Hafsa bint Umar

Hafsa bint Umar (c. 605–665 CE) was an early Muslim woman of the Quraysh, a daughter of Umar ibn al-Khattab (the second caliph), and one of the wives of the Prophet Muhammad — among the women Muslims call the "Mothers of the Believers." The biographical tradition, drawn largely from Ibn Sa'd's Tabaqat, holds that she was born in Mecca about five years before Muhammad's prophetic mission; this is a traditional estimate, not a documented date. She first married Khunays ibn Hudhafa al-Sahmi, an early convert who is reported to have died at Medina of wounds sustained in the early fighting (the tradition usually places them at the Battle of Badr, 624). Tradition records that she then married the Prophet around Sha'ban of year 3 AH (early 625 CE).

Her enduring significance is textual. After the first collection of the Qur'an's revelations onto sheets (suhuf) under the caliphs Abu Bakr and Umar, those sheets are reported to have been entrusted to Hafsa's keeping. When the caliph Uthman undertook a standardized written edition, an account preserved in Sahih al-Bukhari relates that her copy was borrowed as the master reference and later returned to her; after her death the sheets were reportedly retrieved and destroyed by Marwan ibn al-Hakam, then governor of Medina. (The precise role of her copy and the destruction of the sheets are part of the traditional account and remain a debated topic in the modern academic study of the Qur'an's textual history.) She is also credited in the later biographical literature with transmitting some sixty hadith.

She is reported to have died at Medina in Sha'ban 45 AH (665 CE) — the date given by the majority of historians, including Ibn Sa'd and al-Zubayr b. Bakkar, though some sources give 41 AH — and to be buried in the al-Baqi cemetery.