#nusaybah

My dear sister in Islam, who do you look up to when it comes to your femininity? Do the names - Nusaybah, Rufaidah or Atikah sound familiar to you? If yes, then that's good but if they don't then maybe it is time we change perspectives in this life. Indeed, with the emergence of a lot of muslim sisters stepping up in podiums and walking down the streets for rallies to "voice" out their rights or influencers who start to remove their hijab down to fashion gurus making hijab a fashion rather than a code of modesty is quite alarming. Why is it that there seem to be a need for sisters to show their faces in mixed gatherings? Why is that there seem to be a need for our munaqqabah sisters to post videos of them while sharing some ahadith or qur'anic ayats or even advices and tips to remind Muslims about Islam? Why is that there seem to be a need for a simple sister to register or sign up in platforms that let anonymous people send them questions or messages? Why is that there seem to be a need for us to open doors for fitnah? Indeed, when haya goes - everything goes. _____ My dear sisters in Islam, some of the greatest women who ever walked in this earth or ever lived never had a single photo of them posted but look at the legacy that they have left in this world? Generation after generation still look up to them and take inspiration from their lives. And don't we all agree, that the bottom line of why we want to be famous and are willing to forsake our haya is so that we become known or that we may be seen as someone who did something for the ummah? My dear sister, for sure you think you are doing something for the ummah and I am pretty sure it is not something that would benefit you in your akhirah. I don't want to make this a very long post but here are some nice points that maybe would make you rethink of the route you're taking in life. Nusaybah Bint Ka'ab Radiyallahu Anha was famously known for her valor and courage as she was known to have fought during the Battle of Uhud protecting the Prophet ﷺ - it was said that she kept protecting the Prophet until she was injured. But did you know when she took allegiance in the night of Aqabah, she didn't shake hands with the Prophet ﷺ, not only because the Prophet ﷺ did not shake hands with women but because she knew honor comes from Allah not by shaking hands with men. - and look how Allah honored her throughout her remaining life. [1] Rufaidah Al Islamiyyah Radiyallahu Anha was famously known for her intelligence and love for science as she was known to be the first woman or nurse of Islam. She treated the wounded in every battle that the Prophet ﷺ participated. She was so famous that her tent was known as Rufaidah's tent. But did you know whenever she would tend to the Muslims, she still would highly observe her hijab and protect her haya because she knew honor comes from Allah not by forsaking your hijab for a worldly career. [2]

You mean if they were real or not? (Or if the stories about them are real or not, rather.) Nusaybah has more points in her favor than Khawlah does. Khawlah seems mythical whereas Nusaybah was at least a real person.

For those who don’t know, these are two ladies who were supposed to have taken part in some battles. Khawlah appears during the Islamic conquests and has a kind of Mulan-esque story, where she disguised herself and fought after her brother was captured by the Byzantine army. Nusaybah on the other hand appears earlier on in Islamic history, supposedly taking part in at least one of the battles against the Quraysh (and is sometimes said to have also participated in the Ridda Wars) with the knowledge of men around her.

As far as I know, Khawlah only begins appearing in medieval times (~1000s AD). Her first appearance is in a book attributed to the historian al-Waqidi called the Conquests of the Syria Region (Futuh Sham). This has long been recognized as a false attribution; the author is sometimes referred to as “Pseudo-Waqidi” in Western writings. The book has a bunch of colorful anecdotes and is generally meant to be entertaining rather than an actual historical source. So based on her total absence from any earlier or more reliable texts, I would classify Khawlah as a folk heroine.

Nusaybah is more interesting because there might be an actual basis to her story. She is listed as one of the early Ansar (Muslims from Medina) converted by a missionary Mohammed sent to the city. Apparently she was one of only two women present at the whole pledging incident that got Mo kicked out of Mecca. A bunch of sources say that she was at the Battle of Uhud, and sometimes she’s mentioned in other battles as well. Nusaybah is mentioned in some legitimate sources like Ibn Saad’s Tabaqat and Ibn Hisham’s sira, and her son and grandson transmitted some ahadith from her so at least she was a real person. The question is how much of this whole combat thing is based in historical accounts.

It was fairly common for pre-Islamic/early Islamic Arab women to be at battles, we at least know that much for a fact. They weren’t fighting, usually–they provided supportive roles like medical care, giving men water and supplies, or singing songs and reciting poetry to pump up their side and demoralize the other side. There are a small handful of semi-reliable stories placing women in combat, both on the Muslim side and on the enemy’s side, but it seems as though it was very rare.

So it’s possible that Nusaybah was at least present as a helper or whatever during some battles (if you’re picturing like… hellish, world-ending battles, it wasn’t like that, most of these were fairly low-casualty conflicts with less than 100 dead in total). And the story of her at the Battle of Uhud basically says that she didn’t set out to battle, she only ended up fighting when the Muslim army started to flee, leaving Mohammed behind with only a small group.

There are at least five versions of this story just in those two sources I mentioned. The one that both versions share was transmitted via Abu Zayd al-Ansari. I have no idea how reliable the story is, but it’s at least in legitimate ~800s AD sources. There are later and less reliable versions of the story that elaborate on it, but this is what it says:

I went out at the beginning of the day to see what the men were doing, carrying [water], and I came up to [Mohammed] who was with his companions while the battle was in their favour. When the [Muslims] were defeated, I [went to Mohammed] and stood up joining in the fight and protecting him with my sword and shooting with my bow until I suffered many wounds.

It goes on to say that she tried to stab a guy but couldn’t get past the armor he was wearing.

Now I will add that this story is absent from earlier (and other ~800s era) sources, and it wasn’t part of Ibn Ishaq’s original sira. The Battle of Uhud is portrayed as, like “the Muslims lost but the Quraysh just went home and said they’d meet again at Badr” in early sources and then it gets very dramatic as time goes on. Also, the pledging incident I mentioned involved the Ansar pledging to support Mohammed in battle (which is why the Meccans were pissed off about it), so this story may well have been created to show that even the women who pledged to him did in fact stand beside him in battle. But hey, I’ll grant it the “plausible” label, and we can at least say Nusaybah has a much stronger basis in history than Khawlah does.

Nusaybah is often said to have also been in the Battle of Yamama, which was part of a frustratingly vaguely-documented era called the Ridda Wars during the caliphate of Abu Bakr. After Mo died, various people tried to get in on his whole prophet-warlord technique, and one such guy was Maslama from the Najd region. Abu Bakr ordered his forces to put down Maslama’s rebellion, and so they battled at a place called Yamama. The Muslims won but endured a lot of casualties.

What she actually did at Yamama tends to vary from source to source, and in general this story is shakier than the one at Uhud. Some of the stories cast Nusaybah as an old woman whose son had died at Maslama’s hands and she wanted to avenge him. Some have her losing a hand or losing a whole arm; some have her killing Maslama himself (the more legitimate stories say he was killed by one of Abu Bakr’s soldiers), etc. These stories vary way too much for us to say they have a solid basis in history imo. Some other stories place her in other conquest expeditions like Khaybar, Hunayn etc but that’s where you start to get into really dicey sources.

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