Sawda bint Zamʿah: The First Wife the Prophet ﷺ Married After Khadijah (UK Guide)

The first wife the Prophet ﷺ married after Khadijah (RA)

Sawda bint Zamʿah was the second wife of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ — the first he married after the death of Khadijah (RA), and the wife who held that role alone for approximately three years before he subsequently married ʿAisha (RA). She was an early convert to Islam, a widow with significant social standing, and a Mother of the Believers known across the early Muslim community for her dignified presence, gentle humour, and the gracious moment near the end of her life when she made one of the most preserved acts of self-effacement in the household of the Prophet ﷺ.

For British Muslim families teaching their daughters about Muslim widows, older Muslim women, and women whose contribution to Islamic history was through quiet steadiness rather than dramatic public role, Sawda is essential reading.

Her early life

Sawda bint Zamʿah ibn Qays was born in Makkah around 596 CE — making her approximately 12 years older than ʿAisha (RA) when she joined the Prophet's ﷺ household. She came from the Banū ʿĀmir branch of the Quraysh, a respectable middle-tier family. She married al-Sakrān ibn ʿAmr, with whom she had several children. Both Sawda and her husband were among the early Muslim converts in Makkah.

When the persecution of the early Muslims by Quraysh became severe, Sawda and her husband joined the second migration to Abyssinia (Ethiopia) — one of the small group of early Muslims granted refuge by the Christian Negus, al-Najāshī. They returned to Makkah after a period in Abyssinia, where her husband died shortly afterwards.

Her marriage to the Prophet ﷺ

The death of Khadijah (RA) in approximately 10 BH (619 CE), in what is called the Year of Sorrow (ʿām al-ḥuzn), left the Prophet ﷺ a 50-year-old widower with several daughters to raise. He had been married to Khadijah for 25 years and had taken no other wife during that time. Approximately one year after her death, Khawla bint Ḥakīm — a Companion who acted as a kind of family adviser to the Prophet ﷺ — suggested that he consider remarrying. She put forward two names: ʿAisha bint Abī Bakr (then a young child not yet of marriageable age) and Sawda bint Zamʿah.

The Prophet ﷺ approved both proposals. He betrothed ʿAisha (the marriage to be consummated several years later when she came of age) and married Sawda immediately. Sawda was therefore the wife who actively shared his household through the final years of the Makkan persecution, the migration to Madinah, and the establishment of the Madinan community — a role she held alone for approximately three years until ʿAisha came of age and joined the household.

Her contribution in this period

Sawda's role in the late Makkan and early Madinan period is often overlooked because her time as the Prophet's ﷺ only wife was relatively short. But it was a critical period:

• She raised the Prophet's ﷺ daughters Umm Kulthūm and Fāṭimah (RA) in their late childhood and adolescence, alongside her own children.
• She managed the Prophet's ﷺ household through the most intense period of Quraysh persecution — the years immediately after the boycott of Banū Hāshim and before the Hijrah.
• She made the migration to Madinah with the Prophet ﷺ, joining the small early community of refugees who had to rebuild their lives in a new city.

Her character and humour

The classical sources preserve Sawda as a woman of distinctive personality. She was tall and physically substantial — the Prophet ﷺ teased her about it gently, and she would tease him back. ʿAisha (RA) preserved several anecdotes of Sawda's wit and the easy humour she shared with the Prophet ﷺ. She was older than most of his subsequent wives, comfortable in herself, and brought a kind of grandmotherly steadiness to a household full of young energy.

One famous incident: Sawda was identified leaving the household at night to go to the toilet (the Madinan custom was to use designated outdoor areas). ʿUmar ibn al-Khattāb (RA), patrolling the streets, recognised her and called out — half-teasingly — that she had been recognised. Sawda returned upset to the Prophet ﷺ. The verse on the hijab, requiring the wives of the Prophet ﷺ to cover when going out, was revealed shortly afterwards (Quran 33:59). The Prophet ﷺ later said to ʿUmar: "I had been given permission to allow you out for your needs" — meaning the verse's restrictions still permitted necessary movement, but with covering. Sawda's quiet incident shaped a verse of the Quran.

The most-preserved moment of her life

As Sawda grew older, and as the Prophet's ﷺ household expanded with younger wives, she made a remarkable arrangement that the classical sources have preserved with care. Knowing that her physical age made her less able to participate in the rotation of nights between wives, she gave her allotted nights with the Prophet ﷺ to ʿAisha (RA) — the wife the Prophet ﷺ openly loved most.

The act was self-effacement in service of the Prophet's ﷺ happiness. It was also strategic: it allowed Sawda to remain a Mother of the Believers without the Prophet ﷺ feeling the need to divorce her (which the classical sources record he had briefly considered for practical household reasons). Sawda preserved her honour as the Prophet's ﷺ wife while consciously stepping back from the rotation that her age made difficult.

She was rewarded. The Quran refers to her arrangement obliquely in Surah An-Nisā 4:128: "And if a woman fears from her husband contempt or evasion, there is no sin upon them if they make terms of settlement between them — and settlement is best." Classical commentators including Ibn Kathir explain that the verse was revealed in the context of Sawda's arrangement, validating the principle that a wife may, by her own free choice, give up some of her conjugal rights to preserve her marriage. The arrangement is the prophetic precedent for amicable spousal accommodation in mature marriages where circumstances change.

Her later years and death

Sawda lived through the rest of the Prophet's ﷺ Madinan years, witnessed his death in 11 AH, and outlived him by approximately 21 years. She died around 32 AH (652 CE) during the caliphate of ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān (RA). She was buried in al-Baqīʿ cemetery in Madinah.

Lessons for British Muslim families

1. The dignity of the older wife

British Muslim communities, like many others, can be unkind to older women — particularly widows and divorcées. Sawda's story is a deliberate corrective. She was a woman of substantial age and physical presence; the Prophet ﷺ honoured her as his wife and Mother of the Believers throughout her life. Older Muslim women should be treated with the dignity Sawda was given.

2. Widows are marriageable

The Prophet ﷺ chose a widow as his second wife. He chose women, in his subsequent marriages, who were predominantly widows or divorcées rather than young virgins. The British Muslim cultural assumption that men must marry first-time-marrying women is not prophetic — it is cultural inheritance. British Muslim widows and divorcées are marriageable; the Prophet ﷺ modelled this directly.

3. Spousal accommodation in mature marriages

Sawda's arrangement to give her nights to ʿAisha is the Quranic foundation for the principle that mature spouses can, by mutual agreement, modify the standard expectations of marital rotation. British Muslim couples whose marriages enter different phases — children's needs intensifying, illness, age — have direct prophetic precedent for working out arrangements that suit their actual circumstances rather than the textbook ideal.

4. Quiet contribution counts

Sawda did not narrate as many hadith as ʿAisha. She was not a battlefield figure like Umm ʿUmara. She was not a public scholar like Hafsa. She raised the Prophet's ﷺ daughters, kept his household through the worst of the Makkan persecution, made the Hijrah with him, and gave way gracefully when the household expanded. The British Muslim grandmother quietly raising her grandchildren while their parents work, the British Muslim aunt providing emotional steadiness through family crises, the British Muslim mother who never sought a public profile — Sawda is the model.

Frequently asked questions

Where to go next

For more on the Mothers of the Believers, see our guides on Maryam bint ʿImrān, Maria the Copt, Maymūna bint al-Ḥārith, Juwairia bint al-Ḥārith, and Ṣafiyya bint Ḥuyayy. For broader study of women in early Islam, see How Islam Honoured Women. To study the sirah one-to-one with an Al-Azhar-graduate female teacher, book a free trial lesson.