She pressed her case

Khawlah bint Tha'labah was married to Aws ibn as-Samit. He addressed words to her that, under a custom the Arabs called zihar, were treated as putting a wife in a kind of limbo — not divorced, but no longer, in practice, a wife either.

She did not accept that this should be the end of the matter. She went to the Prophet ﷺ and set out her case to him directly.

The reports describe her returning to it more than once, in the same place, rather than accepting a single answer and stopping. This record does not put words in her mouth or describe what she was feeling; it states only that she raised the matter, and kept raising it.

Classical exegesis connects the opening of Surah al-Mujadila to her case — the name of the surah is usually explained by reference to a woman who pleaded her case in just this way. No verse is quoted or numbered here, and the connection is stated as something the exegetical tradition reports, not as a plain historical fact beyond dispute.

What later fiqh did with zihar — treating it as something requiring expiation rather than as a form of divorce — follows from the guidance connected to this case, though the legal detail belongs to fiqh rather than to this record.

Years afterwards, as caliph, Umar is reported to have shown her marked deference, stopping at length to hear her out. The report names who she was and leaves it there.