Divorce

The death of Khadija left Muhammad lonely, and, before he left for Medina, it was suggested by Khawlah bint Hakim that he marry Sawda bint Zamʿa, who had suffered many hardships after she became a Muslim. Prior to that, Sawda was married to a paternal cousin of hers named As-Sakran bin �Amr, and had five or six sons from her previous marriage. There are disagreement in Muslim tradition whether Muhammad first married Sawda or Aisha. In one account, he married Sawda in Shawwal, when she was about 55 years old, in the tenth year of Prophethood, after the death of Khadija. At about the same period, Aisha was betrothed to him.^[11] As Sawda got older, and some time after Muhammad's marriage to Umm Salama,^[12] some sources claim that Muhammad wished to divorce Sawda.^[13] Still other traditions maintain that Muhammad did not intend to divorce her, but only Sawda feared or thought that he would.^[14] As a compromise, or because of her old age, Sawda offered to give her turn of Muhammad's conjugal visits to Aisha, stating that she "was old, and cared not for men; her only desire was to rise on the Day of Judgment as one of his wives".^[13] While some Muslim historians cite this story as a reason of revelation for Quran 4:128, others like Rashid Rida dispute this whole account as "poorly supported", or mursal.^[14]