Four Complete Women

And that is why Āsiyah qualified to be one of the four women whom the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) praised in a hadith. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) says: kamula min al-rijāli kathīr, wa lam yakmul min al-nisāʾi illā arbaʿ — the men who were complete were many, but the women who were complete were only four. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said that these four were Maryam bint ʿImrān, and Āsiyah the wife of Firʿawn, and Khadījah, and Fāṭimah.

And we find that these four women are related in one way or another to the anbiyāʾ. Two of them raised anbiyāʾ, one of them was the wife of a nabī, and the other was the daughter of a nabī. Maryam and Āsiyah raised anbiyāʾ: Maryam raised ʿĪsā, and Āsiyah raised Mūsā. And Khadījah was the wife of a nabī, and Fāṭimah bint Muhammad is the daughter of the leader of the anbiyāʾ, Muhammad (peace be upon him). These are the four — only four complete women.

Āsiyah believed in the message of Mūsā, and so did the believer from the family of Firʿawn. And as for the rest — if we take the tafsīr of fa-mā āmana maʿahū illā dhurriyyatun min qawmih^*** to mean some young people from the people of Firʿawn, there were those. And there is also māshiṭat Firʿawn, a woman who used to come for the daughters. But to sum it up, only a few believed.

This is the end of the story of Mūsā and Firʿawn. Now we will start a new chapter, and that is the story of Mūsā and Banū Isrāʾīl.