880 – Abū Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) reported that the Prophet ﷺ said:

“Whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day must not harm his neighbour. Treat women kindly, for woman was created from a rib, and the most crooked part of the rib is its upper section. If you try to straighten it you will break it, and if you leave it, it will remain crooked. So treat women kindly.”

Agreed upon, and the wording is that of al-Bukhārī. Muslim adds: “If you enjoy her company, you do so while crookedness remains in her; but if you attempt to straighten her you will break her, and breaking her is to divorce her.” (1)

Vocabulary of the ḥadīth
• istawṣū: let each of you counsel the other to show goodness and benevolence toward your womenfolk; or, accept my counsel to you concerning them, for I enjoin you to treat them well.
• ḍilaʿ: pronounced with a kasrah on the letter ḍād and a fatḥah on the lām; the final letter is a silent ʿayn. It is one of the bones of the rib cage, naturally curved. The intended meaning is that Eve was originally created from Adam’s rib, as Allah says, “and from it He created its mate” (al-Nisāʾ 4:1).
• aʿlāhu (its upper part): the portion near the collar-bone, rounded like a half-circle and markedly bent.
• tuqīmuhu (you straighten it): you attempt to set it fully upright.
• ʿiwaj (crookedness): most scholars vocalise the first letter with a kasrah. Linguists say: with a fatḥah it applies to anything vertical, such as a stick; with a kasrah it refers to a flat surface, land, or religion, as in the phrase “in his religion there is ʿiwaj (deviation).”

(1) Muslim, 1468.