Fatima: Difference between revisions

| children          = Hasan ibn Ali, Husayn ibn Ali, Muhsin ibn Ali (unborn), Zaynab bint Ali, Umm Kulthum bint Ali

Her conception and birth were miraculous. Her origin was in a fruit from paradise, often identified as an apple or a date, that Muhammad had eaten during one of his ascensions and that had become “the water of his loins”. <ref>Forat, pp. 75-76; Ibn Babuya, 1385/1966, pp. 183-84.</ref> According to one tradition, this fruit had previously been touched by the sweat and a plume from the wing of the angel Gabriel. <ref>Forat, pp. 321-22.</ref> It was for this reason that the Prophet always said that Fatima was a celestial being in human form (huraʾ ensiya), that she emitted the perfume of paradise, and that she had a name in heaven (usually Mansura). Fatima spoke with her mother while still in the womb. All the most pious women recognized from pre-Islamic religions were present at her birth, namely, Sarah, Asia, Sephora (Safuraʾ), and especially Mary the mother of Jesus. <ref>Ibn Rostam, p. 9; Husayn, pp. 48 ff.</ref> These names are often linked with that of Fatima, and parallels with Mary are particularly frequent, parallels emphasized by Massignon in all his works on Fatima. <ref>cf. Ayoub, 1976, pp. 165 ff.; idem, 1978, s.v.; McAuliffe, 1981.</ref> Yet Fatima’s superiority to other women is always underscored. She is given the epithet “the Great Lady/the Best of Free Women”. <ref>sayyedat/khiarat al-nesaʾ/al-haraʾer; cf. the epithet of the mother of the qaʾem “the Great Lady/the Best of Slave Women [al-emaʾ]; No’mani, pp. 331 ff.; Ibn Quluya, pp. 54, 78, 123-24.</ref> At her birth Fatima pronounced sacred formulas and announced future events; the world was bathed in light. <ref>Ibn Shahrashub, pp. 119 ff.</ref>

In fact, light and Fatima are always linked: at the anthropogonic stage already mentioned, in Shiʿite commentaries on the Light verse, and at her birth and later in her life, especially when she prayed and meditated. She is said to have been “the source of the light on the horizon,” and it is for that reason that she is called “the Confluence of the Two Lights”, <ref>majmaʿ al-nurayn, i.e., those of exoteric prophecy and of the esoteric imamate; Marandi, pp. 4-19.</ref> and that her most famous epithet was al-Zahra. <ref>Resplendent; Husayn, pp. 46 ff.; Ibn Shahrashub, pp. 106 ff.</ref> Ibn Shahrashub <ref>pp. 133 ff.</ref> listed more than seventy honorary names for Fatima, among which the most common are Maryam Kobra (the supreme Mary), Batul, <ref>lit., “Virgin,” defined by the Prophet as “she who never menstruates”; Ibn Babuya, 1385/1966, p. 181.</ref> and the mysterious Omm Abiha (Mother of her father), which has been variously interpreted.