What he ﷺ wore
He ﷺ had no prophet’s costume. The witnesses describe him as they saw him, and their accounts follow one another without a uniform:
- “I saw him in a red garment: I have never seen anything more beautiful” (al-Bara, Bukhari 3551).
- “I saw on him two green cloaks” (Abu Rimtha, Abu Dawud 4065, graded authentic by al-Albani).
- He ﷺ went out one morning in a patterned cloak of black hair (Aisha, Muslim 2081).
- He entered Mecca, on the day of the conquest, wearing a black turban (Jabir, Muslim 1358).
The garment he ﷺ most loved to wear was the hibara (Anas, Bukhari 5813), a striped cloth from Yemen, made of cotton, which his contemporaries held to be the noblest (Ibn Hajar, Fath al-Bari, X, 277).
He ﷺ recommended white: “Wear white: it is purer and better, and shroud your dead in it” (Tirmidhi 2810, graded authentic by al-Tirmidhi and al-Albani, and debated by others).
Beautiful, without pride
He ﷺ said one day that no one with an atom’s weight of pride in his heart would enter Paradise. A man was concerned: “A man likes his garment to be fine and his sandals fine.” He answered: “God is beautiful, He loves beauty. Pride is to reject the truth and despise people” (Muslim 91).
The garments of his death ﷺ
Aisha once brought out a cloak and a coarse waist-wrap: “It was in these two garments that the soul of the Prophet ﷺ was taken” (Bukhari 5818).
His sandals and his ring ﷺ
Ibn Umar wore hairless leather sandals, because he had seen him wear them, and make his ablutions in them (Bukhari 5851). Anas once showed a pair of sandals with two straps: “These are the sandals of the Prophet ﷺ”, said Thabit (Bukhari 5858).
The ring has a story. He ﷺ wanted to write to people who were not Arabs. He was told that they accepted only sealed letters. He had a silver ring made, engraved “Muhammad, Messenger of God”. “I can still see its gleam on his finger”, says Anas (Bukhari 5872). He forbade anyone to engrave the same thing (Bukhari 5877).
Perfume
“I would perfume him with the finest perfume he could find, until I saw its gleam in his hair and his beard” (Aisha, Bukhari 5923). He ﷺ never refused perfume (Anas, Bukhari 5929).
Care of the body
He ﷺ rubbed his teeth with the siwak, the twig used at that time, as soon as he rose at night (Hudhayfa, Bukhari 245). “Were I not afraid of burdening my community, I would have commanded them to use the siwak at every prayer” (Bukhari 887).
Aisha combed his hair (Bukhari 5925). He ﷺ liked to begin with the right, “in putting on his sandals, combing his hair, purifying himself, and in all his affairs” (Aisha, Bukhari 168). He taught the acts of cleanliness, which he tied to the nature of man: circumcision, shaving the pubic hair, plucking the armpits, trimming the nails and the moustache (Bukhari 5889).
His weapons ﷺ
He ﷺ carried the sword and the coat of mail like the men of his time: he was seen in Medina, his sword at his neck, on a horse with no saddle (Bukhari 6033). At his death, all that remained of his goods were his white mule, his weapons and a piece of land he had made a charity (Bukhari 2739).
How this page connects to the others
- His table ﷺ: His table.
- His bed and his home: His days and his nights.
- The account of his death: The Farewell Pilgrimage and his death.