throughout all succeeding ages.

[We have already treated this subject in detail above, explaining the verses and aḥādīth that pertain to it under the Expedition of al-Muraysīʿ, and we have likewise expanded upon it in the Tafsīr in a manner we consider sufficient and convincing—praise and gratitude belong to Allah.]

(1) The scholars are unanimously agreed that anyone who reviles her after her vindication falls into disbelief. They have differed, however, regarding the rest of the Mothers of the Believers: does one who slanders them also become an unbeliever or not? There are two opinions. The sounder view is that he does in fact disbelieve, for the woman reviled is a wife of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and Allah Most High became angry on her behalf precisely because she was the wife of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ; therefore she and the others share the same ruling.

Among her distinctive merits with the Prophet ﷺ was that, in the rotation of nights, she enjoyed two: her own night and the night of Sawdah—[when Sawdah ceded her turn in order to draw nearer to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ] (2).

Moreover, he ﷺ passed away on her day and in her house, his head resting between her chest and her neck; in the very last moment of his life in this world and the first of the next, Allah joined his saliva with hers. He was buried in her room (3).

Imām Aḥmad (4) said: Wakiʿ narrated to us, from Ismāʿīl, from Muṣʿab ibn Isḥāq ibn Ṭalḥah, from ʿĀʾishah, that the Prophet ﷺ said:

“It lightens things for me that I have seen the whiteness of ʿĀʾishah’s hand in Paradise.”

Aḥmad alone relates this report. [This is the pinnacle of profound love: that he found comfort merely because he saw the whiteness of ʿĀʾishah’s hand before him in Paradise] (5).

Another of her distinctions is that she was the most learned of the Prophet’s wives ﷺ—indeed, the most knowledgeable woman of all time. Al-Zuhrī said, “If the knowledge of ʿĀʾishah were placed alongside the knowledge of all his other wives and of all women, the knowledge of ʿĀʾishah would still be superior.” (6)

ʿAṭāʾ ibn Abī Rabāḥ said, “ʿĀʾishah was the most insightful in jurisprudence, the most knowledgeable of people, and possessed the best opinion regarding public affairs.”

ʿUrwah said, “I never saw anyone more learned in jurisprudence, medicine, or poetry than ʿĀʾishah, and no woman—or man, apart from Abū Hurayrah—has narrated from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ as many aḥādīth as she did.”

Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī said, “Whenever any ḥadīth proved difficult for us, the Companions of Muḥammad, and we asked ʿĀʾishah about it, we invariably found that she possessed knowledge of it.” Recorded by al-Tirmidhī (7).

Abū al-Ḍahḥā, on the authority of Masrūq, said, “I saw the senior elders among the Companions of Muḥammad asking her about the laws of inheritance.”