daughter of
Marwan; she had composed some satirical verses on the Prophet and his
followers; and Muhammad, moved to anger, said publicly: 'Who will rid me
of this woman?' Omeir, a blind man, but an ardent Moslem, heard the
speech, and at dead of night crept into the apartment where Asma lay
asleep surrounded by her little ones; he felt about in the darkness till
his hand rested on the sleeping woman, and then, the next instance his
sword was plunged into her breast."[206]

The story of Asma's murder has been variously related by the Arabian
writers, and the testimonies on which it rests are contradictory and
conflicting in themselves. Wakidi, Ibn Sad, and Ibn Hisham relate a very
strange thing about it, that she was killed by Omeir the _blind_ at the
dead of night. A blind person commits murder in a stranger's house
during nocturnal quietness, and is not arrested by any one! Doctor Weil
writes, that Omeir was a former husband of Asma, and the origin of the
murder may be traced to a long-brooding and private malice. Ibn Asakar
in his history (vide _Seerat Shamee_) relates that Asma was a
fruit-seller; some person of her tribe asked her if she had better
fruits. She said 'yes,' and entered her house followed by that man. She
stooped down to take something up, the person turned right and left, and
seeing that nobody was near, gave a violent blow on her head, and thus
dispatched her.

[Sidenote: 47. The story deserves not our belief.]

The historians even relate that Omeir, being offended at the verses
composed by Asma, had volunteered himself of his own free-will to kill
her.[207] She might have been a sacrifice to envy or hatred by the sword
of her assassin, but Mohammad really had no hand in her death. She had
made herself an outlaw by deluding the people of Medina to a breach of
treaty with the Moslems, whereby the rights and jurisdictions of Jews
and Moslems were definitively settled.

Ibn Ishak quietly leaves unnarrated any transaction with regard to Asma.
Wakidi and Ibn Sad do not affirm that Mohammad, being annoyed at her
lampoons, said dejectedly, "Who would rid me of that woman?" On the
contrary, Wakidi writes, that Omeir had voluntarily swore to take her
life. It is only Ibn Hisham who relates without citing his authority,
that Mohammad, hearing Asma's verses, declared: "Is there nobody for me
(i.e., _to rid me_) from Bint Marwan?" This version of the story has no
corroborative proofs from the earliest biogr