There is a kind of person who lives at the center of a great story and is somehow never the one the story is told about. You find her name in the margins of other people's lives: the wife of this companion, the mother of that scholar, the sister of one of the Mothers of the Believers, the aunt of a famous general. Pull the thread of almost any early Muslim family and it runs, sooner or later, through her hands. And yet her own life, a remarkable life, is rarely given its due.
Her name was Lubaba bint al-Harith (may Allah be pleased with her), and once you learn to see her, you begin to see her everywhere.
The woman at the center of everyone's story
She came from a tribe called Banu Hilal, a Bedouin people known above all for the ability to survive. They were experts at wringing crops from hard ground, shepherds who kept cattle and camels alive through drought, masters of the rough conditions that broke other people. Families would send their children to live among Banu Hilal precisely so that they would learn how to endure. Some of the scholars say it was there that her own nephew, Khalid ibn al-Walid (may Allah be pleased with him), first learned the toughness that later made him what he was.
Lubaba came out of that world carrying its qualities. She was strong, she was courageous, and she had a presence that could fill a room, the kind that, as we will see, could put fear into the heart of a man like Abu Lahab. She is sometimes called Lubaba al-Hilaliyya, after her tribe, but she is better known by her honorific, Umm al-Fadl, after her eldest son.
To understand how completely she sat at the center of things, follow the family. Her full sister was Maymuna (may Allah be pleased with her), the last woman the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ married. Her half-sister Zaynab bint Khuzayma (may Allah be pleased with her), known for her charity, also married the Prophet ﷺ and died only months later in Madinah, one of just two of his wives to pass away in his lifetime, the other being Khadijah. So Lubaba was the sister-in-law of the Prophet ﷺ twice over, and the wife of his uncle al-Abbas (may Allah be pleased with him) besides. Two more half-sisters, Asma and Salma bint Umays, were married among them to Jafar, Abu Bakr, Ali, and Hamza.
These were not ordinary women, and the Prophet ﷺ did not treat them as ordinary. He called Lubaba and her sisters al-Akhawat al-Mu'minat, the Faithful Sisters, a single name for women he honored for how early they came to faith and how steadily they supported him. Trace it all out and she is the in-law, in some fashion, of nearly every one of the rightly guided successors. Some of the scholars called her the most noble mother-in-law in the history of Islam; it is simpler, and truer, to call her the great aunt of the Muslim community.
A heart that recognized the truth at once
But the family tree, for all its grandeur, is not what she herself was proudest of. Lubaba held a distinction that outranked every tie of blood and marriage. She was the first woman to enter Islam after Khadijah (may Allah be pleased with her). She used to say she embraced Islam on the same day Khadijah did. The scholar al-Dhahabi records that it was said no woman accepted Islam before her except Khadijah, and Ibn Hajar notes that the only other woman who might possibly have preceded her was Fatima bint al-Khattab, the sister of Umar.
Think about what that means. She was married to al-Abbas, an uncle of the Prophet ﷺ close to him in age and in heart. She had known the Prophet ﷺ for years; she knew his character, loved and admired him, long before he carried any message. So when word reached the family that he had received revelation, she did not wait to weigh her options or watch how the wind would blow. She went straight to him and believed. Faith, for her, was not a calculation. It was recognition: when truth came to a man she had watched all those years, she knew it for what it was, the way you know a familiar voice in the dark.
Because of her closeness to Khadijah, and to the Prophet ﷺ through her husband, she became one of the few permitted to learn Islam both in his own home and in the house of al-Arqam, where the early believers gathered in secret. In a city where simply being seen near him could cost you everything, that access was rare. She used it; she learned at the source.
Steady in the lean years
Her son Abdullah ibn Abbas (may Allah be pleased with them both), the future scholar of this ummah, remembered his mother's faith from the inside. As long as he could remember, he said, his mother was openly declaring her Islam, and he described the two of them as being among the mustad'afin, the weak and vulnerable of Makkah who embraced Islam and suffered for it. She was open where others had to hide. Abu Rafi, the freed servant of al-Abbas, also became Muslim, but he practiced in secret. Lubaba did not hide.
Her husband, meanwhile, held back. The historians disagree about when exactly al-Abbas embraced Islam, but all agree it was nowhere near as early as his wife. And so for years she lived a particular kind of patience: a believing woman in the house of a man who had not yet believed, praying for him. She used to make du'a that Allah would guide al-Abbas to Islam, and that he would abandon riba, the usury she hated long before a single verse forbade it. Al-Abbas was a wealthy merchant famous for the interest owed to him; that is why, years later, when the Prophet ﷺ abolished riba, he pointed first to the debts owed to his own uncle and declared them forgiven. There is something quietly stunning in that. Her fitra was already leaning toward what revelation would one day command. She hated the wrong before she was told it was wrong, and this is a mark of these early believers again and again: their hearts were aligned with the truth before the truth was spelled out for them.
Why was she so open and he so closed? Al-Abbas wanted to follow the example of his brother Abu Talib, who shielded the Prophet ﷺ out of family loyalty, as a noble uncle protects a nephew, without following his religion. He was a Hashimi before anything else, and so, while Lubaba grew more certain in her faith, her husband stood back, loyal but unconvinced.
This is the family that endured the boycott, when Quraysh cut off the Prophet's clan from food and trade and herded them into a barren valley to starve them into surrender. Its strain hastened the deaths of both Abu Talib and Khadijah, and Lubaba lived through all of it, watching Khadijah, whom she loved, weaken and die. And it was in the middle of those very days, in the worst of the hardship, that she gave birth to Abdullah ibn Abbas. The scholar of this ummah was born during the boycott.
When he was born, she asked for the baby to be brought to the Prophet ﷺ for the tahnik, the gentle custom of softening a date and rubbing it on the roof of a newborn's mouth. But there were no dates; in the famine of the boycott there was no food to spare. So the Prophet ﷺ took from the moisture of his own mouth and placed it in the mouth of the infant, with nothing else. Mujahid said Abdullah is the only child known to have that distinction: nourished at his very first breath by the Prophet ﷺ himself, and some of the scholars say this is part of why he loved him so dearly. A blessing that arrives in the depth of hardship is a blessing you never forget. The Prophet ﷺ would later hold this child and pray for him to be given understanding of the religion. That is where it began, in a valley of hunger, with a mother who never stopped believing.
The pole, and the pride of Banu Hilal
Then came Badr. By this point the Prophet ﷺ had migrated to Madinah, and al-Abbas, still not openly Muslim, was made to march out with the Quraysh, though he had no wish to raise a hand against his nephew. The Prophet ﷺ knew his uncle's heart, and before the battle he named al-Abbas among the men dragged out against their will, instructing that such men be captured rather than killed. And so it happened. Al-Abbas never struck a blow, was taken prisoner, and was brought to the Prophet ﷺ, who could show him no favoritism: when he loosened his uncle's bonds, he ordered them loosened for every captive, and when he took ransom, he took it from al-Abbas too.
But before the prisoners reached Makkah, those who had fled the battle arrived first with the news. And here we are given one of the most vivid scenes in her life, narrated by Abu Rafi himself.
He was sitting in the room. Umm al-Fadl was there. And Abu Lahab, who had not gone to the battle, was pacing, anxious for word. When at last Abu Sufyan returned, Abu Lahab leapt up to question him. And Abu Sufyan, shaken, described a defeat: a Muslim force small in number but unmatched in courage, who killed and captured the Makkans as they pleased, fighting alongside enormous men the Quraysh could neither strike nor withstand. Hearing this, Abu Rafi, a vulnerable believer, could not contain his joy and blurted out, "By Allah, those were the angels."
Abu Lahab turned on him in fury, threw him down, and began to beat him bloody, a huge man pounding a defenseless one, enraged at the defeat and at the nerve of this servant celebrating it. Abu Rafi said he thought he might die under the blows.
And then Lubaba moved. She seized a tent pole, and she brought it down on Abu Lahab's head with all her strength, splitting his skull open so the blood ran down his face. She stood over him and said: Do you think you can overpower him just because his master is away? Do you think al-Abbas is gone, so you can do as you please? He is not yours to treat like this. She had struck him so hard that he could not rise.
Consider who this was. Abu Lahab, the one enemy of the Prophet ﷺ named alongside his punishment in the Qur'an itself, the man who had stood at the hill of Safa and hurled his curse at his own nephew. Allah answered him in a surah that every Muslim still recites:
May the hands of Abu Lahab be ruined! May he be ruined too! Neither his wealth nor his gains will help him: he will burn in the Flaming Fire,
Qur'an 111:1-3
And the wound that finished him came from the hand of this woman. The injury festered, and Abu Lahab died of it a few days later. The Banu Hilal in her had come out. This was not a woman afraid of anyone or anything.
Better than what was taken
When al-Abbas was told to ransom himself, he protested that he had no money. The Prophet ﷺ answered with something no one could have known: he asked about the wealth that al-Abbas and Umm al-Fadl had hidden away, the money he had secretly left with her in case he was killed. Al-Abbas said, "By Allah, I know that you are the Messenger of Allah, because this is something no one knew except Umm al-Fadl and myself." It was through a secret kept between husband and wife that the truth of prophethood was confirmed to him.
It was in this context that Allah revealed His word to the captives:
Prophet, tell those you have taken captive, 'If God knows of any good in your hearts, He will give you something better than what has been taken from you, and He will forgive you: God is forgiving and merciful.'
Qur'an 8:70
Whatever you surrender for His sake, Allah will return to you greater, and forgive you besides. It is a promise that hangs over the whole of Lubaba's life, a woman who gave and prayed and waited for years.
And the waiting was long. Al-Abbas did not openly embrace Islam until nearly two decades after his wife, after the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah and shortly before the conquest of Makkah. Then at last the family moved to Madinah, to live near the Prophet ﷺ in the final years of his life. Around that same time he married her sister Maymuna, and the household held back for so long was gathered close.
In those last years her sons came into their own beside the Prophet ﷺ. For three years the young Abdullah shadowed him everywhere, and it was to this boy that the Prophet ﷺ, riding with him, said the famous words: be mindful of Allah and Allah will protect you, be mindful of Allah and you will find Him before you. He would watch his prayer in the depth of the night to teach it to the ummah. Her other son al-Fadl rode behind the Prophet ﷺ through much of the Farewell Pilgrimage, and a great many of our reports of that pilgrimage reach us through him. Two sons, raised by one mother, carrying the Prophet's example to every generation after.
The glass of milk, and a piece of the Prophet ﷺ
Lubaba was present at that Farewell Pilgrimage, and she gave us one of its most quietly brilliant moments. On the day of Arafah, under a punishing sun, the companions did not know whether they should be fasting. In Madinah they had fasted that day for years; now they watched the Prophet ﷺ stand with his hands raised in du'a, never lowering them, neither eating nor drinking. They were growing dehydrated and uncertain, and far too respectful to interrupt his supplication to ask.
Umm al-Fadl saw the scene and understood it. So she did something deft: she sent the Prophet ﷺ a cup of milk. If he turned it away, they would have their answer; if he drank, they would have it too, without a single person breaking his concentration. He understood exactly what she was doing. He raised the cup so all could see it, and drank, and at once the people drank with him, knowing now that the pilgrim at Arafah does not fast that day. That was the vision of Lubaba: she read the moment and used her nearness to the Prophet ﷺ to free the people from their difficulty without anyone losing face.
There is one last connection, and it is the tenderest. Soon after the move to Madinah, Lubaba came to the Prophet ﷺ troubled by a dream that a piece of his flesh was in her house. He read it as glad tidings: Fatima would bear a child, and Umm al-Fadl, who had recently borne her own late son Quthum and still had milk, would nurse that child alongside her own. And so it came to pass. The child was al-Husayn (may Allah be pleased with him), among the most beloved people in the world to the Prophet ﷺ, and Lubaba became his mother through nursing. The piece of the Prophet's flesh in her house was the grandson he called a part of himself.
A small story from those days carries a heavy shadow. Lubaba was once carrying the infant al-Husayn when the Prophet ﷺ took him to play, and the baby, as babies do, wet him, and when she gave the child a small smack for it he cried. The Prophet ﷺ said words that should stop the heart of anyone who knows what later happened to this child: you have hurt me by hurting my son. From this incident comes the famous ruling on the urine of a nursing boy, the report by which she is best known in the books of fiqh. But the words linger: if the Prophet ﷺ was wounded by a baby's tears over a gentle tap, the histories ask us to feel how he would have grieved what the people of a later year would do to that same grandson.
Lubaba narrated about thirty hadith from the Prophet ﷺ, carried onward by her son Abdullah, Anas ibn Malik, and others. She lived into the caliphate of Uthman, died in his days, and was buried in al-Baqi.
What Lubaba's life asks of our faith
It is easy to read a life like this and feel only awe, to admire the strength that split Abu Lahab's skull and the cleverness that freed the pilgrims with a cup of milk, and then to close the book unchanged. That would be a waste. Her life is not an ornament; it is a question put to your own iman.
Start with how she believed. She did not wait for proof, for safety, for the crowd to move first. She had spent years watching a truthful man, and when the truth came she committed at once, openly, in a city that punished such things. This is the heart of faith: to trust Allah and His promise before the outcome is visible, to say "I believe" while it is still costly and not wait for it to become easy. Ask yourself honestly where you are still standing back, keeping your heart in reserve until belief looks safe. She gave hers first. You can too.
Look next at her patience inside her own home. For nearly twenty years she lived as a believer beside a husband who had not yet believed, and her response was not bitterness but du'a, year after year, for his guidance and for the wrong in his life to leave it. She did not despair of him, and she did not despair of Allah. If there is someone you have written off, a parent, a spouse, a friend who seems closed to good, her life asks you to keep asking Allah for them with the patience of a woman who waited two decades and was answered. The decree is in His hands, and your part is the asking.
See, too, how her fitra leaned toward the truth before she was commanded. She hated riba before a verse forbade it, the way a sound heart recoils from harm on its own. You have that same instinct, dulled or alive depending on how you feed it, and faith is partly the work of keeping it clean: leaving a wrong not because you have been forced to but because your heart can no longer sit with it.
And hold on to the promise underneath all of it, the one Allah gave to the captives of Badr: that what is taken from you for His sake, He returns to you better, and forgives you besides. Lubaba gave and waited for years. She buried Khadijah in the famine, bore her son in a valley of hunger, prayed into a silence that did not break for two decades, and none of it was lost. Her sons became lights of this ummah, her sister a Mother of the Believers, and she herself nursed a piece of the Prophet's own flesh. What looked like a woman quietly enduring on the edge of everyone else's story was in truth a life Allah was writing at its center. That is the promise that should change how you spend an ordinary day: what you give to Allah, He keeps, and gives back more.
So take one concrete thing from her into your own week. Make du'a, sincerely and repeatedly, for one person you have nearly given up on, the way she prayed for al-Abbas. Leave one wrong you have been tolerating, not because anyone is watching, but because your heart should no longer hold it. And when the truth is clear to you, act on it before it becomes convenient. That is how the first woman after Khadijah lived: in conviction, in patience, in a heart that ran toward the good. May Allah be pleased with Lubaba bint al-Harith, gather us with the Faithful Sisters she stood among, and grant us a measure of the faith that knew the truth at first sight.
This chapter follows the account of Lubaba bint al-Harith, Umm al-Fadl (RA), in Dr. Omar Suleiman's series The Firsts (Yaqeen Institute). Qur'an translations are from M.A.S. Abdel Haleem (8:70, 111:1-3). Where the histories carry more than one narration, the most widely reported has been followed.