The martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ — what the sources leave unsaid

Introduction — a death that was not natural

In the collective Muslim consciousness, the death of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ is often presented as a sudden illness that struck in the aftermath of the Farewell Pilgrimage. Common as that formulation is, it erases a reality that the sources — Shia and Sunni alike — allow us to reconstruct: the Prophet ﷺ did not die peacefully in his bed. He fell a martyr.

This is not a fringe thesis. It is a conviction rooted in Twelver Shia doctrine, supported by precise hadiths, and partly corroborated by material present in the Sunni collections themselves.

Shia doctrine: not one of the Fourteen Infallibles died naturally

Before examining the facts surrounding the death of the Prophet ﷺ, the Shia doctrinal frame must be set out, for it illuminates everything that follows.

In the Twelver Shia tradition, the Fourteen Infallibles (al-Ma'sumun al-Arba'a 'Ashar) are:

• The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ
• Fatima al-Zahra ع, his daughter
• The Twelve Imams, from Ali ibn Abi Talib to Imam al-Mahdi عج

The doctrine holds that every one of them died a martyr — killed outright, poisoned, or dying from the consequences of violence and oppression. None of them left this world by a natural death.

This principle rests on a hadith reported from Imam Ali ibn Musa al-Reza ع, the eighth Imam:

"There is no Prophet and no successor who is not a martyr." — Basa'ir al-Darajat, p. 523

The cause of death of each is documented:

In the Shia view this series of martyrdoms is no coincidence: it is the mark of the systematic hostility of political power towards the lineage of the Prophet ﷺ, from the Saqifa down to the Abbasid caliphs.

The martyrdom of the Prophet ﷺ — what the sources report

What Aisha herself reports in Sahih al-Bukhari

The soundest starting point is not a Shia source. It is Sahih al-Bukhari, the most authenticated Sunni collection, hadith no. 6418, reported by Aisha herself:

"We made the Prophet ﷺ swallow a substance (ladadna) during his illness. He was signalling to us: do not make me swallow anything! We said: it is the sick man's aversion to medicine. When he regained consciousness he said: Had I not forbidden you to make me swallow anything? Let no one here leave before swallowing this substance in front of me — except al-Abbas, for he was not with you."

This hadith deserves close reading. The Prophet ﷺ:

• explicitly forbids anyone to make him swallow anything
• is nevertheless forced to ingest a substance while asleep
• on waking, compels everyone present to swallow the same substance — a reaction that makes sense only if the substance was dangerous

Aisha justifies the act as a simple medicine refused by a sick man. The Prophet ﷺ, however, does not see it that way. His reaction — punishing everyone present by forcing them to swallow the same thing — is that of a man who knows an attempt has been made to poison him.

This hadith appears in Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 8, p. 40, and in the Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, vol. 8, p. 53.

What the Shia sources report explicitly

Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq ع is reported in several major Shia sources:

"The truth is that the Prophet ﷺ was poisoned in his final days, before his death, at the hands of Aisha and Hafsa." — Tafsir al-Ayyashi, vol. I, p. 200; Bihar al-Anwar, Allama al-Majlisi, vol. XXII, p. 516

Allama al-Majlisi also reports in Hayat al-Qulub (vol. 2, p. 700) that Imam al-Sadiq ع said:

"Aisha and Hafsa poisoned the Messenger of Allah ﷺ."

And in Tafsir al-Qommi (vol. II, p. 367), taken up again in Bihar al-Anwar (vol. XXII, p. 239), the Imam confirms that his forefathers transmitted to him that the poisoning took place with the participation of their fathers, Abu Bakr and Omar.

These primary Shia sources are consistent with what al-Biyadhi reports in al-Sirat al-Mustaqim (vol. 3) and with what Ahmad ibn Abi Talib al-Tabarsi cites in al-Ihtijaj (vol. 1, p. 240).

The Khaybar episode — an open door

The Sunni sources themselves report that a Jewish woman had poisoned a sheep at Khaybar, and that the Prophet ﷺ had eaten from it. He immediately spat out a piece, but the effects of the poison made themselves felt. Some hadiths report that he said, before dying:

"I still feel the severing of what I ate at Khaybar, and this is the hour at which that artery is breaking."

Sunni scholars have often used this episode to explain the death of the Prophet ﷺ as an indirect martyrdom — poisoned at Khaybar, dying of the effects of that poison years later. This reading allows the Sunni tradition to accept the martyrdom of the Prophet ﷺ without assigning responsibility to those close to him.

The Shia tradition, for its part, holds that both poisonings took place: the one at Khaybar, and the one administered during the final illness. The first does not exclude the second; it may even have weakened the Prophet ﷺ and made the second fatal more quickly.

The Quranic verse and its context

The Quran speaks explicitly of the wives of the Prophet ﷺ in a context of severe warning (surah al-Tahrim, 66:1-5). Shia exegetes, and some Sunni exegetes as well (notably in Tafsir al-Jalalayn and Tafsir al-Tabari), situate these verses within an episode involving Aisha and Hafsa.

Verse 66:4 is particularly significant in the Shia reading:

"If you both repent to Allah... but if you support one another against him, then Allah is his Protector, and Gabriel, and the righteous among the believers, and the angels thereafter are his supporters."

Imam al-Sadiq ع, reported in Tafsir al-Ayyashi (vol. I, p. 200), ties this verse to the events surrounding the death of the Prophet ﷺ.

Why this matters

The question of the martyrdom of the Prophet ﷺ is no incidental quarrel. It stands in direct continuity with Ghadir Khumm.

If the Prophet ﷺ appointed Ali ع as his successor on 18 Dhu al-Hijjah — as we established in our article on Ghadir Khumm — then his death less than seventy days later, in murky circumstances, takes on an immediate political meaning: it opened the way to the Saqifa and to the setting aside of Ali ع.

In the Shia view, this is not a coincidence. The designation at Ghadir threatened an order of power that had been constituted at the margins of the prophetic household. The death of the Prophet ﷺ, coming so soon after that public designation, was the inaugural act of a long series — that of all Fourteen Infallibles, every one of them a martyr, without exception.

What we take from this

The death of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ is, in Shia doctrine, a martyrdom attested by the Imams themselves. The sources that establish it are among the most respected in the Shia library: Bihar al-Anwar of al-Majlisi, Tafsir al-Ayyashi, Tafsir al-Qommi, Basa'ir al-Darajat. And the trace of the incident — a substance administered by force while the Prophet ﷺ slept — is present in Sahih al-Bukhari itself, from the pen of Aisha.

The principle the Shia draw from this is clear: not one of the Fourteen Infallibles died naturally. Each of them paid with his or her life for fidelity to the truth and for refusing to bend before the powers of the age. This, in Shia eyes, is what distinguishes the lineage of the Prophet ﷺ: not only purity and infallibility, but the supreme testimony of blood shed for Islam.