Note 89 — Chapter VIII · CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE REBELS IN THE EAST AND SOUTH OF ARABIA. A.H. XI. A.D. 632–3.
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She was the daughter of one Nomân, who, praising her attractions to Mahomet, added, as the climax, that she never had had sickness of any kind. After a private interview with her, Mahomet sent her back to her home in the south, saying, ‘Had the Lord seen anything good in her, it had not been thus.’
In the Life of Mahomet, I rejected as apocryphal this and other accounts of the Prophet’s betrothal to certain females with whom marriage was not consummated. In the present case, however, the betrothal is certainly confirmed by the curious objection taken by the army to Ikrima’s marriage on account of the inchoate relation in which she at one time stood to the Prophet; and it is therefore possible that other betrothals which at the time appeared to me improbable may also be founded on fact. See Life of Mahomet, chap, xxii., and Ibn Cotâba, p. 18.
It will be remembered that the widows of the Prophet, as ‘Mothers of the Faithful,’ were prohibited by the Corân from re-marrying. Ibid. p. 303.