orders—all direct communications from God—are announced.
Sometimes certain revelations also came to justify the actions of the Prophet
in his domestic life. Those in connexion with events which happened about this
time at Madina will serve as an illustration, and may be conveniently mentioned
here, though they actually occurred later on, in the year A.D. 626, and after
the battle of Uhud. The story goes that, on visiting the house of Zaid, his
adopted son, Muhammad was struck with the beauty of his wife, Zainab. Zaid
offered to divorce her, but Muhammad said to him, 'keep thy wife to thyself and
fear God.' Zaid now proceeded with the divorce, though from the implied rebuke
in the thirty-sixth verse of Sura Al-Ahzab (xxxiii) he seems to doubt the
propriety of his action. In ordinary cases this would have removed any
difficulty as regards the marriage of Zainab and Muhammad, and little or no
scandal would have followed; but the marriage of a man with the wife of his
adopted son, even though divorced, was looked upon by the Arabs as a very wrong
thing indeed. However, Muhammad did this, and had to justify his action by
alleging that he had for it the direct sanction of God. It was first necessary
to show that God did not approve of the general objection to marriage with wives
of adopted sons, and so the revelation came thus:—
Nor hath He made your adopted sons to be as your sons. Sura Al-Ahzab (xxxiii)
4.
According to Arab custom and usage Zaid was to Muhammad 'as his son,' but in
Islam such a
