in which my vindication before the people was revealed. He therefore ordered that two men and one woman who had uttered the obscenity about ʿĀʾishah be given the prescribed legal punishment, and they were flogged with the ḥadd.⦗1⦘
He said: The ones who had accused her were Ibn Ubayy, Mistah, Ḥassān, and Ḥamnah.
Al-Aʿmash narrates—from Abū al-Duḥā—from Masrūq—who said:
Ḥassān b. Thābit once entered upon ʿĀʾishah, chanting⦗2⦘ some verses he had composed about her, saying:
Chaste and dignified, never touched by suspicion,
She rises hungry, never having tasted the flesh of the heedless.⦗3⦘
She replied, “I am not as you say.”
I said, “Do you allow a man like this to come into your presence when Allah—exalted is He—has revealed, ‘The one who took upon himself the major share of it shall have a tremendous punishment’ (al-Nūr 24:11)?”
She answered, “And what punishment is harsher than blindness?”
Then she added, “He used to defend⦗4⦘ the Prophet ﷺ⦗5⦘.”
(1) The chain of transmission is sound, for Ibn Ishaq explicitly stated that he had heard it. The report is found in: ʿAbd al-Razzaq, al-Musannaf, no. 9749; Abu Dawud, no. 4474, and Ibn Majah, no. 2567, both in the section on hadd penalties, chapter “The Penalty for Slander (qadhf)”; and al-Tirmidhi, no. 3181, Tafsir section, who classed it as hasan.
(2) At-tashbib denotes amorous verse. When one says, “shabbaba al-shaʿiru bifulānin,” it means that the poet hinted at his love for her and praised her beauty. More broadly, the term refers to softening a poem by mentioning women, and may even be applied to the composition or recitation of poetry lacking any love theme, as in the report of Umm Maʿbad: “When Hassan heard the stranger’s lines, shabbaba answering him,” that is, he began his poetic reply.
(3) tuzan means “to be accused”; ghartha—literally “thin-bellied from hunger”—is used here to indicate that she does not backbite anyone. The wording alludes to the Qurʾanic censure of backbiting: ayuhibbu ahadukum an yakula lahma akhihi maytan (“Would one of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother?”). Al-ghawafil (sing. ghafilah) are the chaste women who are unaware of evil.
(4) The Damascus edition misreads the word as ʿalā.
(5) Reported by al-Bukhari, 7/338 (Maghazi, “Hadith al-Ifk”) and 8/373–374 (Tafsir), and by Muslim, no. 2488 (Virtues of the Companions, “Merits of Hassan b. Thabit”). The appearance in this narration that Hassan was the one who “shouldered the major part of the slander” is problematic, for it has been shown earlier that the culprit was ʿAbd Allah b. Ubayy b. Salul, and this remains the relied-upon view. Al-Hafiz points out that in the version of Abu Hudhayfa from Sufyan al-Thawri, cited by Abu Nuʿaym in his Mustakhraj, the wording is “and he was among those who shouldered the major part,” which lessens the difficulty.