Mariya al-Qibtiyya: Concubine or Wife — and the Two Stories Behind Verse 66:1

A Gift Sails North from Alexandria

Around the year 7 AH (628 CE), letters left Madinah for the courts of the surrounding powers, inviting their rulers to Islam. One letter, carried by Hatib ibn Abi Balta'a, reached al-Muqawqis, the Byzantine-appointed ruler of Egypt. He did not accept the invitation — but he answered with courtesy, and with gifts: fine garments, a riding mule named Duldul, and two Coptic sisters, Mariya bint Sham'un and Sirin. So report Ibn Sa'd in al-Tabaqat al-Kubra and al-Tabari in his Tarikh.

Within two years, Mariya had given the Prophet a son — Ibrahim, his only child not born of Khadija. And within the Islamic literature itself, two questions attached themselves to her name and never fully left. Was she a wife or a concubine? And is she — or a cup of honey — the reason Surah al-Tahrim opens with the words: "O Prophet, why do you forbid what Allah has made lawful for you?"