The Prophet Muhammad died in June 10/632, his head cradled in the lap of his young wife Â’isha. In the shadows near his bed stood Fâtima, his only surviving daughter, ousted from her father’s side at this critical moment. Fâtima would die a few months later after a life lived ostensibly on the edges of Islam, and for centuries, although revered and honored by Muslims, she would remain a indistinct figure, barely known by those who follow the religion of her father.

But from the shadows of history and the pages of ancient Arabic texts emerges the picture of a startling and distinctive woman who, far from living on the peripheries of Islam’s beginnings, is deeply embedded in the politics, intrigue and profound religious sentiments of her time. The only child of Muhammad to survive him, a wife and mother living at the heart of her father’s world, Fatima was from early times taken up by Shî’a Islam, for whose adherents she is the virgin mother, the heavenly intercessor with untold power before God’s throne, and the grieving mother of al-Husayn, the Shi’a's most important martyr. During her life she was impoverished and weak, neglected, marginalized, maltreated and divested of justice: but her reward in heaven comprises incalculable riches and jeweled habitations, and all the populace of that place will bow their heads in deference to her, and her company will be the angels and the friends of God. Here, for the first time, her story is told.