The evil Pharaoh lived in a big palace and was surrounded by servants and maids who fulfilled his every wish. Not only was Pharaoh very unjust and he severely harmed the Muslims who followed Prophet Moses, but he also claimed to be God and many people worshipped him. In the Pharaoh’s palace though, there was a Muslim woman who had hid the fact that she was a Muslim. She was in charge of combing and fixing his daughter’s hair.
One day, while the hairdresser was combing and fixing the Pharaoh’s daughter’s hair, she dropped the comb. The hairdresser said, “Bismillah—In the name of Allah.” The daughter thought this was unusual and asked the hairdresser, “Do you have a Lord other than my father?” meaning the Pharaoh. The hairdresser replied, “My Lord and your father’s Lord is Allah.” The daughter told her father, the Pharaoh, about this.
When the Pharaoh knew about the Muslim hairdresser, he ordered his soldiers to boil a huge amount of water in a big pot. Then he brought the hairdresser with her children and he ordered her to leave Islam and to be a blasphemer. She refused and remained steadfast to Islam.
The evil Pharaoh ordered her children be thrown into the water as she watched. The first child was thrown in and she watched him die while crying. Then the Pharaoh asked her again to leave Islam. She refused, so he threw her second child in the water and he died. The bones of her two children sank to the bottom and the skin floated on top of the boiling water.
When her last, young, nursing child who she was carrying was the only one left. She was weeping dearly. Allah gave this young child the power to speak, as an extra-ordinary event honoring his mother. The child said, addressing his mother, “Oh Mother, be patient for you are on the truth and the torture of this life is nothing compared to the torture of the hereafter.” The soldiers took her nursing child and threw him in the water after which he died. Then they threw her in after him, all the time she was steadfast on Islam never wavering and never leaving it. She died as a martyr.
Before the hairdresser was thrown into the water, she asked that her bones and those of her children’s be collected and buried in one grave. A solider did that for her.
Hundreds of years later, as our Prophet Muhammad was in his ‘Isra’ Journey, riding Al- Buraq (1) and accompanied by Angel Jibril. He passed by her grave and smelled a wonderful odor, as if the hairdresser was saluting him, may Allah raise her rank and grant her what delights her.
(1) It is an animal from paradise which can travel in one step as far as it sees. It was a white animal, slightly larger than a donkey yet smaller than a mule.
