adopted sons. </blockquote>

Historiographic assessments suggest that the "lovestruck" narratives themselves were a fabrication that developed over a century after the death of Muhammad.

Change of adoption laws in Islam

After these events, the traditional Arab form of adoption was no longer recognized in Islam; it was replaced by kafala. Three verses of the Qur'an were revealed about this. Al-Tabari states that Q33:40 was revealed because "the Munafiqun [hypocrites] made this a topic of their conversation and reviled the Prophet, saying 'Muhammad prohibits [marriage] with the [former] wives of one's own sons, but he married the [former] wife of his son Zayd.'"

  1. Al-'Is in October 627.
  2. At-Taraf,
  3. The Battle of Mu'tah in September 629, where Zayd was killed. was a member of the Banu Fazara. She married into the Banu Badr. According to Ibn Ishaq and al-Tabari, Umm Qirfa was wealthy. She was described as being an old woman with high social status and wife of Malik ibn Hudhayfa ibn Badr al-Fazari. After her thirty horsemen were defeated by Zayd ibn Haritha, Muhammad ordered Qirfa or her children to be slaughtered "by putting a rope into her two legs and to two camels and driving them until they rent her in two..." Two of her limbs were torn in to two by four camels, her severed head was later paraded all over the streets of Medina.

As for the first narration, which was mentioned by al-Tabari, the sequence of its chain of transmission is as follows:

Al-Waqidi has been condemned as an untrustworthy narrator and has been frequently and severely criticized by scholars, thus his narrations have been abandoned by the majority of hadith scholars. Yahya ibn Ma'een said: "Al-Waqidi narrated 20,000 false hadith about the prophet". Al-Shafi'i, Ahmad ibn Hanbal and Al-Albani said: "Al-Waqidi is a liar" while Al-Bukhari said he didn't include a single letter by Al-Waqidi in his hadith works.

On the other hand, the story goes against the Prophet Muhammad's orders to merciful killing and forbid mutilation.

In, Safi-Ur-Rahman Al-Mubarakpuri in his book Ar-Raheeq Al-Makhtum tells that Umm Qirfa wanted to kill Muhammad: