Umm Ayman (Baraka bint Tha'laba)

Umm Ayman Barakat bint Tha'laba was a servant of Amina bint Wahb, mother of the Prophet, and afterwards became one of his household ¹.

When Amina set out with her son Muhammad for Yathrib to visit the grave of her husband, Umm Ayman went with her as her servant. She died on the road at al-Abwa', between Mecca and Medina, and the Prophet returned to Mecca in the care of his grandfather Abd al-Muttalib ¹.

After the Prophet's arrival in Medina, his wife Sawda and his two daughters Fatima and Umm Kulthum joined him, as did Usama ibn Zayd (may God be pleased with him), and "Umm Ayman" with the household of Abu Bakr ².

On the day of Uhud, when she saw the remnants of the Muslims wanting to enter Medina, she began to throw dust in their faces. Then she hurried to the field of battle and began to give the wounded water. Habban ibn al-Arqa shot her with an arrow, and she fell and was uncovered. The Prophet ordered Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas to shoot him, and he struck his throat ³.

• The details of her service in Amina's household and her death at al-Abwa' are taken from al-Raheeq. The original sources there are Ibn Hisham and Ibn Sa'd, and we have not yet compared their texts.
• It should be noted that the account of the shooting (Habban ibn al-Arqa) appears in al-Raheeq without the original source of that report on this page.

al-Raheeq al-Makhtum reports that everything Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Muttalib left behind was five camels, a flock of sheep and an Abyssinian slave-girl named Barakah, whose kunya was Umm Ayman, and that she was the Prophet's nurse ^{4 5 6 7}. She was therefore of his father's household before he was born, and she passed to his mother Amina and then to him (the death of Abd Allah) ⁴.

The book says that Amina set out from Mecca to Yathrib on a journey it estimates at five hundred kilometres, with her orphan son Muhammad, her servant Umm Ayman, and her guardian Abd al-Muttalib. She stayed a month, then died on the way back at al-Abwa' (the death of Amina) ^{1 8 9}.

Speaking about language, the Sheikh relates that Umm Ayman, an Abyssinian woman who did not speak Arabic well, called out to the fighters urging them to fight and asking God to make their feet firm, but pronounced the word with a foreign accent, and those who heard her told her she was a non-Arab ¹⁰.