He told her twice
Madinah, 11 AH, during the illness the Prophet ﷺ did not recover from.
Moment 1 of 1Madinah11 AH2 min read
Aishah reported this, and said the wives were all present.
He called Fatimah over and said something to her quietly, and she wept.
Then he called her again and said something else quietly, and she laughed.
Aishah asked her afterwards what that had been, and Fatimah would not say — not while he was alive. She said she was not going to disclose his secret.
It was only after he died that she told them.
The first thing he had told her was that he was not going to recover from this illness. That is why she wept.
The second was that she would be the first of his family to follow him. That is why she laughed.
It is worth sitting with the order of those two, because the second is not a consolation in any ordinary sense. She has just been told she is going to die soon, and it is the news that stops her crying.
There is also the gap in the middle. She held both halves of that — his death and her own — without telling anyone, for as long as he was alive, because he had said it to her quietly and she took that to mean it was his to disclose.
She died about six months later.
The report is in both Sahih collections.
In this moment: Aishah bint Abi Bakr, The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ
Quick recall
What had the Prophet ﷺ told Fatimah that made her weep, and then laugh, during his final illness?
Sources & review
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Sahih al-Bukhariصحيح البخاري
Hadith collection · Muhammad ibn Isma'il al-Bukhari
Sahih Muslimصحيح مسلم
Hadith collection · Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj
References follow the citation detail available in the source material.
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