The Firsts (Sahaba Stories) | The Forerunners of Islam
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Life of the Prophet (seerah)
Khawla Bint Hakim & Uthman Ibn Madhun: The Righteous Couple | The Firsts
52
Life of the Prophet (seerah)
Al-Shifa bint Abdullah (ra): The Healer and Scholar | The Firsts Shorts
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Life of the Prophet (seerah)
Shurahbil Ibn Hasana (ra): The Scribe and Commander | The Firsts Shorts
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Life of the Prophet (seerah)
Khalid ibn al-Walid (ra): The Legendary Military General | The Firsts
126
Life of the Prophet (seerah)
Amr ibn al-As (ra): His Wicked Father and “Better” Brother | The Firsts
146
Life of the Prophet (seerah)
Tulayha ibn Khuwaylid (ra): From False Prophet to Shaheed | The Firsts
147
Life of the Prophet (seerah)
Zayd ibn al-Khattab (ra): The Quiet Brother of Omar (ra) | The Firsts
Atika bint Zayd (ra) - The Wife of Many Martyrs | The Firsts Shorts
How many people would intercede as martyrs for the spouse that supported them in their courage? Listen as Dr. Omar Suleiman introduces us to Atika bint Zayd (ra), the wife of many martyrs.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. As-Salaamu Alaikum Wa Rahmatullah Wa Barakatuhu everyone. Welcome back to the first shorts where we are covering some of the early biographies in Islam that only have a paragraph or two about them, but we want to relive their memory and revive their memory inshallah ta'ala. And the person we are speaking about today is Atika bint Zaid ibn Amr ibn Nufayl. May Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la be pleased with her and her father. Allahumma Ameen. And before I talk about her and what she encountered in this life, I want to talk about the name Atika because I know that a lot of people like to take these names and inshallah ta'ala consider them for names of their children. As this is a tradition that we have in our sunnah from the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam to give good names and to consider the names of the sahaba. Atika is an interesting name. It technically means a person who puts on a lot of perfume and there are other usages for it. And it was a common name for women at the time of the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam. And there's a narration when the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam was in Hunain that the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam says, Ana ibn al-awatika min sulaym. I am the son of the awatik. Meaning the Atikas, the plural of women named Atika. I am the son of the awatik. And in one narration, the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam says, wa ibn al-fawatima min Quraysh. And the son of the Fatimahs of Quraysh. So I am the son of the Atikas from Sulaim and from the Fatimahs of Quraysh. And that is because when you look at the lineage of the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam, there were so many women named Atika. So you have Atika, the mother of Abdi Manaf. Atika, the mother of Hashim. Atika, his grandmother Sulaiman from Banu Zuhra. So this is a name that was quite common amongst the Arabs at the time. And here you have Atika bint Zaid radiAllahu ta'ala anhum. And when we talk about Atika bint Zaid, I want you to go way back to probably one of the most definitive stories in the firsts. And that is the man who embraced
the way of Ibrahim Alayhi Salaam and the man who lived in accordance with the way of Ibrahim Alayhi Salaam before it was formalized through the revelation to the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam. The man who the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam said, will stand on the day of judgment as an Ummah by himself with two guardians, Zaid radiAllahu ta'ala anhum ibn Amir ibn Nufail. And Zaid radiAllahu ta'ala anhum, we covered him in detail, then we covered his desire for his son to be a companion of the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam. And that of course was Sa'eed ibn Zaid. So when Zaid ibn Amir ibn Nufail passed away, remember this was a man who was removed from the ways of ignorance, who gave his kids the best tarbiyah, the best mentorship, the best guide. And that is that he would not only reject idol worship at his time, but he rejected alcohol. He rejected the burial of young daughters at the time. And he would take those girls that were to be buried in female infanticide and he'd bring them into his own home radiAllahu anhu and raise them to a point where they could get married instead. And with Zaid radiAllahu anhu, he leaves behind only two children. And that is Sa'eed ibn Zaid, who we have already covered extensively. May Allah be pleased with him, who of course is one of the 10 promised paradise. And this noble woman Atika radiAllahu ta'ala anhu. Now, when we talk about Atika, she is known for a few things. She's known for her beauty. She's known for being an exceedingly beautiful woman. She's known for being an exceedingly eloquent woman. So she was a poet. And this is where you see her biography is full of poetry, lamenting the situation that she was put in in multiple cases. She was known for her religion, her worship, her ibadahs, Ibn Kathir radiAllahu anhu narrates that she was a woman of great ibadah, great devotion.
She was known for a complete character, just a beautiful, well-rounded character as well. So she's everything that you could want in a woman. And she is everything that you could aspire to as a human being, right? I mean, she has character, she has religion, she has devotion, she's intelligent, she's wise. She has all of these things radiAllahu ta'ala anha. And so when we start to get to her story, we find that the first person that she married is Abdullah ibn Abi Bakr as-Siddiq radiAllahu ta'ala anhuma. Now, I can't tell you how many times I've been corrected in a lecture when I say Abdullah ibn Abi Bakr, and they say, are you sure? Do you mean Abdullah ibn Umar? No, I mean Abdullah ibn Abi Bakr, who is a son of Abu Bakr, who is not well known, but he did play a role in Islam, okay? And in fact, he played a role in the Hijrah. If you remember when we spoke about Asmaa bint Abi Bakr, radiAllahu ta'ala anha, she was the one who would bring the food and the drink to the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam and Abu Bakr, may Allah be pleased with them, as they were on their way to Al-Madinah. It was her brother, Abdullah, who was the one that would, you know, hear the news of Mecca and then relay it to the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam and Abu Bakr as-Siddiq radiAllahu ta'ala anhu on their way. So Abdullah ibn Abi Bakr is also one of the first Muslims, but he was very young at the time, okay? So Abdullah is the first husband of Atika bint Zayd. And the story of Abdullah and Atika is that Abdullah fell madly in love with her, to a point that he held back from doing any good deeds because he just wanted to be with his wife. That's not a bad thing altogether, right? But it was excessive. It was excessive to the point that he, you know, was holding back from serving alongside the Prophet SallAllahu alaihi wasallam. He's holding back from the masjid. He's virtually unseen in the community. So the honeymoon phase was going way too long. And because of how madly in love he was and how he was holding back,
Abu Bakr radiAllahu ta'ala anhu wanted his family to be a family of service. So Abu Bakr radiAllahu ta'ala anhu eventually pushed him to divorce her. And I want to make a serious disclaimer here that those of you that are parents, in-laws, you are not Abu Bakr. This is a very unique situation. You are not Abu Bakr, nor is your son Abdullah. This is a very different scenario, a very different situation. We don't extract from this that anyone can force their children to get divorced or things of that sort. This is a very unique situation where Abu Bakr radiAllahu ta'ala anhu saw that this was an unhealthy attachment that he had. And this was to teach him a, you know, a sense of detachment from dunya and attachment to the deen. When that happens, when Abu Bakr radiAllahu ta'ala anhu told him that he should part ways because his attachment is too much, he authors this poem. And so you have all of this love poetry. He says, aAAatikoo laa ansaaki maa dharra shaariqoo wa maa laaha najmun fissamaa'i muhalliqoo aw aAAatika Now I have to paraphrase, but he says, I will never forget you. So long as anything appears in the sky during the day, meaning the sun rises or any, or any star or any bird flies through the sky at night, I will never forget you. Day or night, I will always think about you, aw aAAatika. laaha khuluqoon jazloon wa ra'yoon wa mansiboon And he praises her akhlaaq, her character. He praises her intelligence. He praises her status, her nobility, right? So he says, she's a woman of character, a woman of intelligence, a woman of character. walam araa mithli tallaqa alyauma mithlaha And I don't see that someone like me would divorce someone like her on any day. walaa mithlaha fee ghayri shay'in tu tallaqoo And I don't see that her, that she would be divorced in anything, that she would be parted from in any situation, right? So, SubhanAllah, it's this serious love poetry,
this serious attachment that he has. So Abu Bakr radiAllahu anhu says, go ahead, take her back. You know, I'm not gonna keep you away. I'm not gonna break your heart. But he wanted him to be more active and more involved in the service that was expected of the family of Abu Bakr as-Siddiq radiAllahu ta'ala anhu. And indeed, Abdullah would serve and it was in the siege of Ta'if later on that Abdullah ibn Abu Bakr, may Allah be pleased with him and his father, was struck by an arrow. And that arrow eventually took his life and he passed away, you know, sometime after in Al-Madinah due to that arrow striking him radiAllahu ta'ala anhu wa an abi, so also one of the first. When he passed away, so he was martyred, he's a shaheed. Atika also loved him dearly. So she said, alaytu la tanfakku ayni hazinatan alayka I promise, I take an oath that my eyes will never stop crying for you. wala yanfakku jildi aghbara and that my skin will never touch, my skin will always remain in dust, meaning it'll never touch any sweet scents, it will never touch other than you. So basically, I'm gonna spend the rest of my life mourning you, okay? And SubhanAllah, he passes away and sometime after that, Zayd ibn al-Khattab radiAllahu ta'ala anhu Zayd being the brother of Umar and the brother of Fatima bint al-Khattab. Now, think about the tree for a moment, okay? Al-Khattab was the one who persecuted Zayd ibn Amr ibn Nufayl to the point that Zayd radiAllahu anhu could not be in Mecca anymore because of the persecution he faced at the hands of al-Khattab. When he would call to monotheism, al-Khattab would beat him and would persecute him. Now you have Sa'eed, the son of Zayd, who is married to who? Fatima bint al-Khattab. Fatima being the famous sister of Umar radiAllahu ta'ala anhu wa anha, who of course,
you know, was instrumental to his initial embracing of Islam and we spoke about her. So now Zayd ibn al-Khattab at some point marries her and then Zayd ibn al-Khattab passes away as a shaheed in what? In al-Yamama. Remember Umar radiAllahu anhu said that you preceded me to Islam and you preceded me to martyrdom as well. So both Fatima and Zayd, the brother and sister of Umar radiAllahu anhu, wa anhum became Muslim before him and here you have Zayd passing away. So now she's been married to Abdullah bin Abi Bakr. She has been married to Zayd ibn al-Khattab. She's once again taking an oath that she will not get married. Umar radiAllahu ta'ala anhu says to her, do not make haram for yourself what Allah has made halal. Remember widows in particular, especially the widows of shuhada, the widows of martyrs would get married multiple times. And this is something that we've already covered multiple times with people like Asmaa ibn Abi Umays radiAllahu ta'ala anha, who married Ja'far and then Abu Bakr and then Ali. So here you have Umar radiAllahu ta'ala anhu who is proposing to the widow of her brother. And she is, you know, in a situation where, you know, she's unsure about her oath, but she doesn't want to turn down a person like Umar radiAllahu ta'ala anhu. So Aisha radiAllahu anha comes to her on her wedding night and reminds her of the poem that she once said about Abdullah who's the brother of Aisha, right? Reminds her of the poem and changes the words for her, okay? And says, alaytu la tanfakku ayni qareeratun alayka wa la yanfakku jildi asfara That I have taken an oath, I have promised that my eye will rest after you, that it will be pleased, that, you know, that I will be able to get there. And instead of aghbara, that my skin will never touch dust, asfara is a very particular type of yellow perfume. And so there's some wisdom in that, that basically she's saying,
look, you have a way out. This was an oath that you didn't have to take upon yourself and that it's okay to be married once again. So here she was now Atika bint Zayd ibn Amr ibn Nufayl. She has married now Abdullah, the son of Abu Bakr. She has married Zayd ibn Al-Khattab and she has married Umar ibn Al-Khattab radiAllahu ta'ala anhu as well. So I just want you to think about this for a moment. Al-Khattab, to both of his sons, okay? Both of his sons marry the daughter of Zayd. And his daughter, Fatima bint Al-Khattab, marries the son of Zayd. Right, so Sa'eed ibn Zayd and here Atika bint Zayd, both of them will be married to the children of Al-Khattab. And in the case of Atika, two sons of Al-Khattab, Umar radiAllahu ta'ala anhu and Zayd radiAllahu ta'ala anhu. And that just shows you the wisdom of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. Al-Khattab wanted to prohibit the spread of iman, to prohibit the spread of faith through the preaching of Zayd radiAllahu ta'ala anhu. And instead what ended up happening? His own children, Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, would be a part of bearing the seed and the fruit of iman for generations to come after him. So here you have now Atika married to Umar. There are multiple stories obviously of her being married to Umar radiAllahu ta'ala anhu that we spoke about. Some of them of how Umar radiAllahu anhu feared the preference to his family and some of the goods that would come to his home and Umar radiAllahu ta'ala anhu not wanting his family to in any way benefit from his position as the Khalifah of the Muslims. You also find that Umar radiAllahu ta'ala anhu was jealous of her going out to the masjid, but he didn't prohibit her because the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam prohibited that the women be prohibited from the masjid. And so Atika was someone who insisted on going to the masjid in the evenings on a regular basis. Then Umar radiAllahu anhu was killed. Okay, so she has now lived to see three of her husbands
become shuhada. Abdullah bin Abi Bakr, shaheed. Zayd bin Khattab, shaheed. Umar radiAllahu ta'ala anhu, shaheed. And she cried and she authored poetry about Umar radiAllahu ta'ala anhu as well. SubhanAllah at this point, I mean, who else is gonna marry you, right? I mean, you've been married to those three people. Who comes next? Az-Zubair radiAllahu ta'ala anhu. One of the Ashar Mubashireen, one of the 10 promised paradise. And if you go back to the personality of Az-Zubair and his stature, and you compare it to Umar radiAllahu anhu, his stature and his personality, they were very similar. Az-Zubair radiAllahu ta'ala anhu was also a huge man, grew up under very rough circumstances, and had a very similar personality to Umar radiAllahu anhu and shared with him and being from Al-Ashar Mubashireen, being from the 10 that were promised paradise. So Az-Zubair radiAllahu ta'ala anhu marries Atika radiAllahu anhu as well. And then Az-Zubair radiAllahu anhu is martyred in the Battle of Al-Jamal. Okay, actually he left the battlefield. And if you go back and you watch the biography of Az-Zubair radiAllahu ta'ala anhu, that he was killed in his salah and martyred in his salah radiAllahu ta'ala anhu. So now she has married Abdullah bin Abi Bakr, she has married Zaid bin Al-Khattab, she has married Umar bin Al-Khattab, she has married Az-Zubair radiAllahu ta'ala anhu ajma'een and they all died as shuhada. They all died as shuhada. So you have to imagine then what people are saying. Did they attach a bad omen to her? Did they say, okay, don't touch her. Number one, she's been a widow four times now. Number two, everyone that marries her seems to die. No, they actually said, man aradash shuhada fadiatazawaj bi Atika. If a person wants to be a shaheed, let them marry Atika because that's clearly the trajectory here that Allah has given shuhada to every single person that she was married to. So SubhanAllah, who is the last person, she got married again.
Who is the fifth husband of Atika, none other than Al-Husayn radiAllahu ta'ala anhu. SubhanAllah, whose martyrdom, whose shuhada is one of the most tragic in history, but of course, at the same time, one of the ways that a person leaves this earth while they are pleased, Husayn radiAllahu ta'ala anhu, of course left this earth in a way that he is pleasing to Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. And may Allah be pleased with him. But she did not live to see Al-Husayn radiAllahu ta'ala anhu martyred, rather she died before Al-Husayn radiAllahu ta'ala anhu. So all five of this woman's husbands, SubhanAllah, were shuhada and they were considered from the greatest of the companions of the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam, the most beloved people to the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam. She lived her life about 72 years and passed away in the Khilafah of Muawiyah. And she was known for her eloquence. She was known for her poetry. She was known for her knowledge. She was known for her ibadah. She was known for her character. And this is a woman radiAllahu ta'ala anhu that you can imagine, SubhanAllah, what passed through her home was truly precious. May Allah SubhanAllah be pleased with her and on her father, who SubhanAllah, wanted to see his children become companions and wanted to see the seed of Islam thrive and look what came through his offspring, radiAllahu ta'ala anhu, in both Saeed ibn Zaid and in Atika. May Allah be pleased with them all. Allahumma ameen. JazakAllah khayran. InshaAllah ta'ala. We'll see you next time. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu.
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