Fatimah (c. 605-632) was the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad and his first wife Khadija, and by every account the child dearest to him. She married Ali ibn Abi Talib, the Prophet's cousin, and through their sons Hasan and Husayn she is the ancestress of the sayyids and sharifs, the descendants of the Prophet, honoured across the Muslim world, and of dynasties such as the Fatimids who took their name from her.
She holds a place of singular honour in both branches of Islam. A widely transmitted saying names her among the greatest of the women of Paradise, and she is known by titles of deep reverence: al-Zahra, the radiant or shining, and al-Batul, the chaste. In much Muslim piety she is a model of purity, devotion and dignity in hardship.
The sources for her life are the early Islamic traditions, sparing in biographical detail and shaped by the veneration that gathered around her. She lived through the persecution at Mecca, the migration to Medina, and her father's death, and she outlived him by only a few months, dying young, a nearness in death that itself became part of her memory.