Umm Salama

An Early Emigrant for Her Faith

Umm Salama, Hind bint Abi Umayya, was of the Quraysh clan of Banu Makhzum. With her first husband Abu Salama — her cousin and the eleventh man to accept Islam — she embraced the faith early and, harried by the Quraysh, emigrated to Abyssinia and later to Madinah. Abu Salama fought at Badr and Uhud, where he took a wound that never fully healed; it reopened and he died of it in 4 AH, leaving her widowed and with young children. 1 Stories of the Sahabah · pp. 249–250 — Zakariyya Kandhlawi — Umm Salama and Abu Salama's early Islam, their emigrations, and Abu Salama's death of his Uhud wound in 4 AH.

The Du’a Rewarded

Abu Salama had taught her a prayer he heard from the Prophet ﷺ for one struck by tragedy. She kept reciting it after his death — though she could not imagine a husband better than him — until Allah answered it with marriage to the Prophet ﷺ himself, at the end of Shawwal 4 AH, her own son Salama giving her in marriage. 2 Stories of the Sahabah · pp. 250 — Zakariyya Kandhlawi — Umm Salama recites the du'a for calamity, her hesitation, and her marriage to the Prophet with her son Salama as guardian.

Virtues in the Hadith

It is from Umm Salama that the Ummah received the Prophet’s ﷺ teaching on what to say in affliction — the very du’a that brought her so great a reward:

اللَّهُمَّ أْجُرْنِي فِي مُصِيبَتِي وَأَخْلِفْ لِي خَيْرًا مِنْهَا

”O Allah, reward me in my affliction and give me something better than it in exchange.” (Following: “We belong to Allah and to Him we return.”)

Sahih Muslim 918a · Book 11 (Funerals), Hadith 4 · narrated by Umm Salama

Death & Legacy

Renowned for her beauty in youth and her wisdom throughout her long life, Umm Salama outlived all the other wives of the Prophet ﷺ, dying at about eighty-four and being the last of the Mothers of the Believers to pass. 3 Stories of the Sahabah · pp. 251 — Zakariyya Kandhlawi — Umm Salama's renowned beauty; she was the last of the Prophet's wives to die, aged about 84.