The Poisoned Sheep

Then there is the story of the two Jewish women. The first is Zaynab bint al-Ḥārith. This woman belonged to the nobility of the Yahūd. After the Battle of Khaybar and the defeat of the Yahūd, she held an invitation, a walīmah: she hosted the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) and some of the Companions. She roasted a sheep for them and filled it with poison; she asked which parts the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) loved, and she put the poison in those pieces. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) accepted the invitation, and he came with the Companions, and she offered them their meal, and they started eating. Bishr ibn al-Barāʾ was the first to swallow a bite of this meat. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) had the meat in his mouth, but he had not swallowed it yet, and then the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) dropped it and said: this bone is telling me that it is poisoned.

Then he called the woman and asked her: did you poison this for me? She said: yes. He said: why did you do so? She said: if you were a king, then you would be killed, and we would be at rest, because we would have rid ourselves of you; but if you were a prophet, Allah would tell you, and you would know about it. And then the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) told her: Allah was not going to give you power over me — Allah (swt) would not give you the ability to overcome me or to kill me. And the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) forgave her. The Companions said: shall we kill her? He said: no, leave her. But then Bishr ibn al-Barāʾ died because of the mouthful he had eaten — which shows that this was a powerful poison. So in some narrations it says that the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) ordered that she be executed.

The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) survived three years after that. And in his final days, when he was suffering from fever — and this hadith is in al-Bukhārī — ʿĀʾishah (may Allah be pleased with her) said that the Prophet (peace be upon him) used to say, in the illness in which he died: O ʿĀʾishah, I still feel the pain of the food I ate at Khaybar, and this is the time when I feel my abhar being cut by that poison (al-Bukhārī 4428). Abhar is an artery — it seems it is called in English the aorta. So the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: this is the time I feel that my abhar will be cut, because of the poison I had at Khaybar. Ibn Hishām says: the Muslims considered that the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) died a martyr, in addition to the prophethood with which Allah honoured him. So Allah combined for the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) the status of prophethood and the status of shahādah, martyrdom.

Now, some might see this as contradicting the fact that Allah promised the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), wa Allāhu yaʿṣimuka min al-nās (5:67): Allah will protect you from the people. So some scholars said that Allah did promise the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) that He would protect him from fitnah, protect him from defeat, and protect him from being killed before he fulfilled his mission. And when the āyah was revealed that Allah had completed the religion, it was time for the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) to leave this dunyā and meet his Lord. So the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) died because of this poison, even though it was three years later, because — as the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) told the woman — she would not have the ability to overpower him, being the Messenger of Allah; but the pain and the effect of the poison came three years later, when it was already the appointed time for the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) to pass away. This is the opinion of some of the ʿulamāʾ, based on the authentic hadith, one of which was just narrated from al-Bukhārī. The next woman is Ṣafiyyah, and her story follows in the next chapter. May Allah send peace and blessings upon our master Muḥammad and upon his family and Companions.