and that anyone who swears, “I will not enter a house or a mosque,” does not break his oath by merely putting his hand, or any part of his body, inside it so long as he does not enter with his whole body.

His wording shows that he understood from the ḥadīth that ʿĀʾishah only extended her hand into the mosque, and on that basis he drew the ruling about oaths. This is a subtle—and rather strained—reading that restricts the ḥadīth to something the text itself neither says nor implies. It is likely that al-Khattābī belonged to those who believe a menstruating woman may not enter the mosque, and therefore he qualified the ḥadīth in line with evidence he considered valid. Such a restriction would be acceptable were that evidence sound, but, as will be shown, it is not; hence the ḥadīth should stand in its unrestricted, general sense.

Additional material supporting this unrestricted meaning has indeed been transmitted. The Imam recorded:

Sufyān narrated to us from Manbūdh, from his mother, who said:

“I was with Maymūnah when Ibn ʿAbbās came in. She asked, ‘My son, why is your hair so dishevelled?’ He answered, ‘Umm ʿAmmār, the one who combs it, is menstruating.’ She said, ‘My child, what does menstruation have to do with the hand? The Messenger of Allah ﷺ would come to one of us while she was menstruating, rest his head in her lap, and recite the Quran while she was in that state; then one of us would take her khumrah and lay it in the mosque. My child, what does menstruation have to do with the hand?’”

Al-Nasāʾī also related the report through Muḥammad ibn Manṣūr from Sufyān in a shorter form: “…and she would spread it out while she was menstruating.”

Al-Shawkānī said: