Four sons at Qadisiyya

Al-Khansa, the greatest elegist of pre-Islamic Arabia, met the Prophet ﷺ, accepted Islam, and lived to see her four sons old enough to fight. She sent them to Qadisiyya. When all four were killed, she said: 'Praise be to Allah who honoured me with their martyrdom.'

Tumadir bint Amr of the Banu Sulaym, known by her kunya Al-Khansa ("the gazelle" or "the flat-nosed one," an epithet of physical description that became her literary name), was born about 575 CE, five years before the birth of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. She was of a wealthy tribal aristocracy and was married in her early twenties. She bore four sons.

Her literary reputation began in the pre-Islamic period. She composed poetry in the classical Arabic tradition, the qasida, the elegy, the boast, and her verses circulated widely across the tribes of Najd and the Hijaz. She was already famous by the time she was 30.

Her two brothers Sakhr and Muawiya were killed in tribal warfare when she was in her thirties. Sakhr in particular had been the pride of her family, a warrior, generous, protective of his sister when their tribe was under pressure. When he was killed she composed a long series of elegies (marathi, singular marthiya) for him that established the form of the classical Arabic elegy for the next thousand years.

The Umayyad poet-critic Umar ibn al-Khattab said of her, the same Umar who would later become caliph, "Al-Khansa has surpassed every poet, man or woman, in this art." Her poetry was studied, memorised, and imitated for centuries. Sample of her surviving marthiya for Sakhr, in the classical Arabic form:

She met the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ when a delegation of the Banu Sulaym came to Medina to accept Islam in 8 AH. She was in her mid-sixties. She accepted Islam and became a Muslim. The Prophet ﷺ, according to the tradition preserved by al-Isfahani, asked her to recite from her pre-Islamic poetry and wept when she did.

She lived through the last two years of the Prophet's life, the caliphates of Abu Bakr and Umar, the Ridda wars, and the beginnings of the great conquests. Her four sons, Yazid, Muawiya, Amr, and another son whose name is variously preserved, grew up as Muslims. All four became fighters.

When the call went out for the army of Qadisiyya against the Sasanian Empire in 636 CE, all four of her sons volunteered. They rode to Qadisiyya together. She rode with them. She was in her seventies.

"O my sons, you have accepted Islam willingly. You have made hijrah on your own choice. By Allah beside whom there is no god, you are the sons of one man as you are the sons of one woman. I have not betrayed your father, nor shamed your uncle, nor mingled your lineage, nor changed your ancestry. You know what Allah has promised the Muslims who fight the unbelievers. Know that the eternal abode is better than the abode that passes. Allah says: 'O you who believe, be patient, exhort each other to patience, be steadfast, and be conscious of Allah, that you may succeed' (Aal Imran 3:200). If you rise tomorrow, safe and sound, then go forth in the strength of Allah to fight the enemy. And if the battle rages hot, then plunge into it. Seek out its commander until Allah destroys him. Endure and be patient, you shall win the spoils and the honour in the abode that is eternal."

Her four sons left her tent and rode into the battle at dawn on the first day of Qadisiyya. Over the four days of the battle, all four were killed. The classical sources preserve the manner of each of their deaths, one killed in the first charge on day one, one killed leading a counter-attack on day two, one killed defending the standard on day three, one killed in the final assault on day four.

The news reached her the evening of the fourth day. She was told, one after another, that all four of her sons were dead. The classical sources preserve her response verbatim. She raised her hands and said:

"Praise be to Allah who honoured me with their martyrdom. I hope my Lord will unite me with them in the abode of His mercy."

She did not weep publicly. She did not compose an elegy. Umar ibn al-Khattab, when the news reached him in Medina, granted her a lifetime pension in the names of her four sons, the standard pension of a fighting Muslim, quadrupled, to her, and wrote her personally in his own hand. The letter has not survived, but its existence is attested in multiple sources.

She lived on quietly for another eight years. She died in about 645 CE, at about 70, in the Nejd. She was buried in the tribal territory of the Banu Sulaym. Her poetry was collected and preserved by later Muslim editors. It is studied today in every university department of Arabic literature in the world.

What the story teaches

Al-Khansa is remembered for a specific transformation. The greatest elegist of pre-Islamic Arabia, the woman whose fame in poetry rested on the weeping intensity of her mourning for her brothers, became, on the night of Qadisiyya, the woman who did not weep for her four sons. The classical Muslim scholars take this transformation as evidence of what accepting Islam actually does to a Muslim's understanding of death. Al-Khansa in her pre-Islamic period had mourned Sakhr as an absolute loss, his death was the end of him, his tribal fame was all that remained, and her weeping was the recognition that nothing beyond the tribal memory would come to him again. When she became a Muslim, the metaphysics of death changed. A martyr in Islam is not lost, he is transferred to the eternal abode. Her four sons, killed at Qadisiyya, were not gone; they were promoted. The mother of four martyrs, in the classical Muslim understanding, does not need to weep. She needs to give thanks. Al-Khansa did. She said the words that four Muslim mothers across fourteen centuries have found the strength to say when the same news reached them: al-hamdu lillahi lladhi sharrafani bi-shahadatihim, praise be to Allah who honoured me with their martyrdom. She said them without qualification, without private tears afterward, without composing a great marthiya for them the way she had composed one for Sakhr. She said the words and let them stand. She had become a different woman.