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Aisha bint Abi Bakr

Aisha bint Abi Bakr claimed that she was Muhammad’s second wife,^[1] although she was probably stretching the truth to make a point.^[2] She is known as Aisha al-Siddiqa (“the Truthful”)^[3] to complement her father, who was also known as al-Siddiq.^[4] This byname originally referred, not to Abu Bakr’s personal honesty, but to his “testimony to the truth” of Muhammad’s miraculous Night Journey.^[5] Muslims consider Aisha another major “witness to the truth” of Muhammad’s prophetic office. The Syrian scholar Ismail ibn Umar ibn Kathir wrote: “A great deal of the knowledge that we still have today, about how our beloved Prophet lived and behaved, was first remembered and then taught to others by Aisha … This is what makes it so much easier for those who wish to follow in their footsteps to try and follow their example.”^[6] Aisha’s witness has bequeathed to the world a wealth of truth about the nature of Islam.

Aisha’s Background

Aisha was born in Mecca “at the beginning of the fourth year of prophethood,”^[7] i.e., between 25 October 613 and 19 February 614.

Her father was the cloth-merchant Abu Bakr ibn Abi Quhafa from the Taym clan of the Quraysh. “He was a man whose society was desired, well liked and of easy manners … of high character and kindliness. His people used to come to him to discuss many matters with him because of his wide knowledge, his experience in commerce, and his sociable nature.”^[8] His generosity had made him popular in the city.^[9] Abu Bakr’s first wife was Qutayla bint Abduluzza from the Amir ibn Luayy clan of the Quraysh. She bore him a daughter, Asma.^[10] He then married his business partner’s widow, Umm Ruman (Zaynab) bint Amir; she was an immigrant from the Kinana tribe whose only relative in Mecca was her young son, Tufayl ibn Abdullah.^[11] She was the mother of Abu Bakr’s first son, Abdulrahman.^[12] Qutayla then bore him a second son, Abdullah;^[13] but soon afterwards, Abu Bakr divorced Qutayla.^[14]

The family lived near Khadijah’s house^[15] and must have known Muhammad for several years before the latter declared himself a prophet in 610. Abu Bakr “did not hold back or hesitate.”^[16] He was the first male outside Muhammad’s family to convert to Islam.^[17] “When he became a Muslim, he showed his faith openly and called others to God and his apostle… He began to call to God and to Islam all whom he trusted of those who came to him and sat with him… He brought them to the apostle when they had accepted his invitation and they accepted Islam and prayed.”^[18] The earliest Muslim historian, Muhammad ibn Ishaq, lists 50 people who became Muslims through Abu Bakr’s preaching,^[19] which was probably the majority of the earliest converts.

Aisha was born in the year when Islam was first publicly preached in Mecca^[20] and she never knew any lifestyle other than Islam.^[21] She grew up on a household where her mother was the only wife and she had four much-older siblings. The records also mention several servants.^[22] Her paternal grandparents, already in their seventies at the time of her birth, lived nearby.^[23] Her grandmother, Umm Al-Khayr bint Sakhr, was a Muslim,^[24] but her grandfather, Abu Quhafa ibn Amir, remained a pagan. When he spoke disparagingly of Muhammad, Abu Bakr hit his father’s chest so hard that the old man became unconscious.^[25]

Aisha was less than three years old when the Quraysh declared a blockade against the Hashimite clan.^[26] Abu Bakr considered leaving Mecca to join the exiles in Abyssinia. But he found a protector who agreed to keep the neighbours from harassing him on condition he confined his religion to the privacy of his home and did not try to convert anyone else. Abu Bakr kept to the letter of the agreement – he no longer preached outside his home. But he later found a way to break its spirit. He built a mosque in the courtyard of his house, where he once again read the Qur’an out loud. When women and youths flocked to hear his preaching, the men challenged his duplicity, and Abu Bakr renounced his protection.^[27] But the worst recorded attack on Abu Bakr is that “one of the loutish fellows of Quraysh” once threw dust on his head.^[28] Aisha recalled that the ayat Quran 54:46, concerning the occasion when the moon was miraculously split in the sky, was first recited in Mecca when she was “a little girl at play,” three or four years old. She did not, however, claim to remember the miracle itself.^[29]

When Aisha was six, the blockade against the Hashimites was revoked, and the clan emerged from hiding in the mountain ravine. After that, Muhammad came to visit her father every morning and evening.^[30] Aisha never met his wife Khadijah,^[31] who returned to Mecca in poor health and died shortly afterwards.^[32]

Reasons for the Marriage

In April 620, “when Khadijah died, the Prophet was terribly grieved over her,”^[33] and “people feared for him.”^[34] After only a few days, Khawla bint Hakim, the sister-in-law of his friend Umar,^[35] decided that he needed a new wife. She called on Muhammad to tell him that she knew of both a maid and a matron whom he might marry and asked which one he would prefer. He immediately responded that he would take them both.^[36]

The maid was Abu Bakr’s daughter. It is often claimed that Muhammad married her “to reinforce the friendly relations already existing with Abu Bakr.”^[37] In one sense this is true: Abu Bakr was one of the few men in Mecca who would still have been willing to give him a daughter.^[38] But did Muhammad’s request to his friend reflect Khawla’s original intention? The oral traditions about Muhammad’s life were first put in writing long after his death,^[39] and it could be that they have been distorted by narrators who did not know about the interview with Khawla until they also had hind-knowledge of its result. It is not impossible that Khawla originally mentioned “Abu Bakr’s daughter” without giving the name, and that she had actually been referring to his elder daughter Asma. Regardless of whether or not Khawla was complicit in the eventual outcome, what happened was that Muhammad, the Apostle of Allah, completely overlooked the 16-year-old Asma^[40] and asked instead to marry the six-year-old Aisha.^[41]

It is also suggested that Muhammad “married Aisha for the benefit of Islam and Humanity … From her, 2210 Hadith have come... Many of her transmissions pertain to some of the most intimate aspects of personal behaviour which only someone in Aisha's position could have learnt.”^[42] This makes no sense. If Muhammad had wanted the traditions about his life to be securely transmitted to posterity, he would not have relied on the hope that his young widow might later think of it; he would have arranged to have them committed to writing during his lifetime. He never did. Further, if he had believed that a wife was the best kind of chronicler, he would have chosen an adult spouse who knew how to write. Aisha could in fact read^[43] but she never learned to write.^[44]

What Muhammad later said was that Allah had instructed him to marry Aisha. He said the angel Jibreel had appeared to him in a dream, holding a veiled child and saying, “Messenger of Allah, this one will remove some of your sorrow. This one has some of the qualities of Khadijah.” Then he lifted the veil, revealing that the child was Aisha.^[45] In a second dream, Jibreel showed him Aisha’s portrait painted on silk, promising, “She will be your wife in Paradise.”^[46] If Muhammad really had any such dream, it is disturbing that he would act on it so literally.

Muhammad’s decision to marry Aisha was made less than three weeks after Khadijah’s death^[47] while he was grieving. He was not necessarily making wise decisions, even from his own point of view. There is little doubt that Muhammad’s choice of Aisha over Asma was influenced by Aisha’s personal qualities. That she was very pretty was conceded by people who had no vested interest^[48] as well as by those who might have been biased.^[49] She was slim and light-framed^[50] with a fair, rosy complexion and perhaps also red hair,^[51] which she wore plaited.^[52] Her nephew later said, “I did not see a greater scholar than Aisha in poetry, Arab history and genealogy,”^[53] and it was said that there was no one else “more intelligent in opinion if her opinion was sought.”^[54] While we might question whether Muhammad was aware of her intelligence when she was only six years old, she had indeed “some of the qualities of Khadijah”.^[55]

Marriage Contract

When Muhammad made his formal request for Aisha’s hand, he did not mention that Allah had “commanded” him to marry Aisha.^[56] Abu Bakr hesitated at first, saying, “Would this be suitable, since she is like my brother’s daughter?” But Muhammad said that their brotherhood was purely spiritual and did not preclude such a marriage.^[57] Abu Bakr had informally betrothed Aisha to young Jubayr ibn Al-Mutim, but breaking off this engagement proved easy, as the pagan family no longer wished to risk that their son might convert to Islam.^[58] So Abu Bakr married Aisha to Muhammad in May or June 620.^[59] If he told Aisha about the contract, she did not understand what he said, for she later claimed that she had not known that she was Muhammad’s wife until the very day of the consummation.^[60]

That Aisha did not know that she was married was, of course, nothing unusual. Throughout history and in nearly every culture, betrothals have been arranged over cradles, and women in particular have been married without their knowledge, understanding or consent. The fact that Aisha was a child is barely an issue here; no woman of any age should be married without her own consent, whether she is six, 16, 36 or 60. However, it is unlikely that any seventh-century Arab grasped “informed consent” in the way the modern West understands it. Muhammad’s similar failure to grasp it betrays that he was no prophet or pioneer of human rights but was simply a normal product of his own culture.

Muhammad instructed Umm Ruman, “Take good care of Aisha and watch over her for me.” The family therefore gave Aisha a “special position”. One day Aisha complained to her father about her mother. This made Abu Bakr was angry with both of them. Umm Ruman “came after” Aisha, who hid behind the front door, “weeping with great distress.” When Muhammad arrived for his daily visit, Aisha told him everything. Muhammad’s eyes “overflowed with tears” as he reminded Umm Ruman, “Didn’t I tell you to watch over Aisha for me?” Umm Ruman tried to give her side of the story, but Muhammad replied, “So what?” Aisha’s mother had to promise, “I will never trouble her again.”^[61] As the specific details have been omitted from this story, it is not apparent whether it was Umm Ruman who was a difficult mother or Aisha who was a difficult child, or even whether it was Abu Bakr who was a difficult husband and father; but it is certain that Muhammad was interfering with another family’s affairs without any interest in knowing all the facts.

In 622 Abu Bakr accompanied Muhammad on his flight (Hijra) to Medina. He took all his savings with him, leaving nothing to support his family, much to the consternation of his elderly father. Asma had to fool her grandfather, who was blind, by touching his hand to a cloth covering a pile of stones and letting him believe they were a sack of coins.^[62] Fortunately it was only a few months before Abu Bakr sent for his family to join him in Medina. Aisha had an adventure on the way: “My camel broke loose. I was sitting in the howdah with my mother, and she started exclaiming, ‘Alas, my daughter! Alas, you bride!’ But they caught up with our camel after it had safely descended the Lift Valley.”^[63] After the dry heat of Mecca, the emigrants found Medina damp and cool, and several of them were struck by fever. Aisha was bemused by the delirious ramblings of two of Abu Bakr’s servants and asked Muhammad what it meant. Some of the Muslims were so weak that they said their prayers sitting down until Muhammad advised them, “The prayer of the sitter is only half as valuable as the prayer of the stander.” Thereupon they “painfully struggled to their feet.”^[64] Then Aisha herself became feverish for a whole month, and her hair fell out.^[65]

Paedophilia

After Aisha had recovered, “and my hair had grown back past my earlobes,”^[66] Abu Bakr approached Muhammad and asked him if he would like to consummate the marriage. Muhammad did not express any outrage or disgust at this invitation; instead of correcting his friend’s morality, he merely confessed that he had no cash to pay the dower. Abu Bakr replied that he would provide this.^[67] The earliest source states that it was a sum of 400 dirhams^[68] (about £2,000), but others say 12½ ounces,^[69] which would have been worth 500 dirhams (£2,500). It is also said that that dower was “some household goods worth 50 dirhams”^[70] (£250), so perhaps part of the value was paid in kind. Abu Bakr did not explain why he suddenly lost his scruples over child-marriage and urged that the union be finalised; but Aisha’s illness would have hinted at her mortality, while the flight to Medina must have altered the political landscape unrecognisably, so perhaps Abu Bakr felt the need to confirm his continuing importance in the Muslim hierarchy. The family landscape had also changed, for Abu Bakr had lately acquired a new wife, Habiba bint Kharija, a Medinan woman whom he visited in the suburbs at a discreet distance from the mosque.^[71] Perhaps he expected this marriage to produce new financial burdens, although in fact Habiba’s only child, Umm Kulthum, was not to be born until 634.^[72]

Umm Ruman tried to fatten Aisha up before sending her to Muhammad’s house. Several types of food failed to replace the flesh that she had lost during her illness “till she gave me cucumber with fresh dates to eat. Then I became fat as good.”^[73] In April or May 623 Aisha, now aged nine, was playing on a swing with some friends when her mother called her over. Still breathless, Aisha was taken to the little house that had just been built into the wall of the mosque, a hut of unbaked bricks with a palm-branch roof, perhaps five metres by four in size.^[74] When she was brought inside, where some ansar women wished her good luck, “it occurred to me that I was married. I did not ask her, and my mother was the one who told me.”^[75] For some reason, Umm Ruman then departed, leaving the ansar women to wash and perfume Aisha, dress her up in a red-striped gown, apply make-up and comb her hair. When her father’s friend Muhammad arrived, she was surprised (suggesting that she had still not guessed the identity of her bridegroom) but not afraid. The women left the house, and Muhammad sat her on his lap.^[76] The consummation was not marked by any kind of wedding party or public celebration: “neither a camel nor a sheep was slaughtered for me.”^[77] This possibly indicates that, while the Muslim converts did not question Muhammad’s judgment, he knew only too well what his Jewish neighbours would think of his bigamy.^[78]

Aisha was always very proud of her position as the beloved of the Prophet^[79] and never recognised that she had been raped. She spoke calmly of the way Muhammad sucked her tongue^[80] and took baths with her in the same tub,^[81] and of how she would then wash the semen off his clothes^[82] and anoint him with perfume^[83] (his favourite was dhikarat al-tayyib, a blend of musk and ambergris^[84]).

Aisha’s acceptance of the situation does not alter the fact that a 52-year-old man should have known better than to engage sexually with a nine-year-old. Most cultures throughout history have understood that a girl should not be touched before puberty. The Jews in Medina most certainly understood it.^[85] Muslim apologists have tried to plead that Aisha was an early developer for whom “it is most likely her puberty started at 8, and continued till she was 9, and once she was going through puberty and her menses, this made her a lady and not a girl anymore.”^[86] But this is not correct. Aisha had still not reached menarche by the age of 14½, more than five years after the consummation of her marriage. She several times described her 14-year-old self as a jariya (“prepubescent girl”)^[87] and in July 628 was still playing with dolls, which were forbidden to adults but permitted to prepubescents.^[88] Although this could not have been predicted on her wedding day, she actually belonged to the 10% of girls who are latest in reaching puberty.^[89] At nine, she would have been flat-chested and only three-quarters of her future height; nobody could have mistaken her for an adult. Unlike the informed consent issue, which simply reveals that Muhammad was a product of his culture, this act of paederasty betrays that Muhammad was morally inferior to his own culture. He rejected the moral norms of his wisest contemporaries and abused a little girl for no better reason than that Abu Bakr had made it easy for him to do so. He demonstrated for once and for all that he had no timeless, universal moral insight to offer the world – in short, that he was not a prophet.

Relationship with Muhammad

Aisha was to remain Muhammad’s favourite wife.^[90] He claimed that Aisha was dearer to him “than butter with dates.”^[91] and superior to all other women in the same way that a meat stew was superior to plain bread^[92] When a companion asked him, “Whom do you love most in this world?” he replied, “Aisha!” When the young man protested that he had meant male persons, Muhammad corrected his reply to, “Her father.”^[93] He made himself a doorway in the mosque wall close to Aisha’s house-door,^[94] presumably to visit her more conveniently. As he once sat repairing his sandals, Aisha stared at him until he asked why. She replied, “Al-Huthali’s poem was written for you! He said that if you looked to the majesty of the moon, it twinkles and lights up the world for everybody to see.” Muhammad walked over to her, kissed her between the eyes, and said, “I swear to Allah, Aisha, you are like that to me and more.”^[95] She once asked, “How is your love for me?” and he replied that it was, “Like the rope’s knot.” After that she would often ask, “How is the knot?” and he would reply, “The same as ever!”^[96]

Muhammad allowed Aisha her playtime. Her collection of dolls included at least three shaped like female humans^[97] and a stuffed horse with wings. Muhammad questioned her about this anomaly but he laughed when she reminded him that Solomon was supposed to have owned winged horses.^[98] Strangely, neither of them mentioned that Muhammad himself claimed to have ridden a winged horse a few years earlier.^[99] Aisha said that (presumably after she grew older) she used to hide her dolls under a garment when Muhammad entered, “but she did not stop.”^[100]

At first her playmates “felt shy of Allah's Messenger”^[101] and “used to hide themselves” when Muhammad entered her house, “but the Prophet would call them to join and play with me.”^[102] At festival time her friends sang badly and beat tambourines in her house, although Muhammad came to lie down there. Abu Bakr rebuked them: “Musical instruments of Satan near the Prophet!” But Muhammad told the girls not to stop their play for him.^[103] Later that day, some Abyssinian guests put on a display in the mosque courtyard to demonstrate their prowess with shields and spears. Women were not really allowed, but Muhammad circumvented the regulation by standing in front of Aisha at her front door, screening her with his cloak, so that she could watch the performance.^[104] She once beat him in a running race. Later, after she had put on weight, they raced again, and he won, remarking, “This pays you back for that other time!”^[105] When she mounted an unbroken camel and began to drive it “round and round”, Muhammad reminded her to be kind to the animal.^[106]

But what these “innocent” episodes demonstrate, above anything else, is that Aisha was a child. A grown woman does not play with dolls and swings. Aisha was just a little girl who, like any other little girl, was inconsiderate about noise^[107] and could not cook.^[108]

Poverty

Muhammad taught that women “have the right to their food and clothing in accordance with the custom.”^[109] But he did not provide much food for Aisha, and she was always hungry. She was underweight because she so rarely ate meat.^[110] She claimed she never ate barley bread for more than three successive days. Sometimes the family did not light a fire for a month on end because they had nothing to cook but lived off dates and water.^[111] A neighbour once sent Aisha a pudding. While she was finishing her prayers, a cat came in and ate some of it, but she had no compunction in eating from the place that the cat had licked.^[112]

Muhammad told Aisha, “Beware of sitting with the wealthy, and do not replace a garment until you have already mended it.”^[113] Throughout her life, she disliked discarding worn-out clothes.^[114] She did own a gown costing about 5 dirhams (£25), and “no woman desiring to appear elegant before her husband failed to borrow [it] from me.” But the cloth cannot have been of very high quality compared to what became available in Medina in later decades, for although the widowed Aisha continued to wear similar clothes, her slave refused to wear such a coarse gown in the house.^[115] The mosque had no indoor toilets, “for we loathe and detest them,”^[116] and Aisha did not have a lamp in her house.^[117]

Charity was a way of life for the Arabs, and of course the Prophet’s young wife had to set the example. In the early years, beggars sat on the Bench in the mosque courtyard waiting for food distribution.^[118] Aisha used to count them until Muhammad told her, “Give and do not calculate, [or else] calculation will be made against you.”^[119] On one occasion a beggar came to her door on a fast-day, and Aisha told her maid to give him their only loaf. The servant protested that there would be nothing to break their fast, but Aisha insisted.^[120] On another occasion, a widow with two daughters came begging, and Aisha’s larder was reduced to one date. She handed it over, and the widow divided it between the children without taking anything for herself.^[121] Ibn Kathir, writing 700 years after the event, cited an old tradition when: “The Prophet had sacrificed an animal, and Ayesha was so generous in sharing the meat out amongst the poor that she found that she had left nothing for the Messenger’s large household except the shoulder of the animal. Feeling a little distressed, she went to the Prophet, and said, ‘I’ve only been able to save this.’ ‘That is the only part that you have not saved,’ smiled the Prophet, ‘for whatever you give away in the name of Allah, you save, and whatever you keep for yourself, you lose.’”^[122] The shoulder was Muhammad’s favourite part of the sheep.^[123]

The fact that Aisha had a servant does not indicate very much about the comfort-level of her home. Barira was a slave whom Aisha bought for nine ounces of silver (about £1,800) with the specific goal of immediate manumission. As it happened, Barira had nowhere else to go, so she chose to stay with Aisha as a domestic maid.^[124] Muhammad put up the silver, which only proves that (largely through the successes of his wars and robberies^[125]) he by now had some money in his coffer. But he spent his money on arming his warriors,^[126] bribing the double-minded^[127] or assisting the poor^[128] (which included such acts as manumitting slaves). According to Aisha, it did not translate to food for his household. “The Prophet of Allah liked three worldly objects – perfume, women and food … He obtained women and perfumes but he did not get food.”^[129] The servant Barira was an extra mouth for Muhammad to feed, and she must have been as hungry as her young mistress.

After the conquest of Khaybar in July 628, Muhammad was no longer poor, and Aisha was granted a share of the revenues.^[130] She hoped that “at last we will eat our fill of dates.”^[131] But if her rations improved, she did not remember it afterwards, so the majority of her sacks of wheat and dates must have been sold for cash or distributed to the poor. On the day Muhammad died, he was “King” of all Arabia, but Aisha’s barrel contained only one handful of barley.^[132]

Co-Wives

Aisha was jealous of the deceased Khadijah. She complained: “Khadijah is always on your mind, and you speak as if she were the only woman in the world! Why do you still think of that toothless old woman who is long dead, when Allah has given you someone better to replace her?” Muhammad retorted, “No, I have never had a better wife than Khadijah!”^[133] Perhaps Aisha would not have minded about Khadijah if she had not also had to compete with living co-wives. Muhammad kept acquiring new women, and by March 630, when Aisha was 16, he had eleven legal wives plus two official concubines.^[134] At one stage he announced a revelation from Allah that he must not marry any more women “no matter how beautiful.”^[135] Historians have found it difficult to date this verse because there was no significant period (in Medina) when Muhammad stopped marrying. But the revelation is of no great importance, for “Allah lifted the restriction stated in this ayah and permitted him to marry more women … Aisha said, ‘Allah’s Messenger did not die until all women were permitted to him.’”^[136]

Aisha was quick to emphasise her position as the preferred wife. She enumerated that she was Muhammad’s most beloved wife; that she was the only one in whose bed he received revelations; that she was the only one who used to lie down in front of him while he was praying; that her father was his most beloved companion; that she was the one whose innocence was revealed from Heaven; that Muhammad suffered his final illness in her house, where she had nursed him; that he died in her lap and on her rostered day; and that in her house he lay buried.^[137] With less plausibility, she also claimed that she was the first woman whom Muhammad married after Khadijah;^[138] that Allah had sent an angel to command the marriage; that she was his only virgin bride; that only she had parents who were both emigrants; that only she bathed in the same tub as the Prophet; and that only she saw Jibreel. But these latter claims to uniqueness could all be challenged.^[139]

Muhammad set up an orderly roster so that each wife would have an equal share of his attention. Every afternoon he paid a social call on all his wives before settling in the house where he intended to sleep.^[140] When he went on a journey, he cast lots among his wives to determine who would accompany him.^[141] But rosters and lotteries did little to secure fair turns, for all the wives knew about his preference. As Aisha said, “When a lot other than mine came out, his dislike could be seen. He did not return from any journey and visit any of his wives before me. The division [roster] began with me.”^[142] He said, “Aisha has a part in me occupied by no one else.”^[143] When he teased his wives by saying that he would give his favourite an onyx necklace, he waited for them to whisper that he would give it to Aisha before presenting it to his little granddaughter.^[144]

Inevitably, Aisha was not always the wife who benefited from Muhammad’s favouritism. A revelation gave him special permission, not available to any other Muslim, to postpone one wife’s turn if he wanted to be with another.^[145] Muhammad would ask the rostered wife’s permission before he skipped her, but Aisha never dared say no. She only told him: “If I really were free to say no, I would never allow you to favour another woman.”^[146] One night, when Muhammad left Aisha’s room, she assumed he had gone to visit one of the others out of turn. She was so angry that she ripped up his clothes. When he returned to find his cloak in ribbons, he asked: “What is the matter, Aisha? Are you jealous?” She retorted: “And why shouldn’t I be jealous over a man like you!”^[147] On another night when he departed before dawn, Aisha sent Barira to follow him; but Barira reported that Muhammad had only gone to the graveyard to perform a prayer-ritual.^[148] Only a few days before Muhammad died, he asked Aisha, “Would you like to die before me so that I might wrap you in your shroud, pray over you and bury you?” She replied, “After you had done that, I think you would return to my house and spend a bridal night in it with one of your other wives!” He smiled but he did not deny it;^[149] for his newest bride, a princess whom he had never met, was at that moment journeying towards Medina.^[150]

Some Muslims, especially Shi’a, hold up Aisha’s “jealousy” as an example not to be followed: “She was absolutely consumed by jealousy throughout her whole life, and jealousy is a major sin. I don’t know why such a person should be considered to be a great saint, when many ordinary women are able to rid themselves of this disease.”^[151] This attempt to label Aisha as “selfish” for wanting a normal monogamous marriage deflects the blame for the conflict away from Muhammad the “perfect man”. Once the focus is returned to Muhammad, it is obvious that he showed very imperfect judgment about the nature of marriage. He claimed to be a prophet in the line of the Jews, and they did not find polygamy acceptable.^[152] While it is true that polygyny was normal for the pagans, Muhammad was claiming to know better than they did. The same pagans also practised polyandry, and Muhammad had enough insight to forbid this.^[153] He also knew that polygyny hurt women. When his son-in-law Ali considered taking a second wife, Muhammad preached from the pulpit that he forbade it because, “What hurts Fatima hurts me.”^[154] If he did not forbid polygyny for everyone, beginning with himself, it was essentially because he wanted this form of adultery to be legal. The South African theologian John Gilchrist believes: “Ayishah … may have been his favourite wife but her grievances clearly were motivated … by the fact that she was not his only wife … Ayishah’s expressions of jealousy are perhaps the best judgment that can be passed on the whole defence that polygamy is justified where all the wives are treated equally.”^[155]

The Necklace Affair

While travelling home from a raid in January 628, Aisha, then aged 14, lost a zafar necklace that she had borrowed from her sister. While she was searching for it away from the camp, the caravan accidentally departed without her, and she was left stranded in the desert for several hours. Eventually she was discovered by a young warrior, Safwan ibn Muattal, who “had fallen behind the main body for some purpose and had not spent the night with the troops.” He gave her a lift on his camel to the army’s next halt.^[156] Gossip spread around the camp that Aisha and her rescuer must have committed adultery.^[157]

Aisha was not aware of the rumours. She felt sick as they completed the journey to Medina and took to her bed as soon as they arrived.^[158] She was aware during her illness that Muhammad was not paying his usual attention to her comfort; but she knew that he had just acquired a new bride (this brought the total to seven)^[159] and that he was busy with plans to visit Mecca,^[160] so she did not connect his coolness with her own behaviour.^[161] She moved into her parents’ house so that Umm Ruman could nurse her. It was three weeks before she was well enough to speak to anyone outside the family and discovered that she was accused of infidelity.^[162]

It is highly unlikely that Aisha was actually guilty: she had witnessed the stoning to death of adulterers^[163] and she was far too intelligent to betray Muhammad so blatantly. Besides, she was still pre-menarchal, and it is unlikely that she found sex a pleasurable activity; infidelity would not have been much of a temptation to her. Hundreds had witnessed that she had already lost the necklace in a separate incident just the previous day,^[164] so it presumably did have an unreliable clasp; and since it was borrowed, it was only natural that she would put considerable effort into searching for it. The more interesting question is why she was even accused. Four people who were not eyewitnesses and apparently had little in common with one another formed a spontaneous alliance to speculate on Aisha’s guilt and smear her character.

1. Mistah ibn Uthatha was a poor relation of Abu Bakr’s,^[165] and his mother cursed him for attacking their patron’s daughter.^[166] It is not at all obvious why Mistah might have accused Aisha; perhaps he had some reason to resent her or perhaps he was just very careless in his speech; yet he is the strongest contender for being the first author of the gossip.
2. Hassan ibn Thabit was Muhammad’s poet;^[167] his usual job was to satirise Muhammad’s political enemies.^[168] It is not known whether he had had any previous dealings with Aisha, but a tabloid editor makes it his business to publish scandals.
3. Abdullah ibn Ubayy was the most powerful chief in Medina.^[169] “The people propagated the slander and discussed it in his presence. He confirmed it, listened to it and asked about it to let it prevail.”^[170] It would have been more fitting for a leader among the people to forbid such idle tales. There is no evidence that he had any personal grudge against Aisha, but he seems to have been quite willing to sacrifice her to his political agenda. Six years earlier, he had been elected King of Medina. But before he could be crowned, a dissident faction had announced their support for the prophet from Mecca.^[171] Abdullah had at first cooperated with the Muslims and had even instructed his own partisans to support Muhammad rather than fight over the leadership of the city.^[172] But he came to regret the way he had facilitated the Muslim take-over. After his intercession for the lives of his Qaynuqa allies^[173] and his refusal to fight his Meccan friends at Uhud,^[174] Muhammad had labelled him the “chief hypocrite”.^[175] By 628 Abdullah must have hoped that the Muslims would quarrel among themselves so that Islam would crumble from within.
4. Hamna bint Jahsh had not travelled with the army, so she must have first heard the gossip after they returned to Medina. “She spread the report far and wide.”^[176] Hamna was the sister of another of Muhammad’s wives; she hoped that Aisha’s downfall would pave the way for her sister to become the favourite wife.^[177] Aisha did not mention that Hamna also had a more personal grudge against her. Hamna’s husband, Talha ibn Ubaydullah,^[178] had expressed a desire to marry Aisha when Muhammad died.^[179] Muhammad had responded with a revelation that his widows were never to remarry,^[180] but Hamna cannot have relished the news that her husband had his eye on a pretty and politically important girl much younger than herself.

The slanderers included “others about whom I have no knowledge, but they were a group.”^[181]

On hearing of the accusations, Aisha became sick again.^[182] “I kept on weeping that night till dawn. I could neither stop weeping nor sleep … I wept for two nights and a day with my tears never ceasing and I could never sleep till I thought that my liver would burst from weeping.”^[183] Her mother told her not to take it so seriously because people always gossiped about a beautiful woman whose husband loved her.^[184] Umm Ruman’s downplaying of the gossip might have been sensible in pagan Mecca; but in Muslim Medina, it was an evasion of the reality. Adultery was a capital offence; Aisha had no witnesses; the culture had no clear understanding of the “innocent until proved guilty” principle; and if Aisha were put to death, or even divorced quietly, her whole family would be disgraced alongside her.

Muhammad apparently did not think of defeating the gossip by ignoring it and making a public show of loyalty and affection to Aisha. His coolness to her continued for the month of her illness.^[185] Nor did he call for a formal trial where the evidence could be publicly assessed. Instead, he consulted his son-in-law, Ali, and his adoptive grandson, Usama ibn Zayd, about whether he should divorce Aisha. Usama spoke highly of her: “She is your wife, and we do not know anything except good about her. This is a lie and a falsehood.” Ali advised: “Women are plentiful, and you can easily change one for another. Ask the servant, who will tell you the truth.”^[186] Muhammad called Barira, then sat without voicing a murmur of protest while Ali “gave her a violent beating” for information. But no matter how he beat her, the worst story that Barira could produce against her mistress was that Aisha had once fallen asleep when she was supposed to be watching the rising dough, and so the pet lamb had eaten it (doubtless a hungry memory).^[187] Aisha never forgave Ali for this suggestion that her life, marriage and honour were less important than how foolish gossip might reflect on Muhammad. For the rest of her life, she avoided speaking Ali’s name and never had a good word for him.^[188]

Muhammad then addressed the whole community in the mosque: “Who will relieve me from that man who has hurt me with his evil statement about my family and saying false things about them?”^[189] As this was Muhammad’s usual formula when he was requesting an assassination,^[190] an Aws chief immediately volunteered to behead the culprit. A Khazraj rival, in protesting the crime, only confirmed that the culprit was indeed a Khazraji (i.e., Abdullah ibn Ubayy). The two tribes “were flared up until they were about to fall upon one another”^[191] while Muhammad was still standing in the pulpit, but he managed to calm them down.^[192] It was clearly not practicable to kill a man as powerful as Abdullah.

So Muhammad finally went to Aisha and asked her directly if she was guilty. She waited for her parents to protest her innocence, then asked why they did not speak in her defence. They replied that they did not know what to say.^[193] Aisha responded, “I think you believe the lies. I won’t repent! If I confessed to the crime, I would be lying, but if I denied it, you wouldn’t believe me. I will be patient and ask for Allah’s help.”^[194] Muhammad immediately went into the trance of revelation, sweat dropping off his brow. Then he announced: “Good news, Aisha! Allah has declared your innocence.”^[195] Umm Ruman told Aisha to thank her husband, suggesting that she knew Allah’s real identity; but Aisha (possibly annoyed that Muhammad had taken a month to make up his mind) replied, “No, I will praise none but Allah.”^[196]

Muhammad went out to the courtyard and recited the new revelation to the people:^[197] “Why, when you heard it, did not the believing men and believing women think good of one another and say, ‘This is an obvious falsehood’? Why did [the slanderers] not produce for it four witnesses? And when they do not produce the witnesses, then it is they, in the sight of Allah, who are the liars.”^[198] This excused Aisha even had she happened to be guilty, since she only had three and a half witnesses against her.^[199] Hamna only counted as a half-witness because she was a woman;^[200] but she still had to take the full punishment. She, Hassan and Mistah were sentenced to 80 lashes each.^[201] The aristocratic Abdullah was not lashed.^[202] Eighty lashes can cause serious injury, or even kill, although Hamna, Hassan and Mistah all survived. While the punishment seems an exaggerated retribution for mere gossip, that gossip had essentially amounted to a plot against Aisha’s life. The real problem lay in the rigid system that not only killed adulterers but forced women in particular to take an unrealistic level of responsibility for never being suspected.

In the light of his punitive attitude to adultery, Muhammad’s own behaviour is ironic. On the same night when Aisha was alone in the desert, with nobody to verify whether she was looking for a lost necklace or meeting a lover, there were 700 witnesses who had seen Muhammad take yet another new bride into his tent.^[203] But these witnesses never accused him of adultery. The Prophet was not required to be faithful to a woman.

As a sad aside, it was only three months after this scandal concluded that Aisha’s mother died.^[204]

Violence

Aisha once claimed: “Allah’s Messenger never slapped a woman or a servant.”^[205] This is sufficiently explained by Muhammad’s 25 years as the husband of Khadijah, for he would surely not have dared to strike her. In fact “never” was an exaggeration, for Aisha herself had a contrary memory. One night Muhammad arose from her bed and she quietly followed him. Probably she assumed he had gone to visit another woman. As it happened, he only went to the nearby graveyard to perform a prayer-ritual, so she ran home before he could realise she had been spying on him. Unfortunately, Muhammad had spotted her, and he asked what she had been doing out at night. When she denied that she had left the house, he hit her chest. “That blow,” she said, “was very painful.”^[206]

If Aisha remembered Muhammad as a man who almost never beat her, she was probably comparing him with her father. Abu Bakr had no concept that his married daughter had ceased to be his property. The first time Aisha lost her sister’s necklace, Muhammad indulgently held up the whole army to search for it (it turned out that a camel was sitting on it), and the warriors complained to Abu Bakr about the wasted time. That night, as Muhammad slept with his head in Aisha’s lap, Abu Bakr rebuked his daughter and punched her thigh “with a very painful blow”. She kept very still so as not to awaken Muhammad.^[207] It is nowhere recorded that Aisha complained to Muhammad or that Abu Bakr suffered any kind of rebuke or consequence for this attack. Aisha recounted the story as if it was no serious problem.

During one quarrel between Aisha and Muhammad, Abu Bakr walked in. Muhammad asked, “Abu Bakr, will you obtain my right from Aisha?” Aisha said, “You speak [first] but tell the truth.” Abu Bakr said, “O enemy of yourself, does he utter anything but the truth?”^[208] In one version of the story, he “raised his hand and struck her hard on the chest.”^[209] In an alternative version, “he struck her until her mouth bled.”^[210] Muhammad said, “May Allah forgive you, Abu Bakr! I did not mean this!”^[211] But in neither version of the story did Muhammad require Abu Bakr to apologise to Aisha, let alone to undergo any of the violent punishments that he imposed on a slanderer, a thief or an adulterer.^[212]

How common was domestic violence in the Muslim community? There were doubtless families where it never happened. When Habiba bint Zayd disobeyed her husband, Saad ibn Al-Rabi, and he slapped her face, her father and brother complained to Muhammad.^[213] The spouses were cousins, and the objecting brother was Saad’s stepfather,^[214] so even within one family, there was no consensus over what was culturally normal. Muhammad advised, “Retaliation! And there is no other judgment to be held.”^[215] He then announced to the community, “Do not beat Allah’s handmaidens,”^[216] and “they stopped beating them.”^[217] The word “stopped” indicates that there were other families where it had been normal to beat wives (and daughters and sisters, since a “handmaiden” was not necessarily a “wife”). The respite did not last long. Umar, who was “rough and ready … toting a stick or whip, which he was never afraid to use on a person,”^[218] told Muhammad, “Women have become emboldened towards their husbands.” So Muhammad “gave permission to beat them”^[219] with the new revelation: “If you suspect rebellion from your wives, reason with them, then desert them in their beds, then beat them.”^[220] Muhammad explained his change in policy to the family of Habiba bint Zayd thus: “We wanted one thing, but Allah wanted another, and whatever Allah wants is good.”^[221] Muhammad was the community leader and he could have controlled a few men whose behaviour was socially unacceptable. If he felt the need to overlook domestic beating, he must have realised that it was practised by too high a proportion of the warriors on whose loyalty he depended.

After the new revelation, “in the night seventy women came to the family of Muhammad, all of whom complained about their husbands.”^[222] If they came by night, they presumably did not feel safe to complain in the open. “So Allah’s Apostle said: ‘Many women have gone round Muhammad's family complaining against their husbands. They are not the best among you.’”^[223] Elsewhere he warned that women who complained about their husbands were likely to go to Hell.^[224] When Tamima bint Wahb came to Aisha for help because she was covered with bruises from her husband’s beatings, Aisha observed: “Her face is greener than her veil. Believing women suffer more than any others!” Muhammad took no interest in Tamima’s bruises; he only attended to determining why her marriage had apparently never been consummated.^[225] He also had no recorded reaction to Aisha’s complaint that pagans treated their wives better than Muslims did.

In fact, there is no evidence that Muhammad believed that it was intrinsically wrong for a man to strike a woman, child or subordinate. In his Farewell Sermon he only cautioned that wife-beating must be for some reason, in which case “Allah permits you to shut them in separate rooms and to beat them, but not severely … Treat women well, for they are domestic animals with you and do not possess anything for themselves.”^[226] Nor did he enlarge on what he meant by “not severely”, but he apparently permitted something more than a sharp slap, for he advised: “Hang your whip where the members of the household can see it, for that will discipline them.”^[227] He confirmed a man’s right to do as he liked in the privacy of his home: “A man will not be asked why he has beaten his wife.”^[228] Muhammad said that his two favourite friends were Abu Bakr and Umar,^[229] and “he was always saying, ‘I, Abu Bakr and Umar were there’ or ‘did something’ or ‘went somewhere’.”^[230] He appointed Abu Bakr as his successor,^[231] and nobody was surprised when Umar succeeded Abu Bakr.^[232] Umar was so violent that even the dying Abu Bakr advised him, “Temper severity with mildness.”^[233] Yet it does not seem to have crossed Muhammad’s mind that his friends’ violence rendered them unfit for leadership.

Later generations of Muslims have too often inferred from all this that, although Muhammad discouraged wife-beating, this was one of those impossible ideals to which no ordinary Muslim could reasonably aspire. A 2013 study by Dr Lateefa Latif is said to have found that nearly half of Saudi women were being beaten by their husbands, fathers, brothers and even their sons, who used their hands, sticks, head-covers and sharp objects.^[234] Leaders of six Swedish mosques in 2012 advised beaten wives not to report their husbands to the police.^[235]

Aisha and Jihad

Aisha once asked Muhammad, “Shouldn’t we [women] participate in holy battles and jihad [war] along with you?” He replied, “The best and the most superior jihad (for women) is Hajj [pilgrimage to Mecca].”^[236] Despite this disapproval of a woman’s direct participation in war, Muhammad nevertheless expected Aisha to contribute to the jihad effort.

She was only eleven years old when he took her as an auxiliary to the Battle of Uhud. With her skirts hitched up “so that her ankle-bangles were visible,” she hurried backwards and forwards between pouring water into the mouths of the warriors and refilling her water skin, while the bulk of the Muslim army fled, leaving Muhammad exposed to the enemy’s arrows.^[237] Aisha’s other battle-duties included helping to dig graves^[238] and finishing off the enemy wounded.^[239] Arabs did not deliberately attack non-combatants,^[240] but it does not seem to have bothered Muhammad that Aisha might have been harmed in the cross-fire. When his cousin Umm Sulaym bint Milhan served as a battle-auxiliary, she strapped a dagger to her waist so that “if one of the idol-worshippers comes near me, I will slit open his stomach.”^[241] While it is not stated that Umm Sulaym ever needed to carry out her threat, her precaution shows that the danger to non-combatants was real. Muhammad did not allow boys to fight before they were 15 years old,^[242] but Aisha had to serve like a woman at eleven.

Two years later, Muhammad took Aisha to the Battle of the Trench. This was much less dangerous, for the “battle” was a stalemate siege with little actual fighting.^[243] Aisha’s services were only required by night, when Muhammad was guarding the narrowest and most vulnerable point of the trench. Whenever he became overwhelmed by the bitter cold, he went into Aisha’s tent “to be warmed by her embrace.”^[244] Since there was nothing that she could actively contribute to this campaign, it seems an unnecessary hardship to have imposed on a 13-year-old.

The following month, Muhammad captured the Qurayza, the last Jewish tribe living in Medina, and ordered that every adult male should be decapitated. Muhammad personally supervised the executions in Medina Market.^[245] Aisha did not directly witness the killings but she was within earshot. She chatted to a woman named Bunanah, who was “laughing immoderately as the Apostle was killing her men in the market. Suddenly a voice called her name. ‘Good Heavens,’ I cried, ‘what is the matter?’ ‘I am to be killed,’ she replied. ‘What for?’ I asked. ‘Because of something I did,’ she answered. She was taken away and beheaded. I shall never forget my wonder at her good spirits and her loud laughter when all the time she knew that she would be killed.”^[246] Bunanah’s crime had been to participate in the Jewish defence by throwing a millstone onto the assailants, which had crushed to death a Muslim warrior.^[247] As for how the executions affected Muhammad: “His eye did not weep for anyone.”^[248]

That day an Aws chief named Saad ibn Muaz died of a battle-injury, and Muhammad announced that Allah’s throne had shaken when the doors of Paradise were flung open for him.^[249] Soon afterwards, Aisha was with Saad’s kinsman, Abu Yahya ibn Hudayr, when the news arrived that the latter’s wife had died. He was overcome with grief. Aisha exclaimed: “Allah forgive you, O Abu Yahya! Will you weep over a woman when you have lost your [second cousin twice removed^[250]], for whom the throne shook?”^[251] Her astonishment over Abu Yahya’s attachment to his wife speaks volumes about her own experience of marriage.

In 628 Aisha’s full brother Abdulrahman finally became a Muslim and was reconciled to his family. He reminded Abu Bakr: “O Father, twice at the Battle of Badr I had you under my sword, but my love for you stayed my hand.” Abu Bakr replied, “Son, if I had had you under my sword even once, you would be no more.”^[252] In 629 Ali’s brother Jaafar became a jihad “martyr”, and soon afterwards his widow, Asma bint Umays, married Abu Bakr. She bore his third son, Muhammad, in 632.^[253]

After the Necklace Affair, the lottery that determined which wife would accompany Muhammad to the wars never again fell on Aisha.^[254] Although she helped him pack his military equipment early in 630, she admitted to her father that she did not know where the troops were going.^[255] In fact Muhammad took them to conquer Mecca, where he proclaimed that anyone who did not convert would be killed. At this point, Aisha’s grandfather Abu Quhafa finally became a Muslim; he was 90 years old.^[256]

Islam

There is no real evidence that Aisha “believed” Islam in the sense of giving intellectual assent to the literal existence of Allah. On the contrary, she expressed her scepticism to Muhammad’s face. When he told her that Allah had given him permission to reject or accept as many as he liked of the women who offered themselves to him,^[257] she responded, “It seems to me that your Lord is very quick to grant your desires!”^[258] When she was accused of infidelity, she wept night and day as long as she feared Muhammad might reject her. But when he finally spoke to her directly about the accusations, he did not mention the usual punishment for adultery but only said, “Fear Allah, and if you have done wrong as men say, then repent towards Allah, for he accepts repentance from his slaves.” At this hint that Muhammad intended to exonerate her, “my tears ceased, and I could not feel them.”^[259] Muhammad immediately entered the prophetic trance to hear Allah’s verdict, and “I felt no fear or alarm … [but] as for my parents … I thought that they would die from fear.”^[260] Aisha was not afraid of Allah because she already knew that Muhammad had decided in her favour – that is, she knew who Allah really was. In one quarrel she told her husband directly: “You are the one who claims to be the prophet of Allah!”^[261]

She challenged him on his un-Prophet-like morals too. He had warned her against rudeness and malicious speech, even to people who deserved it.^[262] Yet she overheard him so annoyed by the conversation of two visitors that “he invoked curse upon both of them and hurled malediction.” After the visitors had left, she asked him why he had insulted them on such trifling provocation. Muhammad had no back-story on why he had been morally justified. He could only tell Aisha, “I have made condition with my Lord … that for a Muslim upon whom I invoke curse or hurl malediction, [He will] make it a source of purity and reward.”^[263]

Although Aisha claimed to have seen Jibreel, she qualified this. What she actually saw was Muhammad talking just outside her house to a man mounted on a horse. She thought the man was Dihya ibn Khalifa al-Kalbi, but when she asked Muhammad about it, he replied, “You have seen a great blessing. That was Jibreel.” A short time later, Muhammad announced that Jibreel was in the room and that he brought Aisha the greeting of peace. She replied, “Peace be upon him, and the mercy of Allah and his blessings.”^[264] But when she narrated the story years later, she admitted to her audience, “I could not see [Jibreel]. [Muhammad] used to see things that I did not see.”^[265]

Despite her scepticism, Aisha became an expert on Islam. “Whenever Aisha heard anything that she did not understand, she used to ask again till she understood it completely.”^[266] She memorised the whole Qur’an.^[267] It was said that nobody had “more knowledge of the sunna [lifestyle] of Allah’s Apostle than Aisha … nor better knowledge of the verses [of the Qur’an] as to what they were revealed about.”^[268] It was inevitable that she should become a teacher. She even had the clear, carrying voice^[269] required for public speaking, and Musa ibn Talha confirmed, “I did not see anyone more eloquent than Aisha.”^[270] From the earliest times, Muslim women clustered around Aisha in the mosque,^[271] and Muhammad, who said that, “Some eloquence is so beautiful that it constitutes sorcery,”^[272] is supposed to have instructed them, “Take half your religion from this little red one.”^[273]

This contradiction between Aisha’s private attitude and Aisha’s visible behaviour is easily explained by her circumstances. She could not escape Islam. Whatever she believed in private, she had to work within the Islamic system, for no other system was available to her. Fourteen centuries later, it is easy for an outsider to recognise that the Islamic system is exactly what has caused the problems of Islamic societies and that these problems will not be solved before the authority of Muhammad is abandoned. But even if Aisha perceived this, she was in no position to say so directly.

Death of Muhammad

When Muhammad was taken ill in June 632, he lost track of his wife-roster and kept asking, “In whose house will I be tomorrow? And where the next day?” His wives realised he wanted to be with Aisha and agreed that he would pass his illness in her house.^[274] He lay for several days with his head in her lap while she recited over and over to him the last two suras of the Qur’an,^[275] hoping the incantation would effect a cure. She chewed a toothpick for his last teeth-cleaning “so that my saliva mixed with his on his last day in this world and his first day in the next.”^[276] Then she felt him growing heavy in her lap, and “he died when no one but me and the angels saw him.”^[277] She laid his head on a pillow and arose beating her breast and slapping her cheeks, soon to be joined by the other women.^[278]

Muhammad was buried in Aisha’s house.^[279] His wives respectfully observed the traditional idda (waiting period) of 130 days, even though they were all forbidden to remarry.^[280] They visited one another but never left the mosque courtyard and were “out of action until they were like nuns. Not one day or two or three passed by them except that each woman was heard sobbing.”^[281] Aisha was 18 years old;^[282] she had no children;^[283] and she was to live for another 46 years.

Widowhood

Aisha spent her adult life in the mosque at Medina, keeping all the Muslim prayers and fasts, and being careful never to show her face to any man. When a blind man asked her why she bothered to veil herself from him, she replied, “Even if you cannot see me, I can see you.”^[284] Her female friends observed that she was usually dressed in loose trousers, a shift, a gown, a niqab (full veil that exposed only the eyes) and gold rings. Her veil was sometimes black, but (unlike the typical modern wearer of a niqab), Aisha often wore both a veil and a gown dyed with safflower, which is bright pink. Wolfskin furs against the cold are also mentioned, although Aisha was particular not to wear the furs of carrion.^[285]

She had limited control over her movements, for she needed permission to leave Medina. It was not until October 644, when she was 30, that she and her seven surviving co-wives were given leave to make a Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca (i.e., to take a holiday). They travelled in howdahs covered with green shawls, preceded by the camel of Uthman ibn Affan and followed by the camel of Abdulrahman ibn Awf. Uthman and Abdulrahman “did not let anyone come near them nor see them,” and shouted, “Get away! Get away! Go left!” or “Go right!” at anyone whom they passed on the road. In the midday heat they camped in ravines, shielded by trees on every side, “and they did not let anyone come near them.” A woman who brought them some meat and milk wept at the sight of them, saying she “remembered Allah’s Messenger,” which made all of them weep with her. Some years later, they petitioned, and were granted permission, to make a second Hajj, again guarded on every step of the journey.^[286] It is not recorded that Aisha left Medina again until 656.

Her chief income was the revenues of Khaybar. After the surviving Jews were banished to Syria,^[287] Aisha chose to take control of her share of the real estate (“land and water”) rather than the annual income of dates and barley.^[288] She lived very frugally. She was asked why she bothered to mend her old trousers when “Allah has given you so much wealth,” and she replied, “Enough! A person who has nothing old and worn has nothing new.”^[289] She expended most of her wealth in charity. Her nephew bought her house for 100,000 dirhams (about £500,000) and a lifetime residence. The money arrived in two sacks, and Aisha spent all day dividing the money up into bowls to give away as alms. She did not keep even enough to buy her evening meal, although she said she would have done this much if she had thought of it.^[290] Another time he gave her a gown of rough silk, which she did keep for herself.^[291]

In working life, she was much sought as a teacher.^[292] She hung a curtain in her house so that she could sit behind it while men came to hear her teaching without seeing her.^[293] She narrated 2210 ahadith to her students.^[294] “Whenever we encountered any difficulty in the matter of any hadith, we referred it to Aisha and found that she had definite knowledge about it.”^[295] Many of her hadiths were the endless prescriptions for the correct rituals of prayer and hygiene (Muhammad liked to put on his right sandal first;^[296] he always urinated in a squatting position;^[297] and he considered vinegar an “excellent condiment”.^[298]). But many of her other teachings were stories about her friends and family, giving insight into events and relationships while leaving the morals unspoken and implicit. Of Muhammad she said, “His character was the Qur’an,”^[299] an assessment that few would dispute.

There is some evidence that, while Aisha could not contradict any teaching of Muhammad that had become public knowledge, she emphasised the aspects of Islam that she liked. After the Qur’an was collated in writing, she commissioned a copy for herself. When her scribe reached “Guard the prayers and the middle prayer,” she told him to correct it to, “Guard the prayers and the middle prayer and the afternoon prayer,” because this, she said, was how Muhammad had recited it.^[300] While it is difficult to see what motive Aisha could have had for inventing this kind of detail, other people were not convinced, and her addition does not appear in the standard Qur’an.^[301] At other times, Aisha was content not to bother correcting the text. She said that the injunction to stone adulterers to death had been written “on a paper and kept under my pillow. When Allah’s Messenger expired and we were occupied by his death, a goat entered and ate away the paper.”^[302] Although several Muslims had memorised this verse, and Aisha never denied that it had once existed, she also made no attempt to re-insert it into the Qur’an. To this day, it is not included.^[303]

She remembered several ahadith that had not seemed important to the male narrators. When a sack of bread was brought to Muhammad, he had specifically distributed among the peasant and slave women rather than the men.^[304] She recalled his promise that, “Whoever is tried with something from daughters, and he is patient with them, they will be a barrier from the Fire for him.”^[305] When a student mentioned that prayer was annulled by the passing of a dog, a donkey or a woman, Aisha protested, “Is the woman an ugly animal? It is not good that you people have equated us with dogs and donkeys. When I lay in my bed, the Prophet would come and pray facing the middle of the bed.”^[306] In fact there was dispute about what Muhammad did teach. Three male teachers agreed that the Prophet had told them that a woman who came closer than “the back of the saddle” annulled a man’s prayer.^[307] Abdullah ibn Abbas conceded that Muhammad had specified only “a menstruating woman,”^[308] while Aisha had no witnesses to her assertion that Muhammad had prayed so close to her that he had nearly touched her feet on prostration. Of course, it is quite possible that Muhammad was inconsistent or that a revelation was abrogated.^[309] The point here is that Aisha was shaping Islam to her own liking.

When recounting the story of how she had been accused of infidelity, she finished, “Questions were asked about [Safwan] ibn Al-Muattal, and they found that he was impotent; he never touched women. He was killed as a martyr after this.”^[310] Perhaps she believed that she would never be contradicted because Safwan was dead. Unfortunately, his name had already appeared on the public record in a law-suit. Not only had he been married, but his wife had complained that he demanded sex while she was fasting (in addition to beating her for spending too long at her prayers). Safwan’s defence had been, “I am a young man and I cannot restrain myself.” Muhammad had ruled that a woman should not fast without her husband’s permission (and that the way to avoid being beaten was to pray shorter prayers).^[311] In fabricating additional “evidence” for her innocence, presumably because she felt that some people would not be convinced by the assertions in the Qur’an, Aisha had overshot the mark.

Sometimes she gave legal judgments even to senior companions, for “nobody else was so knowledgeable in law.”^[312] She ruled that the guardian of an orphan was allowed to enjoy the income of her ward’s property.^[313] She warned some Syrian women to stop their custom of visiting public bath-houses since, “If a woman undresses outside her own home, she tears the veil between herself and Allah.”^[314] When she recalled Muhammad’s word that, “Breaking a dead man’s bone is like breaking it when he is alive,”^[315] she was presumably dealing with a current case. She mentioned that Muhammad had not claimed the estate of a freedman who, after falling out of a palm-tree, had died without heirs, but had paid it out to a man from the servant’s village.^[316] She was good at arithmetic, so the Muslims used to consult her on dividing up an inheritance or profits.^[317]

She was also consulted on medicine, for nobody knew more home remedies. “A person would become ill and would be prescribed something, and it would benefit, and I would hear the people prescribing for each other, and I would memorise it all.”^[318] For example, Muhammad had always treated her fevers with broth.^[319] She used to recommend talbina, a gruel of barley-flour, milk and honey, for a depressed mood, even though patients disliked it.^[320]

Abu Bakr and Umar

Islamo-apologists like to emphasise Aisha’s public life. They describe her as “a political activist”^[321] and refer to her “predominant role in government”^[322] However, such remarks tend to confuse the public sphere with the professional, perhaps betraying the reality that, historically speaking, most Muslim women have been excluded from both. Aisha was unquestionably a working professional; she influenced people who came to her voluntarily for teaching about Islam; but outside of her profession, there are few concrete examples of her political activity. She never bore an office of state. There is no evidence that she was ever consulted about policy. If she chose to speak out, she was not always heeded. It would be closer to the truth to state that Aisha was a minor political figure who occasionally influenced politics.

For the first two years after Muhammad’s death, Abu Bakr was the Caliph (leader) of the Islamic state.^[323] The Arab tribes who did not want to pay tax immediately apostasised from Islam,^[324] and “the whole of Central Arabia [was] either in open apostasy or ready to break away on the first demand of tithe.”^[325] Aisha recalled, “If what fell upon my father had fallen upon the solid mountains, it would have crushed them,”^[326] but Abu Bakr determined to fight the apostates until they re-submitted and paid every dirham “down to the last camel’s halter.”^[327] Aisha played no visible role while her father “crushed Apostasy and laid secure the foundations of Islam.”^[328] Abu Bakr died of a fever in August 634^[329] and was also buried in Aisha’s house.^[330] It was only a few months since Aisha had lost her brother Abdullah, who died of battle-wounds,^[331] and her grandmother Umm al-Khayr;^[332] her grandfather Abu Quhafa died a few months later at the age of 95.^[333]

Umar succeeded Abu Bakr as caliph.^[334] His reign was devoted to conquest. He sent his armies to Mesopotamia, Syria, Jordan, Jerusalem and the Holy Land, Persia, much of Byzantium, parts of Afghanistan, Egypt, Mauritania and Morocco, and subjected them all to Islam.^[335] “He directed the government with the most complete success and victories were numerous during his time.”^[336] “‘Omar began his reign master only of Arabia. He died the Caliph of an Empire.”^[337] This expansionist policy did not require assistance from Aisha or any other woman, and there is no record that Aisha had anything to do with any of it. Umar liked women to sit behind curtains where men could not see them.^[338] He did not like them to contribute ideas.^[339]

Within these limits, and when it did not cost him much, Umar showed respect to Muhammad’s widows. His own daughter was one of them,^[340] yet he paid particular recognition to Aisha. He once distributed 10,000 dirhams (about £50,000) to each widow, but he gave 12,000 (£60,000) to Aisha because “she was the beloved of Allah’s Messenger.”^[341] When Umar wanted to marry Aisha’s five-year-old sister, Aisha withheld consent: “You are rough and ready … How will it be with her if she disobeys you in any matter and you beat her?”^[342] Umar, who was 58, did not press the point and instead married the nine-year-old daughter of Ali.^[343] At about the same time, he enlarged the mosque, commensurate with the increase of the crowds who converged on Medina to work and worship.^[344] It is not detailed what difference these crowds, and their larger buildings, might have made to Aisha’s living conditions.

But Aisha had no power to prevent anything that Umar really wanted. When Abu Bakr died, a woman came to her house to weep for him and, since women were not allowed to weep for the dead, Umar ordered her outside. Aisha tried to support the woman’s desire to grieve by forbidding anyone to enter, but her orders were ignored. A man pushed his way into her house and brought the woman out, and Umar whipped her.^[345]

Umar was assassinated by a disaffected slave in October 644.^[346] He petitioned to be buried beside Muhammad and Abu Bakr. Although Aisha had assumed that this burial spot would be hers, she conceded, “Today I prefer Umar to myself.”^[347] With Umar in her house, even though he was dead, Aisha did not like to expose her face. “I never took my veil off and used to stay wrapped up in clothes”Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content until she could have a wall built to section off the three tombs. Thereafter she never entered the tomb-room unveiled.Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content The new wall must have reduced her usable living space to half.

Aisha said that it did not matter in which order the suras of the Qur’an were arranged, but she could, on request, recite them in chronological order.^[348] Whenever she recited, “Women, remain in your houses,”^[349] she wept until her veil was soaked.^[350]

Death

Aisha died on Tuesday 17 Ramadan 58 AH,^[351] the 56th lunar anniversary of the Battle of Badr.^[352] By the Gregorian calendar, it was 16 July 678, and she was 64 years old.

It would have been natural to bury her in her own house, but she instructed that she should be laid beside nine of her co-wives in the Jannat al-Baqi (Celestial Cemetery) in Medina, “as I would not like to be looked upon as better than I really am.”^[353] A flaming palm-branch led her funeral procession,^[354] and “the Ansar gathered and attended [the funeral], and no other night was ever seen that was more crowded than that one. [Even] the people of the villages outside Medina came.”^[355] Aisha had chosen to waive the posthumous glory that she might have attracted if she had lain beside her husband, on display throughout all history as the most important of Muhammad’s consorts.

See Also

• Qur'an, Hadith and Scholars:Aisha (primary and early sources about Aisha)
• Aisha's Age of Consummation
• Refutation of Modern Muslim Apologetics Against Aisha's Age
• Responses to Apologetics: Muhammad and Aisha
• Aisha and Puberty
• The Tragedy of Aisha
• A Refutation of 'The Islamophobe's Glass House'
• Rejecting Dr. David Liepert's "Aisha Was Older" Apologetic Myth (Essay)
• Islam and Pedophilia (Core Article)
• Forced Marriage
• Muhammad's Wives (Hub Page)
• Polygamy (Hub Page)
• Adultery
• Wife Beating in Islam
• Aisha (Farsideology) (satire)

References