Narrated Umm Salama told that a woman came to the Prophet and said:
"Messenger of God, my daughter’s husband has died and her eye is troubling her, so may we apply collyrium to it?” He said “No” twice or thrice, saying only “No” all the time. Then he said, “It is only four months and ten days, whereas in the pre-Islamic period none of you threw away the piece of dung till a year had passed.”*
* The reference is to a pre-Islamic custom by which a widow threw a piece of dung when her idda period came to an end. Cf. Lane, Lexicon and Taj al-'arus; Mirqat, 3:513 f.
Al-Miswar b. Makhrama said that some nights after her husband’s death Subai’a al-Aslamiya gave birth to a child. Then she went to the Prophet and asked permission to marry. He gave her permission and she married.
Umm Habiba and Zainab daughter of Jahsh reported God’s Messenger as saying, “It is not lawful for a woman who believes in God and the last day to observe mourning for one who has died more than three nights, except for the four months and ten days in the case of a husband.”
My maternal aunt was divorced by three utterances of the divorce and wanted to cut down fruit from her palm-trees, but a man forbade her to go out, so she went to the Prophet and he said, “Certainly, cut down fruit from your palm-trees, for perhaps you may give sadaqa or do an act of kindness.”
