2 of 4 · 10th year of prophethood · c. 619–620 CE · Makkah
Sawdah bint Zam'ah رضي الله عنها
A Home After the Year of Sorrow
After Khadijah died, the Prophet's ﷺ house was left without a mother, and his daughters without one to care for them. Khawlah bint Hakim, the wife of 'Uthman ibn Maz'un, came to him and asked whether he would remarry, and mentioned Sawdah — a believer who had followed him and suffered for it.
He agreed, and Sawdah accepted. She became the first woman he married after Khadijah, and for a time the only wife in his home, looking after his household and his daughters through the last hard years in Makkah and the move to Madinah.
She was older, widowed and not wealthy. The marriage gave a sincere emigrant a home and protection, and gave the grieving Prophet ﷺ a household again.
Marriage in the Prophet's ﷺ life was often an act of care — for a widow who had sacrificed, and for children who needed a home.
Who in your community has sacrificed for their faith and now has no one looking after them?
- Musnad AhmadGrade not recorded here
- Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabaqat al-KubraHistorical report
- al-Dhahabi, Siyar A'lam al-Nubala'Historical report
What the hadith grades mean
- Sahih (authentic): an unbroken chain of trustworthy, precise narrators, free of hidden flaws or contradiction. It is acted upon.
- Hasan (good): like sahih, but a narrator's precision is slightly lighter. It is also accepted and acted upon. "Hasan sahih" means it reaches sahih by its routes.
- Da'if (weak): a break in the chain or a narrator who is not reliable enough. It is not used to establish beliefs or rulings.
- Very weak (munkar, matruk): a seriously flawed chain or a narrator accused of lying. It is not relied on at all.
- Mawdu' (fabricated): falsely attributed to the Prophet ﷺ. It may not be narrated as his words except to warn against it.
- The two Sahihs: every hadith with a full chain in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim is accepted as sahih by the scholars of hadith.
- Historical report: biographies and histories (Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabari) record events with chains that are often incomplete. They are used for the story, not for rulings.
- Hadith scholars grade a narration; the four madhhabs do not. Where a hadith carries a ruling, the page shows which schools act on it.
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