Aisha bint Abu Bakr: The Scholar and Mother of the Believers

Aisha bint Abu Bakr (d. 58 AH / 678 CE) was a wife of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) and the daughter of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, the closest of his Companions and the first caliph after him. She is the most prolific woman transmitter of hadith in Islam and among the most prolific transmitters of either sex. In the biographical literature she carries the title al-Siddiqa, the truthful, set beside her father's title al-Siddiq.

Her importance to Islam rests on two things, both firmly documented. The first is proximity: she lived in the Prophet's household through the Medinan years, the Prophet spent his final illness and died in her apartment, and he was buried in it. That placed her in possession of detailed knowledge of his domestic life, his worship, and his last days which no one outside the household could have had. The second is what she did with it. She lived more than four decades after him as a recognised authority, teaching in Medina, answering questions of ritual, inheritance and Qur'anic interpretation, and issuing rulings that senior Companions accepted and that passed into the legal literature of the schools.

She is also the only woman of the first generation about whom a substantial body of Qur'anic revelation is reported to have been sent down. Ten verses of Surah al-Nur address an accusation made against her and declare it false, and the verse permitting dry ablution where no water can be found is reported to have been revealed on an occasion connected with her. Both passages outlived the events that occasioned them and became permanent parts of Islamic law.

Name, Family and Lineage

Her father was Abu Bakr ibn Abi Quhafa, whose given name is recorded as Abdullah ibn Uthman, of the clan of Taym of Quraysh. He was among the earliest Muslims, the Prophet's companion on the migration to Medina, and the first caliph. Her mother was Umm Ruman, whose full name is given as Umm Ruman bint Uwaymir al-Kinaniyya. Umm Ruman had been married before, to a man named Abdullah al-Azdi, and had by him a son named Abd al-Rahman; the Abd al-Rahman who appears in the account of the Prophet's last hours below is Aisha's brother through Abu Bakr.

Her sister Asma bint Abu Bakr and her brother Abdullah were also Companions, and Asma's son Urwah ibn al-Zubayr became one of the principal transmitters of Aisha's material to the following generation. Asma appears repeatedly in Aisha's own life: it was a necklace borrowed from Asma that was lost on the expedition which gave rise to the accusation against her, and another borrowed necklace, lost on a later journey, that occasioned the verse of dry ablution.

She was born at Mecca into a household that had already accepted Islam, and this is a point she is reported to have counted among the things that distinguished her: she was born a Muslim and did not come to Islam from anything else.

Birth, Age and the Sources

The reports bearing on her age at marriage and at death require a section of their own, because they are the most discussed question in her biography and because the approved sources for this article speak to them directly.

Ali ibn Abi Talib by Ali Muhammad as-Sallabi states that she was born four or five years after the beginning of the Prophet's mission; that the marriage was contracted when she was six; that the marriage was consummated when she was nine, in the month of Shawwal of 1 AH, with 2 AH given as an alternative; that she was eighteen when the Prophet died; and that she died on the night before 17 Ramadan in 58 AH. Great Women of Islam by Mahmood Ahmad Ghadanfar gives her birth as 614 CE, describes her as nine when she entered the Prophet's household, and gives her age at death as sixty-six.

These two accounts agree with each other and are internally consistent. A birth around 614 CE places her about eighteen at the Prophet's death in 11 AH, and about sixty-six lunar years old at her own death in 58 AH, which is the figure Great Women of Islam gives. The one point of divergence within the approved sources is the year of the consummation, which as-Sallabi's work reports as Shawwal of 1 AH with 2 AH noted as an alternative reading.

One point bears on this from her own testimony. In the long report on the accusation against her, preserved in Sahih al-Bukhari and discussed below, she describes herself at the time of that episode as a young girl with little knowledge of the Qur'an; and the servant Barira, asked about her in the same report, described her as a young girl who fell asleep and let the household goats eat the family's dough. Both descriptions are consistent with the ages the sources give for that period of her life, and they come from within the canonical collection rather than from later reckoning.

This article reports those figures as the approved sources state them, and does not go beyond them. Two limits should be stated plainly. The sources named here are the ones consulted; they are not the whole of the literature, and the question has been discussed at length elsewhere on grounds this article has not examined. And a reader who has met confident and very different figures in modern popular writing should understand that this article is reporting what its sources say rather than adjudicating a debate conducted largely outside them. The point is taken up again in the Historiographical Note.

Childhood

The early sources record little of her childhood, and what they do record is slight. Great Women of Islam preserves an exchange from her girlhood in which the Prophet, visiting her father's house, saw her playing with a toy horse that had wings, and remarked that horses do not have wings; she answered that the horses of the Prophet Sulayman had wings. The report is of small consequence in itself, and the book offers it as an indication of a quick and well-furnished mind rather than as an event of any weight.

Of substance, two things are established. She was raised in a household at the centre of the new community, her father being the Prophet's closest friend and earliest supporter. And she possessed a retentive memory from early on: the same source notes that she was a child at the time of the Hijra and yet was able, many years afterwards, to give minor details of that migration. Since her transmission of hadith rests entirely on retention and accurate report, this capacity is not incidental to her later standing but the foundation of it.

Marriage

The report of the dream

Both Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim preserve a report from Aisha herself in which the Prophet told her: "I was shown in my dreams for three nights that an angel brought you to me wrapped in a cloth of silk, saying, 'This is your wife.' I uncovered your face and saw that it was you, and I said: 'If this is from Allah, then He will bring it to pass.'"

The precise content of the report is worth stating carefully, because it is often loosely rendered. What the canonical collections record is a dream, seen on three nights, in which she was brought to him wrapped in silk. Later devotional retellings sometimes present this as a portrait or picture delivered to the Prophet while awake. The collections do not say that. Great Women of Islam also cites a version referred to the chapter on merits in the collection of al-Tirmidhi.

The betrothal

The suggestion of the match is attributed in the biographical literature to Khawla bint Hakim. Abu Bakr, as her father, concluded the contract. She entered the Prophet's household at Medina after the migration, in the period following the deaths of Khadija bint Khuwaylid and of the Prophet's uncle Abu Talib, the two people who had given him protection at Mecca.

She was the only one of the Prophet's wives who had not been married before. This is recorded in the sources as a distinguishing fact rather than a matter of rank, and she herself is reported to have referred to it.

The Household at Medina

Her apartment

The dwellings of the Prophet's wives were small rooms built against the mosque at Medina, in the quarter of the Banu al-Najjar. Great Women of Islam describes Aisha's, which stood on the eastern side of the mosque, in some detail: it was about six feet wide, with earthen walls and a roof of leaves and twigs which had to be covered with a blanket to keep the rain out, and it was so low that a person standing upright could touch the roof. It had a single shuttered door which was never closed, with a blanket serving as a curtain. Its contents were a mat, a thin mattress, a pillow filled with tree bark, a leather water bag, a small plate for dates and a drinking vessel. Close by, on slightly higher ground, was another small room, and it was to this that the Prophet withdrew during the month of separation described below.

This room matters to the history of Islam out of all proportion to its size. It was where much of what is known about the Prophet's private worship was observed; it was where he died; and it became his grave, and afterwards that of Abu Bakr and of Umar ibn al-Khattab.

Provision and want

The Prophet's household was maintained without margin. Bilal had charge of providing for the families of the Prophet and distributed the annual supply of grain, and Great Women of Islam records that it was sometimes necessary to borrow in order to meet the household's needs. The contrast the same source draws is stark and worth recording: by the time of the Prophet's death the Arabian peninsula was under Muslim authority and grain and money were flowing into the central treasury, and yet on the day he died there was not a day's food in his own house.

Reports in the canonical collections describing periods in which little food was available in the Prophet's household are transmitted in part by Aisha herself, and they are among the material for which she is the principal witness.

The other wives

She lived alongside the Prophet's other wives, among them Hafsa bint Umar, Umm Salama, Sawda bint Zam'a, Zaynab bint Jahsh, Safiyya bint Huyayy, Umm Habiba and Maymuna bint al-Harith. Those relationships continued through the decades of widowhood that followed, and the sources record ordinary friction as well as regard. Great Women of Islam preserves a remark of Aisha's that among the Prophet's wives only Hafsa could be compared with her, and it records Umar advising his daughter Hafsa not to set herself in competition with Aisha.

One report bearing on the household is preserved in Sahih al-Bukhari through Hisham ibn Urwah. People had taken to bringing gifts to the Prophet on the days he spent with Aisha. The other wives asked Umm Salama to raise the matter and to request that gifts be brought to him wherever he was. She raised it, and the Prophet turned away; she raised it again, and he turned away again; on the third occasion he answered: "O Umm Salama, do not annoy me with regard to Aisha, for by Allah, the revelation never comes down to me when I am under the blanket of any of you except her." Commenting on this report, al-Dhahabi is quoted in as-Sallabi's work as observing that it indicates her precedence among the Prophet's wives to have been a matter of divine appointment rather than merely of the Prophet's affection, and that this was among the reasons for the affection rather than a consequence of it.

The Verse of Choice

By the ninth year after the Hijra the position of Medina had changed. It had become the centre of a polity extending over most of the peninsula, and Great Women of Islam records that some of the Prophet's wives, seeing that means had become available, asked for their allowances to be reviewed and increased. The Prophet withdrew from his wives for a month, into the small upper room beside Aisha's apartment, during a period in which he was also suffering the effects of a fall from a horse.

After twenty-nine days he came down. Both Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim preserve Aisha's account of what followed. He began with her, and said that he was going to tell her something, and that she need not hurry but might consult her parents first — knowing, the report notes, that her parents would not counsel her to leave him. He then recited to her:

"O Prophet! Say to your wives: If you desire the life of this world, and its glitter, then come! I will make a provision for you and set you free in a handsome manner. But if you desire Allah and His Messenger, and the Home of the hereafter, then verily, Allah has prepared for the good-doers among you an enormous reward." (Quran 33:28-29)

Her answer was that she had no need to consult her parents, and that she desired Allah and His Messenger and the home of the hereafter. The other wives then made the same choice. Great Women of Islam adds a detail from her side of the exchange: she asked him to keep her answer to himself, so that she could see what the others would say without being influenced by hers, and he answered that he had been sent as a teacher and not as one who compels.

The Incident of the Slander

The episode known as the ifk, the slander, is the most fully documented event of her life, and it is the subject of the longest single report transmitted from her. The account is preserved in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim and is graded sahih.

The expedition and the necklace

Great Women of Islam places the expedition in the month of Sha'ban in the fifth year after the Hijra, directed towards a place called Qadid, where a brief engagement took place with the tribe of the Banu al-Mustaliq. Some captives were taken and a few men killed. The army camped on the banks of a watercourse on the return.

Aisha had accompanied the Prophet on this expedition, and had borrowed a necklace from her sister Asma. Having gone out from the camp, she realised the necklace was missing, retraced her steps and eventually found it. By the time she returned the caravan had moved on. The arrangement on the march was that the women travelled in curtained litters which the camel drivers lifted onto the animals' backs, and because she was slight her absence from her litter was not noticed. Finding the camp empty she lay down where she was, expecting that when she was missed someone would come back for her.

Safwan ibn al-Mu'attal had the duty of following behind the army and checking the ground for anything left behind. Arriving at daybreak he found a figure lying wrapped in a cloak. Seeing that it was a woman, he dismounted and withdrew so that she could mount, and then led the camel forward on foot. They reached the next camp in the afternoon, and she dismounted in front of the assembled company.

The talk at Medina

The long report in the Book of al-Maghazi of Sahih al-Bukhari is the fullest account, and the detail that follows is taken from it. Urwah ibn al-Zubayr's additions to the report are preserved within it and are noted where they occur.

Abdullah ibn Ubayy ibn Salul was the man who spread the accusation most. Urwah adds that people talked of it in his presence, and that he confirmed it, listened to it, and asked after it so as to keep it circulating. Urwah names those identified as part of the group besides him — Hassan ibn Thabit, Mistah ibn Uthatha, and Hamna bint Jahsh, together with others he says he does not know — and identifies the phrase in Surah al-Nur 24:11, "and as for him among them who had the greater share therein", as referring to Abdullah ibn Ubayy.

Urwah preserves one further detail which deserves to be recorded. Aisha would not have Hassan ibn Thabit abused in her presence, and used to recall a line of his verse in which he offered his father, his father's father and his own honour for the protection of the Prophet's honour. Her refusal to hear an enemy of that moment spoken ill of afterwards is her own conduct, reported in the collection, and it belongs to the account.

On the return to Medina she was ill for a month. The talk was circulating and she knew nothing of it, but she noticed that she was not receiving from the Prophet the kindness she was used to when unwell: he would come, greet her, ask "How is that lady?" and leave. That roused her doubts without explaining them.

She learned of it only after recovering. She went out at night with Umm Mistah to al-Manasi, the ground used for relieving themselves before there were latrines near the houses. Bukhari's report identifies Umm Mistah precisely: the daughter of Abu Ruhm ibn al-Muttalib ibn Abd Manaf, whose mother was the daughter of Sakhr ibn Amir and an aunt of Abu Bakr, and whose son was Mistah ibn Uthatha ibn Abbad ibn al-Muttalib. On the way back Umm Mistah caught her foot in her covering sheet and said, "Let Mistah be ruined!" Aisha rebuked her for speaking so of a man who had fought at Badr. Umm Mistah answered, "Did you not hear what he said?" and told her what was being repeated.

She asked the Prophet's leave to go to her parents, wanting to confirm it. She asked her mother what people were saying, and her mother's answer is preserved: that she should not distress herself, since there is scarcely a woman loved by her husband who has other wives besides her but they find fault with her. Aisha wept that night until dawn, unable to stop or to sleep, and wept again in the morning.

The consultation and the sermon

The revelation was delayed, and Bukhari's report records what the Prophet did in the interval.

He called Ali ibn Abi Talib and Usama ibn Zayd and consulted them. Usama spoke for what he knew of her: "She is your wife, and we do not know anything except good about her." Ali said that Allah had not placed him under constraint, that there were many other women, and that he should ask the servant, who would tell him the truth. The Prophet then called Barira, the servant, and asked whether she had ever seen anything that raised her suspicion. Barira answered by Him who had sent him with the truth that she had never seen anything in Aisha she would conceal, except that she was a young girl who fell asleep and left the family's dough uncovered so that the household goats came and ate it.

The Prophet then went up on the pulpit and spoke to the Companions of the man who had injured him by what he had said of his family, stating that he knew nothing but good of his household and nothing but good of the man who had been named with them, and that the man had never entered his house except in his own company. Sa'd ibn Mu'adh of the Banu Abd al-Ashhal rose and offered to deal with Abdullah ibn Ubayy. Sa'd ibn Ubada, the chief of al-Khazraj, contradicted him, and Usayd ibn Hudayr answered Sa'd ibn Ubada in turn. The two tribes of al-Aws and al-Khazraj became so heated that they were on the point of fighting in the mosque while the Prophet stood on the pulpit, and he quieted them until they fell silent.

This part of the report is worth attending to, because it shows the episode was not a private household matter. It reached the pulpit, it produced an open dispute between the two great tribes of Medina, and it required the Prophet to intervene to prevent violence between them.

Her answer

She wept for two nights and a day, she says, until she thought her liver would burst. An Ansari woman asked leave to come in and sat weeping with her. A month had passed without revelation.

The Prophet came, greeted them and sat down — the first time he had sat with her since the talk began. He recited the testimony of faith and then said: "O Aisha, I have been informed such and such about you. If you are innocent, then Allah will reveal your innocence; and if you have committed a sin, then repent to Allah and ask His forgiveness, for when a person confesses his sin and asks forgiveness, Allah accepts his repentance."

At that her tears stopped entirely. She asked her father to answer for her and he said he did not know what to say. She asked her mother, and her mother said the same. Then she answered for herself, and Bukhari preserves the answer:

"By Allah, I know that you have heard this talk until it has settled in your minds and you have taken it for truth. If I tell you that I am innocent you will not believe me, and if I confess to you falsely that I am guilty — and Allah knows I am innocent — you will believe me. By Allah, I find no likeness for myself and you but the father of Yusuf, when he said: 'So patience is most fitting. And it is Allah alone Whose help can be sought against that which you describe.'" (Quran 12:18)

She adds that she then turned to the other side of her bed, hoping that Allah would show her innocence; and she says plainly that she never expected revelation in her own case, considering herself too slight to be spoken of in the Qur'an, and had hoped only that the Prophet might be shown her innocence in a dream. She describes herself in the same passage as a young girl with little knowledge of the Qur'an.

The revelation

The revelation came before the Prophet had risen and before anyone had left the house. The state that used to come over him at such times came over him, and the sweat dropped from him like pearls although the day was cold, from the weight of what was being sent down. When it passed he rose smiling, and his first words were: "O Aisha, Allah has declared your innocence."

Her mother told her to go to him. Her reply is preserved: "By Allah, I will not go to him, and I will not thank any but Allah." Ten verses were revealed, beginning at Surah al-Nur 24:11.

The passage describes those who spread the accusation as a group among the believers; states that the matter would prove good rather than bad for those wronged by it; asks why the believers did not think well of their own and say plainly that the charge was an obvious lie; asks why four witnesses were not produced, and states that in their absence it is the accusers who are the liars before Allah; and forbids the repetition of such conduct. A later verse in the same surah is also referred to her:

"Bad statements are for bad people and bad people for bad statements. Good statements are for good people and good people for good statements: such are innocent of every bad statement which they say; for them is forgiveness, and a generous provision." (Quran 24:26)

A further verse, on Abu Bakr's oath

Bukhari's report carries a sequel that is easy to overlook and is of some importance. Abu Bakr had been providing for Mistah ibn Uthatha, who was a kinsman and poor. After what Mistah had said of his daughter, Abu Bakr swore that he would never give him anything again. A further verse was then revealed, directing those blessed with means not to swear off helping their kinsmen and the poor and those who had left their homes for Allah's sake, but to pardon and forgive.

The episode therefore produced two distinct legal consequences rather than one: the law of false accusation, and a direct instruction against withdrawing support from a dependent kinsman in anger. That the second was addressed to the injured party's own father, at the moment of his vindication, is the point of it.

Comments in the tradition

Two comments on the episode are preserved in as-Sallabi's work. Ibn al-Qayyim observes that the vindication was not merely private but was made permanent in a text recited in the prayers of Muslims, and quotes her own words to the same effect. Ibn Kathir is quoted as recording that ten verses were revealed concerning her, and that the scholars are agreed that to repeat the accusation after her vindication is a grave matter of belief.

What the passage established

The importance of the passage outlasts the episode. It is the basis of the Islamic law of qadhf, false accusation of unchastity, and of the requirement of four witnesses. A body of law binding on the whole community was therefore settled by way of an accusation against one woman, and this is among the reasons the episode occupies the place it does in the literature. The article states the matter at that level and does not reproduce the accusation.

The Verse of Dry Ablution

A second passage of the Qur'an is reported to have been revealed on an occasion connected with her, and Sahih al-Bukhari preserves the account. On a journey, in company that included her father and a number of Companions, a necklace she had borrowed from Asma was again lost. Some of the Companions were sent to search for it and it was not found. The time for the dawn prayer came and there was no water for ablution, and they prayed without it. When they complained of this to the Prophet, the verse permitting ablution with clean earth was revealed:

"And if you are ill, or on a journey, or one of you comes after answering the call of nature, or you have been in contact with women, and you find no water, perform tayammum with clean earth and rub therewith your face and hands. Truly, Allah is Ever Oft-Pardoning, Oft-Forgiving." (Quran 4:43)

Great Women of Islam records that Abu Bakr had rebuked his daughter sharply for the situation, and that when the verse came those who had complained turned to praising her instead. It preserves the remark of the Companion Usayd ibn Hudayr, that nothing happened to her which she disliked but Allah brought good out of it for her and for the Muslims. The necklace, the account adds, was found under one of the camels when they were loaded for departure.

The legal consequence is considerable and is the reason the incident is recorded at all: the concession of tayammum is a permanent easing of the law of purity for the whole community, available to any Muslim without water anywhere.

Her Standing in the Prophet's Household

Several reports in the canonical collections bear on the Prophet's regard for her, and they are collected in as-Sallabi's work with their attributions.

Sahih al-Bukhari narrates, through Amr ibn al-As, that when the Prophet had sent him at the head of the expedition of Dhat al-Salasil he asked the Prophet who among people was dearest to him. The Prophet answered: "Aisha." Asked who among men, he answered: "Her father." Al-Dhahabi is quoted as remarking on this report that the Prophet loved only what was good, and that in these two answers he named the best man and the best woman of his community.

Sahih al-Bukhari also records that the Prophet said to her one day: "O Aisha, this is Jibril sending greetings of salam to you," and that she replied: "And upon him be peace and the mercy of Allah and His blessings. You see what I cannot see."

On the comparison of her standing with that of other women, Sahih al-Bukhari preserves a report narrated by Abu Musa in which the Prophet said that many men had reached perfection but that among women none had done so except Asiya, the wife of Pharaoh, and Maryam the daughter of Imran, and that the superiority of Aisha to other women was like the superiority of tharid — a dish of meat and bread — to other foods. Sahih Muslim preserves the same comparison. Al-Nawawi's commentary, quoted in as-Sallabi's work, explains that tharid was understood as the most nourishing and satisfying of the ordinary foods, and enters a careful qualification: the report does not plainly place her above Asiya and Maryam, and may mean that she was foremost among the women of this community.

Sahih al-Bukhari records that when she fell ill, Abdullah ibn Abbas visited her and told her that she was going to meet those who had gone before her, the Messenger of Allah and Abu Bakr. Al-Hakim's al-Mustadrak is cited for a report in which she asked the Prophet who his wives in Paradise would be and he answered that she would be among them.

Life in the household

Not all of what the sources record of the household is solemn, and the ordinary material is worth preserving because it is unusually well attested for the private life of any figure of the period.

Great Women of Islam records that on one festival day there were Abyssinians displaying their skill with spears, that Aisha wished to watch, and that the Prophet stood in front of her so that she could see the display without being seen herself, and did not move until she had had enough of it. It records that the two of them told each other stories, and that the Prophet told her the story of a man called Khurafa who had been carried off by the jinn.

The best known of these exchanges is her account of eleven women who agreed to describe their husbands frankly, each in turn — the report known from its closing figures as the hadith of Umm Zar'a. The descriptions range from the admiring to the sharply critical: a husband beyond reach like meat on a mountain top; one of whom there was too much to say to begin; one of so uncertain a temper that his wife was as good as neither married nor unmarried; one as temperate as the nights of the Hijaz; one a cheetah at home and a lion abroad, who kept his word without being reminded; one who consumed everything set before him and took the whole blanket for himself; one violent; one soft to the touch and sweet-smelling; one tall, open-handed and rich; one wealthier and more hospitable still; and last Abu Zar'a, whose wife's account of his household, his mother, his son, his daughter and his servant is the longest of the eleven. When she had finished, the Prophet told her that he was to her as Abu Zar'a was to Umm Zar'a.

The same passage records what she observed of the limit of all such ease: that when the call to prayer was heard the Prophet would rise at once and go out, and that it was as though he did not know his own household — the claim of prayer standing above every other attachment.

The Prophet's Final Illness and Death

The Prophet fell ill in Safar of the eleventh year after the Hijra. Sahih al-Bukhari records that during the illness he went about among his wives asking, "Where will I be tomorrow?", and Aisha understood that he was waiting for the day that fell to her. Sahih Muslim preserves her statement that he kept asking where he would be that day and the next, until her turn came, and that he then remained there. His wives gave him leave to be where he wished.

He remained in her apartment until he died. Sahih Muslim records her account that Allah took his soul when his head was between her neck and her chest.

Great Women of Islam and as-Sallabi's work both preserve the sequence of the last moments as she reported it. Her brother Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr came in holding a miswak, a tooth-cleaning twig. The Prophet looked at it, and Aisha understood what he wanted; she asked for it, took it, softened it in her mouth and gave it to him, and he cleaned his teeth with it while leaning against her. She said afterwards that Allah had mixed her saliva with his on his last day in this world and his first in the hereafter. Near him was a vessel of water, into which he dipped his hand and wiped his face, saying: "There is none worthy of worship but Allah. Verily, death has pains." Then he pointed upward and said: "Toward the best friend."

There is a report of an earlier exchange during an illness of his in which she was also unwell, and he told her that if she died before him he would wash her body himself, shroud her, lay her in the grave and pray for her; she answered lightly that it sounded as though he would be glad of it, and told him that if she went first he should bring a new wife into her apartment. It was during that illness that he died.

He was buried in the apartment. Great Women of Islam records a dream she was said to have had beforehand, of three moons descending into her room, and her father's remark after the Prophet's burial that part of it had come true; Abu Bakr was later buried beside the Prophet, and Umar after him.

Widowhood

She was widowed in the eleventh year after the Hijra. Under Surah al-Ahzab 33:53 the wives of the Prophet did not remarry, and Surah al-Ahzab 33:6 establishes their standing in relation to the believers, from which the title Mother of the Believers derives.

She remained at Medina through the caliphates of her father, of Umar ibn al-Khattab and of Uthman ibn Affan, teaching and answering questions. Great Women of Islam records that the caliphs who followed the Prophet considered it an honour to provide for the Mothers of the Believers and were diligent in doing so.

Scholarship and Transmission

The scale of her transmission

Great Women of Islam sets out the seven Companions to whom thousands of traditions are attributed, with the figures the tradition gives: Abu Hurayra 5,374; Abdullah ibn Umar 2,630; Aisha 2,210; Abdullah ibn Abbas 1,660; Jabir ibn Abdullah 1,540; Abu Sa'id al-Khudri 1,540; and Anas ibn Malik 2,286. She is the only woman in the list.

Two cautions belong with the figure. It is the tradition's own tally rather than a modern computation, and the list as printed is not ordered consistently by size, since the figure given for Anas exceeds those placed above him. The figure should therefore be read as the order of magnitude the classical counts report, not as an exact count derived by a uniform method.

Her reports are distributed throughout the canonical collections, and they are concentrated where one would expect them to be: in matters that only a member of the household could observe. The details of the Prophet's prayer and of his voluntary worship, his conduct at home, his fasting, his ablution, his manner in illness, and the circumstances surrounding particular revelations are areas in which she is a principal or the principal witness. Sahih al-Bukhari alone opens more than five hundred reports with her name across its nine volumes.

How revelation began

The most consequential single narration attributed to her stands at the very head of Sahih al-Bukhari. Hadith 3, in the Book of Revelation, is her account of how prophecy began, and it is the foundation of what is known about the subject.

In her report the commencement of revelation took the form of true dreams which came about as plainly as daylight. Then the love of solitude was given to him, and he would withdraw to the cave of Hira to worship for many nights together, taking provisions with him, before returning to Khadija for more. It was there that the truth came upon him. The angel commanded him to read; he answered that he did not know how to read; the angel pressed him until he could not bear it, released him and commanded him again, and this was repeated a third time, after which the opening verses of Surah al-Alaq were given to him.

That the earliest history of the revelation rests on her testimony is the strongest illustration of her position in the tradition. She was not present at Hira and does not claim to have been; she is reporting what the Prophet told her. But it is her transmission of it, rather than anyone else's, that al-Bukhari placed at the opening of his collection.

The Prophet's night prayer

The shape of the Prophet's voluntary night worship is known chiefly through her, for the plain reason that it was performed at night in his own house.

Sahih al-Bukhari records in hadith 994 her statement that he used to pray eleven rak'ah at night, and that his prostrations were long enough for someone to recite fifty verses before he raised his head; and that he prayed two rak'ah before the obligatory dawn prayer and then lay on his right side until the caller to prayer came to him.

Hadith 1147 preserves an exchange in which Abu Salama ibn Abd al-Rahman asked her about the Prophet's prayer in Ramadan. She answered that he never exceeded eleven rak'ah in Ramadan or in any other month: four, and then four, and then three — repeating of each set of four that he should not ask her about their beauty and their length. In the same report she recounts asking him whether he slept before praying the witr, and his answer: "O Aisha, my eyes sleep but my heart remains awake."

Two things are worth drawing out. The first is the character of the evidence: precise, first-hand, and unobtainable from anyone outside the household. The second is that this material is not merely biographical. The number of rak'ah in the night prayer, and whether the practice of Ramadan differed from that of other months, became live questions of law, and her report is among the texts on which the schools of jurisprudence reasoned. A domestic observation became a legal authority.

Ritual and domestic detail

The same pattern holds across a wide range of subjects. Her reports bear on ablution and the states requiring it, on menstruation and the ritual obligations attaching to it, on fasting and its concessions, on seclusion in the mosque during the last part of Ramadan, on the funeral rites, and on the ordinary conduct of the Prophet's household. In each case the reason her testimony carries weight is the same: she was in a position to observe what she reports, and much of it could not have been observed from outside.

This is also why so much of the material transmitted from her concerns the religious obligations of women. Questions of purity and of what is required of a woman in prayer and fasting were put to her because she was the natural authority on them, and the answers entered the collections under her name.

Qur'anic interpretation

Great Women of Islam records that she had memorised the Qur'an, and that she was regarded as expert in its interpretation and commentary by reason of her long association with the Prophet. It notes in particular that much of the Book of Interpretation in Sahih Muslim consists of narrations from her.

The reason is structural rather than a matter of reputation. Where a verse was revealed in response to a circumstance, the person who witnessed the circumstance is in a position to report the occasion of its revelation, and she had witnessed a great many. Her apartment was where revelation frequently came. That gave her a standing in exegesis which no amount of later study could reproduce.

Law and the giving of rulings

Great Women of Islam records that her fatwa was accepted during the caliphates of the Rightly Guided Caliphs, and that her recorded legal opinions were extensive enough to fill several volumes. It preserves a specific attestation on the law of inheritance, one of the most technical areas of the law: asked whether Aisha had mastery of the rules of inheritance, Masruq swore that he had himself seen senior Companions putting questions to her on their finer points.

The sources also record her correcting reports she considered inaccurate, and the material attributed to her includes reasoning from text to ruling rather than the relaying of remembered statements alone. This is why the classical biographers treat her as a jurist and not only as a transmitter.

Her students

She taught at Medina for the remainder of her life. Among those who transmitted from her were her nephew Urwah ibn al-Zubayr, the son of her sister Asma, and al-Qasim ibn Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr; both became major figures in the transmission of hadith and law to the following generation, and through them her material entered the standard chains. Great Women of Islam notes that Urwah visited her often to discuss religious questions and that other Companions envied his access, since as her sister's son he was her mahram and could approach her freely.

A report in Sahih Muslim records her commendation of the women of the Ansar for asking about matters of religion without embarrassment. Questions of ritual purity and of women's religious obligations form a substantial part of the material transmitted from her, and her position made her the natural authority on them.

Al-Dhahabi's assessment is quoted in Great Women of Islam: that she surpassed all other women in knowledge and understanding, and was a theologian of the first rank. The same source records the title given her in the tradition, the Horizon of the Ladies of Islam.

The testimony of her contemporaries

Hayatus Sahabah by Muhammad Yusuf Kandhlawi collects a series of statements about her learning from people who knew her or knew those who did, giving for each the earlier work in which it is preserved — chiefly Ibn Sa'd, with others from al-Tabarani, al-Hakim, Ahmad and al-Bazzar. None of those earlier works has been read directly for this article, and the statements are reported here as Hayatus Sahabah transmits them.

Abu Musa al-Ash'ari is quoted as saying that whenever the Companions were uncertain about a matter they referred it to Aisha, and always found the answer with her. Qabisa ibn Dhuwayb is quoted to the effect that she was among the most knowledgeable people and that even the senior Companions consulted her.

The fullest of these testimonies is Abu Salama's, and it is worth setting out because it specifies the fields. He said that he had not seen anyone with more knowledge of the Prophet's practice than Aisha; that he had not seen anyone give a better opinion when an opinion was sought; and that he had seen no one with more knowledge of the circumstances in which a verse was revealed, or of the law of inheritance.

Mahmud ibn Labid is quoted as saying that although all the Prophet's wives knew many traditions, none knew as much as Aisha and Umm Salama; that Aisha issued legal rulings through the caliphates of Umar and of Uthman and continued to do so until her death; and that Umar and, after him, Uthman used to send to her to ask about the Prophet's practice. That a reigning caliph sent to her for rulings is the concrete measure of her standing, and it is more informative than any general praise.

Mu'awiya is quoted as saying that he had never seen a speaker as well-spoken, as eloquent or as intelligent.

Medicine, poetry and the history of the Arabs

Urwah ibn al-Zubayr is quoted as saying that he had not seen a woman as knowledgeable in medicine, jurisprudence and poetry as his aunt, and Hayatus Sahabah preserves an exchange between them which explains the last of these.

Urwah told her that the more he considered her the more he was astonished. That she should be among the most accomplished in Islamic jurisprudence he could account for: she had been the Prophet's wife and was Abu Bakr's daughter. That she should be among the most learned in the history of the Arabs, their lineages and their poetry he could also account for: her father had known more about Quraysh than anyone. What he could not account for was that she was also proficient in medicine, and he asked her where she had learned it.

She took his hand and answered that when the Prophet's illness grew worse, physicians both Arab and non-Arab had sent medicines and prescriptions for him, and that she had learned medicine from those. Another version of the report has her say that she learned it in the course of using them to treat him.

The exchange is worth preserving for two reasons. It records a fourth field of competence beyond hadith, law and exegesis, which is easily lost from accounts of her. And it shows the mechanism: her learning in each case followed from her position, and in this instance from the least fortunate circumstance of her life. She acquired a body of practical knowledge while nursing a dying man.

Charity and Manner of Life

The sources are consistent and detailed on her giving, and the detail is worth recording because it is one of the few areas where figures are reported.

Great Women of Islam records that on one occasion she gave away seventy thousand dirhams at a single sitting, and rose showing the empty cloth in which the money had been held. On another, a hundred thousand dirhams arrived from Mu'awiya in Syria and the whole sum had been given away by nightfall; her maid reminded her that she was fasting and had kept nothing for herself to break the fast with, and she asked why she had not been reminded earlier. A hundred thousand dirhams sent by her nephew Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr were disposed of in the same way. She sold a house to Mu'awiya and gave the proceeds away.

The same source preserves a comparison drawn by Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr between his aunt and his mother. Both Aisha and Asma gave away everything that came to them; the difference was that Aisha would let a sum accumulate and then give it in one act, while Asma gave whatever was in her hand at the time, and would incur debt to help someone in need, on the view that a person who intends to repay will be helped to do so.

There is a report that Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr, whom she loved and who looked after her needs, once remarked that her giving needed restraining; that she was angered by it and swore she would not speak to him; and that when she was reconciled to him she freed several slaves as expiation for the broken oath. Another report describes her, while fasting, giving her last piece of bread to a beggar over the objection of her maid that there was nothing else to break the fast with, and receiving a dish of cooked meat later the same evening.

The instruction behind it

Hayatus Sahabah preserves a report which supplies the reason, and it changes how the rest should be read. Aisha said that she was sitting and weeping beside the Prophet during his final illness when he asked her what made her weep, and told her that if she wished to meet him in the hereafter she should be content in this world with no more than a traveller's provision, and should not keep company with the affluent. A further narration adds the instruction that she should not replace her clothing until it had been patched beyond further use.

The same source records, on Urwah's authority, that she never took new clothing until her old clothing had been patched so often that the patches overlapped one another. And it records an occasion on which Mu'awiya sent her eighty thousand dirhams, of which not one remained by evening; when her servant asked why she had not kept a single dirham to buy them meat, she answered that she would have done so had she been reminded.

Two things follow. The first is that her giving was not simply a disposition but the carrying out of an instruction received at the Prophet's deathbed, and it was sustained for nearly half a century afterwards. The second is a small discrepancy worth noting: Great Women of Islam records a hundred thousand dirhams sent by Mu'awiya and given away by nightfall while she was fasting, and Hayatus Sahabah records eighty thousand with a closely similar exchange with her servant. These may be separate occasions or variant figures for one; the sources do not settle it, and both are reported here as they stand.

The Battle of the Camel

The events of 35 and 36 AH are the most contested in her biography and the most difficult to treat neutrally. This article states what the approved sources report of the sequence and does not attribute motive to any party.

Background

Uthman ibn Affan was killed in 35 AH. Ali ibn Abi Talib was thereafter recognised as caliph, and a dispute followed over the response to the killing — specifically over whether and how the prescribed penalty should be exacted from those responsible, and how quickly.

As-Sallabi's work records that Talha ibn Ubaydullah and Zubayr ibn al-Awwam came to Mecca and met Aisha there in Rabi al-Akhir of 36 AH, about four months after the killing, and that discussions then began about going out in pursuit of those responsible. It records the positions the three of them stated. Aisha's was that Uthman had been killed wrongfully and that she would certainly seek retaliation for his blood. Talha's was that he had fallen short in the matter of Uthman and could make amends only by shedding his own blood in the cause. Al-Zubayr's was that people must be roused so that the killing not be forgotten, since if such an act were not deterred no leader would be safe.

Three circumstances at Mecca bore on what followed. Members of the Umayyad house had left Medina and settled there. Abdullah ibn Amir, who had been Uthman's governor of Basra, was at Mecca urging action and offering material assistance. And Ya'la ibn Umayya, who had set out from Yemen to support Uthman and learned on reaching Mecca that he had been killed, offered the money, weapons and mounts he had brought with him. It was Ya'la who gave Aisha the camel, brought from Yemen, on which she travelled to Basra and which she rode during the engagement; the battle takes its name from that animal.

There was a debate about where to go. Aisha argued for Medina; another view favoured Syria; Basra was settled on. As-Sallabi's work states their declared purpose plainly: to seek retaliation for the killing of Uthman, to set matters right, to make known what had been done, and to have the prescribed penalty carried out. The plan was to enter Basra and then Kufa, seek support there, and then call on other regions. As-Sallabi's work also records that she wrote letters to other regions. The day the party left Mecca is recorded as having been called the day of wailing.

Whether she was persuaded to go

Whether Aisha went out on her own initiative or at the urging of others is a genuine disagreement among the sources, and as-Sallabi's work sets it out rather than passing over it.

Al-Ya'qubi held that al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam made her go. The same view is attributed to the author of al-Imama wa-l-Siyasa, to Ibn Abi al-Hadid, and to al-Daynuri. A report transmitted by al-Dhahabi has it that the person who prevailed on her was Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr, the son of her sister Asma; as-Sallabi's work notes that this report has been relied on by a number of later writers.

As-Sallabi's work rejects that reading, on the ground that she had begun to demand retaliation from the moment she learned of the killing — before Talha and al-Zubayr reached Mecca at all, since they did not leave Medina until four months after it. In support it records an exchange on her road back to Mecca, when Abdullah ibn Amir al-Hadrami asked her why she was returning, and she answered that she was returning because Uthman had been killed unlawfully, that the affairs of the Muslims could not be sound while those responsible went unchecked, and that he should seek retaliation for Uthman's blood and so support Islam. He is recorded as the first to respond to her.

This article reports the disagreement and does not resolve it. The point is not trivial, because the two readings assign her very different roles in the events that followed, and because both readings rest on identifiable sources.

Attempts at reconciliation

The engagement was not sought by either side without effort to avoid it, and this is among the better-attested aspects of the episode.

As-Sallabi's work records that Ali halted at Dhu Qar for some days before advancing on Basra and used every means available to end the division peacefully, and says the same of Talha and al-Zubayr. A number of Companions and senior members of the following generation who had kept out of the dispute worked to the same end.

Imran ibn Husayn sent word discouraging both parties from fighting, and sent an envoy to the Banu Adiyy, many of whom had joined al-Zubayr. The envoy delivered his message in their mosque: that Imran swore he would rather be a slave with a cut-off nose tending goats on a mountain top until death than shoot a single arrow at either party, whether it hit or missed. Their answer is recorded: that they would not abandon the wife of the Messenger of Allah for anything.

Ka'b ibn Sur, one of the senior figures of the following generation, persisted in the attempt until the thing he was trying to prevent occurred, and was killed standing between the two armies calling each to lay down its weapons and refer the matter to the Book of Allah.

Ali sent al-Qa'qa ibn Amr al-Tamimi to Talha and al-Zubayr with instructions to call them to brotherhood and unity and to warn them of the gravity of division. Al-Qa'qa went to Basra and began with Aisha. He asked her what had brought her to Basra, addressing her as his mother; she answered that they had come for the purpose of setting things straight among the people. At her request Talha and al-Zubayr were summoned, and he spoke with them in her presence.

That the two sides were still negotiating shortly before the fighting began is the context in which the engagement itself has to be read.

The engagement

As-Sallabi's account describes two rounds. In the first, Talha and al-Zubayr commanded the Basran force. Both sides gave orders of restraint: neither to kill any man who wished to flee, nor to finish the wounded, nor to pursue those leaving the field. Talha was killed early in the fighting, which the work attributes to the testimony of al-Ahnaf ibn Qays; al-Zubayr left the field. The work records Ali's distress at the casualties and an exchange with his son al-Hasan in which he said that he wished he had died twenty years earlier, and that he had not thought the matter would go so far.

In the second round Aisha came out on the camel, accompanied by Ka'b ibn Sur, the judge of Basra, to whom she had given a copy of the Qur'an to hold up as a call to stop fighting. Ka'b went forward with it, calling the opposing army to the Book of Allah and to reconciliation on that basis, and was killed holding it. Aisha called out to the fighters to remember Allah and the Day of Reckoning and to stop, and was not heeded. The engagement ended with Ali's forces in possession of the field.

The date

The date is not settled, and as-Sallabi's work sets out the variants rather than choosing silently among them. Khalifa ibn Khayyat, transmitting from Qatada, has the two forces meeting on a Thursday in the middle of Jumada al-Akhira of 36 AH with the battle on the Friday. Umar ibn Shabba places it in the middle of Jumada al-Akhira of 36 AH. Al-Tabari, transmitting from al-Waqidi, gives Thursday 10 Jumada al-Akhira 36 AH. Al-Mas'udi gives Thursday 10 Jumada al-Ula. As-Sallabi's work judges the first of these the soundest on the strength of its chain of transmission, and elsewhere in the same volume gives the date as Friday 16 Jumada al-Thaniya 36 AH. The year is not in dispute; the day and month are.

Afterwards

What the sources record of the aftermath is more informative about her standing than the battle itself. As-Sallabi's work records that Ali came to the house where she was staying and asked leave to enter, and greeted her, and that she received him. In the same house women were mourning two brothers, one killed on each side, and one of them reproached Ali bitterly; he did not answer her, and when a man asked why he was silent he said that the community had been commanded to leave women unharmed when they were not Muslims, and asked whether they should not do the same when they were.

The work further records that when two men were reviling Aisha at Ali's door, Ali ordered each of them flogged a hundred lashes; and that Ammar ibn Yasir, who had taken the opposing view in the dispute itself, publicly rebuked a man who spoke against her, calling her the wife of their Prophet. Bukhari places the report from Ammar under the heading of the merits of Aisha. What emerges is that her standing was defended on the winning side, by men who had opposed her in the matter, and that the dispute was not treated as touching her position as a Mother of the Believers.

She returned to Medina and took no further part in political affairs.

Later Years

She lived a further two decades at Medina, teaching. The material on these years is thinner than on the Medinan period of the Prophet's life, which is itself a point worth noticing: her prominence in the record derives from what she transmitted rather than from events in which she figured. The reports of her charity described above belong largely to this period, when substantial sums were reaching her and were being given away as they arrived.

Death and Burial

She died at Medina in 58 AH, corresponding to 678 CE. Great Women of Islam gives the date as 17 Ramadan and her age as sixty-six; as-Sallabi's work gives the night before 17 Ramadan of 58 AH. Both record that Abu Hurayra led the funeral prayer and that she was buried in the cemetery of al-Baqi at Medina. Great Women of Islam names those who lowered her into the grave as Abdullah ibn Muhammad ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Abu Bakr and Abdullah ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Abu Bakr, two of her kinsmen.

That she was buried at al-Baqi rather than in her own apartment, where the Prophet and her father lay, is worth noting for readers who assume otherwise.

What the Sources Establish

She was the daughter of the first caliph and a wife of the Prophet, the only one of his wives not previously married. The Prophet died in her apartment and was buried in it, and the fullest surviving account of his final illness is transmitted from her. She is the most prolific woman transmitter of hadith, with about 2,210 reports attributed to her in the classical counts, third among the seven Companions credited with thousands. She had memorised the Qur'an, and much of the material on the occasions of revelation and a large part of the Book of Interpretation in Sahih Muslim come through her. Her legal rulings were accepted under the Rightly Guided Caliphs and senior Companions consulted her on the law of inheritance. She was vindicated by name in Surah al-Nur, and the law of false accusation rests on that passage; the concession of dry ablution is reported to have been revealed on an occasion connected with her. She was present at the Battle of the Camel in 36 AH and withdrew from public affairs afterwards. She gave away very large sums in charity. She died in Ramadan of 58 AH and was buried at al-Baqi.

Historiographical Note

Four matters need stating so that readers are not misled.

The question of her age. This article reports the figures its approved sources give: birth four or five years after the beginning of the Prophet's mission, or 614 CE; the contract at six; the consummation at nine, in Shawwal of 1 AH or of 2 AH; eighteen at the Prophet's death; sixty-six at her own. Those figures come from Great Women of Islam and from as-Sallabi's Ali ibn Abi Talib, and they agree. What this article does not do is adjudicate the wider modern discussion of the question, which has been conducted substantially in works outside the sources consulted here and on grounds — comparisons with the recorded ages of her sister Asma among them — that those sources do not address. A reader who has met a different figure elsewhere should understand the difference as one between bodies of literature, and should not read this article's figures as a verdict on that discussion. Earlier versions of this article stated no age at all; that silence rested on reasoning drawn from works not in this project's approved source base, and reporting what the approved sources do say is the more honest course.

Devotional and historical material are not the same thing. The chapter in Great Women of Islam is written in a devotional register and includes a list of nine distinctions attributed to her, several of which concern angels attending her apartment and the circumstances of her marriage. Some of these correspond to reports in the canonical collections and are given above with their attributions; others belong to the genre rather than to the historical record, and this article has not reproduced them as fact. The clearest instance is the report of the dream: what Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim record is a dream seen on three nights, and later retellings that present it as a picture or portrait physically delivered while awake go beyond the collections.

The Battle of the Camel and its literature. The account followed here for the battle is as-Sallabi's, and that work frames the outbreak of the fighting in a particular way, attributing it to the agitation of a faction rather than to any of the Companions on either side. That framing is a recognisable position within the literature and not a neutral description, and this article has not adopted it. What has been taken from the work is the sequence of events, the names, the orders of restraint given on both sides, the variant dates, and the conduct recorded afterwards. The motives of any party are not stated here, because they are transmitted within a literature shaped by later disputes and are not uniform across it. The same work carries extended polemic against particular groups; none of it has been carried into this article, and the neutrality standard of this encyclopaedia forbids it.

What is still not established. Her childhood and education beyond the slight material noted above, including whether she could write. The motives of any party at the Battle of the Camel. Her personal habits of worship, her temperament, and detailed scenes of her final days, which appear in later writing without support in the earlier material. These are omitted. What remains is narrower than the popular account and better supported.

References and Further Reading

Primary Islamic Sources

The Qur'an, Surah al-Nur 24:11-21 — the passage addressing the accusation against her and establishing the law of false accusation and the requirement of four witnesses
The Qur'an, Surah al-Nur 24:26 — referred to her in the commentary tradition
The Qur'an, Surah al-Ahzab 33:28-29 — the verse of choice, recited to her first
The Qur'an, Surah al-Ahzab 33:6 and 33:53 — the standing of the Prophet's wives as mothers to the believers, and the provision that they did not remarry
The Qur'an, Surah al-Nisa 4:43 — the concession of tayammum, reported as revealed on an occasion connected with her
Sahih al-Bukhari — hadith 3, her account of the commencement of revelation, which opens the collection; hadith 994 and hadith 1147, on the Prophet's night prayer and his prayer in Ramadan; hadith 3411, narrated by Abu Musa, on her standing among women; the long report from her on the incident of the slander, graded sahih; the report of the dream; the report from Amr ibn al-As on whom the Prophet held dearest; the report through Hisham ibn Urwah on revelation and the gifts; Jibril's greeting; the account of the necklace and the revelation of tayammum; and the reports of the Prophet's final illness and death in her apartment
Sahih Muslim — the parallel report on the slander; the verse of choice; her statement that the Prophet died with his head between her neck and her chest; her commendation of the women of the Ansar; and the Book of Interpretation, much of which consists of narrations from her
Jami' al-Tirmidhi — cited in Great Women of Islam for a version of the report of the dream, in the chapter on merits
al-Mustadrak of al-Hakim — cited in as-Sallabi's work for the report that she would be among the Prophet's wives in Paradise

Classical Islamic Sources

Al-Dhahabi — his assessment of her knowledge, and his comment on the report concerning revelation and the gifts, both quoted in the works consulted; not read directly for this article
Ibn al-Qayyim — his comment on the permanence of her vindication in the recited text, quoted in as-Sallabi's work; not read directly
Ibn Kathir — his statement that ten verses were revealed concerning her and on the standing of the accusation after her vindication, quoted in as-Sallabi's work; not read directly
Al-Nawawi — his commentary on the report comparing her standing to tharid, including his qualification concerning Maryam and Asiya, quoted in as-Sallabi's work; not read directly
Masruq — his attestation, preserved in the biographical literature, that he had seen senior Companions questioning her on the finer points of the law of inheritance
The reports of Urwah ibn al-Zubayr and al-Qasim ibn Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr — her principal transmitters, through whom her material entered the standard chains

Academic and Scholarly Sources

Great Women of Islam by Mahmood Ahmad Ghadanfar — the dedicated chapter on Aisha bint Abu Bakr, consulted throughout and the source for her parentage, her mother's earlier marriage, the description of her apartment, Bilal's charge of the household provisioning, the named sums of her charity and the comparison with Asma, the narrative of the slander and of the later necklace, the month of seclusion, the count of the seven Companions and her place among them, the acceptance of her rulings under the Rashidun caliphs, Masruq's attestation on inheritance, the account of the Prophet's death, and the date and circumstances of her own
Ali ibn Abi Talib by Ali Muhammad as-Sallabi, volume two — the compilation of reports on her with their attributions to Bukhari and Muslim; her mother's full name; the ages stated above; the meeting at Mecca in Rabi al-Akhir 36 AH and the stated positions of Aisha, Talha and al-Zubayr; the circumstances at Mecca including Abdullah ibn Amir and Ya'la ibn Umayya, and the provenance of the camel; the debate over the destination and the declared purpose of the campaign; the disagreement among al-Ya'qubi, Ibn Abi al-Hadid, al-Daynuri and others over whether she was persuaded to go out, and the report from al-Dhahabi naming Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr; the exchange with Abdullah ibn Amir al-Hadrami; the reconciliation efforts of Imran ibn Husayn, Ka'b ibn Sur and al-Qa'qa ibn Amr al-Tamimi; the narrative of the two rounds and the variant datings; and Ali's conduct towards her after the battle. The work carries sectarian polemic which has not been used, and it frames the outbreak of the fighting in a particular interpretive way which this article has not adopted; its factual and descriptive content has been taken and its evaluative framing left aside
Hayatus Sahabah by Muhammad Yusuf Kandhlawi, volume three — the section on her knowledge, and the source for the testimonies of Abu Musa al-Ash'ari, Qabisa ibn Dhuwayb, Abu Salama, Masruq, Mahmud ibn Labid, Mu'awiya and Urwah ibn al-Zubayr collected there, together with her own account of how she learned medicine. The work gives for each report the earlier source in which it is preserved, chiefly Ibn Sa'd and also al-Tabarani, al-Hakim, Ahmad and al-Bazzar; none of those earlier works has been read directly for this article
Al-Sira al-Nabawiyya — for the framework of the Medinan period within which her life is placed
The Sealed Nectar — for the chronology of the expeditions of the Medinan years