Thus, when they saw her returning with the child in her arms, they exclaimed, “O Mary, you have come with something terrible!” (Maryam 19:27). The word fariyyah denotes an outrageous and heinous deed, whether in act or in speech.

They then said to her, “O sister of Aaron” (Maryam 19:28). One explanation is that they likened her to a devoted worshipper of their own era who rivalled her in piety and whose name was Aaron. Another, related by Saʿīd ibn Jubayr, is that they compared her to an immoral man of their time who was also called Aaron. A third view is that they intended Aaron the brother of Moses, drawing a parallel between her and him in devotion.

Muḥammad ibn Kaʿb al-Quraẕī went astray when he claimed that she was literally the sister of Moses and Aaron by lineage, for between them and her stretch long centuries—something obvious to anyone with the least knowledge and sufficient to refute so grave an error. He was apparently misled by the mention in the Torah that Mary, the sister of Moses and Aaron, beat the tambourine on the day Allah saved Moses and his people and drowned Pharaoh and his hosts, and so he imagined that this Mary was the same as the mother of Jesus. This is sheer falsehood and contradicts both authentic ḥadith and the clear wording of the Qur’an, as we have set out at length in the Tafsīr; praise and gratitude belong to Allah.

An authentic report does indicate, however, that she had a brother named Aaron. Nothing in the story of her birth or in her mother’s dedicating her to the Temple precludes her having other siblings; Allah knows best.

Imām Aḥmad relates: ‘Abd Allāh ibn Idrīs told us—he said, I heard my father mention it—from Simāk, from ʿAlqamah ibn Wāʾil, from al-Mughīrah ibn Shuʿbah, who said: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, sent me to Najrān. They said, “How do you recite, ‘O sister of Aaron,’ when Moses was before Jesus by such and such centuries?” I returned and conveyed this to the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him. He said, “Why did you not inform them that the people used to name their children after the prophets and the righteous who preceded them?”

Muslim, al-Nasāʾī, and al-Tirmidhī also transmitted this ḥadīth through the chain of ‘Abd Allāh ibn Idrīs, and al-Tirmidhī remarked, “It is ḥasan, ṣaḥīḥ, and gharīb; we know it only through this chain.”