1898 – Ahmad ibn Yahyā al-Hulwānī also narrated to us, saying: Saʿīd ibn Sulaymān narrated to us, from Abū Usāma, from Hishām ibn ʿUrwa, from his father, who said: “I kept Aisha’s company ⦗2412⦘—may Allah have mercy on her—so closely that, four or five years before her death, I said, ‘Were she to die today, I would not regret any knowledge of hers that had escaped me.’ Yet I never saw anyone more knowledgeable than she about a revealed verse, a religious ordinance, or a sunnah; nor anyone more knowledgeable about poetry or better versed in reciting it; nor anyone more knowledgeable about the Arabs’ battle-days, genealogy, such-and-such and such-and-such, legal judgments, or medicine.

“I asked her, ‘Mother, where did you learn medicine?’ She replied, ‘I used to nurse the sick, and a remedy would be prescribed to me. A patient would fall ill, and a remedy would be prescribed for him and would benefit him. I would also hear people sharing such prescriptions with one another, and I would memorize them.’”

ʿUrwa said, “Indeed, the greater part of her knowledge escaped me because I did not ask her about it.”