with the knowledge he had of his wife’s innocence and the affection he bore her. Usāmah said, “Messenger of Allah, she is your household, and we know nothing about her except good.”
ʿAlī, however, said, “Messenger of Allah, Allah has not constrained you; there are plenty of other women. Ask the maid—she will tell you the truth.”
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ then summoned Barīrah and asked, “O Barīrah, have you seen anything that might arouse your suspicion?” She replied, “No, by the One who sent you with the truth, I have seen nothing in her that I could censure more than this: she is a young girl who sometimes falls asleep while kneading her family’s dough, and the house animal comes and eats it.”
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ thereupon rose and sought redress concerning ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ubayy ibn Salūl. Standing on the pulpit he said, “O assembly of Muslims, who will relieve me of a man whose harm toward my household has reached us? By Allah, I have known nothing but good of my family, and they have mentioned a man of whom I likewise know only good; he never entered upon my family except in my presence.”
Saʿd ibn Muʿādh stood up and said, “Messenger of Allah, I will relieve you of him. If he is from the Aws, I shall strike off his head; and if he is from our brothers the Khazraj, command us and we will carry out your order.”
Saʿd ibn ʿUbādah—the leader of the Khazraj, who had been a righteous man before tribal zeal overtook him—rose and said, “By Allah, you are lying! You will not kill him, nor are you able to kill him.”
Usayd ibn Ḥuḍayr, a cousin of Saʿd ibn Muʿādh, then stood and said, “By Allah, you are the one lying! We shall certainly kill him, for you are a hypocrite arguing on behalf of the hypocrites.”
The two factions, the Aws and the Khazraj, then leapt to their feet and were on the verge of fighting while the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was still standing on the pulpit. He kept calming them down until they grew quiet and he himself fell silent.
She said: I wept that entire day and night; my tears did not cease and no sleep came to my eyes. By the next morning my parents were with me, and I had now been weeping for two nights and a day without sleep or relief, until they feared that my weeping would split my liver. While they were sitting with me and I was still crying, a woman from the Anṣār requested permission to enter; she sat down and wept with me.
While we were in that state, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ entered, greeted us, and sat down, though he did not sit near me.