In Fatḥ al-Bārī (4 / 52–53) Ibn Ḥajar cites this report without raising any objection; that silence on his part means he considers it reliable. Accordingly, it serves as a strong corroboration of her earlier narration quoted in this “Fifth Discussion,” pages 27–28: “O Asmāʾ, once a woman reaches puberty….” The following ḥadith of hers provides further support.

With respect to her actual conduct, it appears in the report about the ʿumrah she performed from Tanʿīm with her brother ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. She related:

(Ṣaḥīḥ) “He seated me behind him on his camel. I began to lift my khimār (head-cover), drawing it back from my neck, and he kept tapping my leg because of the movement of the mount. I said to him, ‘Can you see anyone…?’” (1)

Muslim recorded it (4 / 34), as did al-Nasāʾī in al-Sunan al-Kubrā (2 / 223, photo edition) and al-Ṭayālisī in his Musnad (1561), although the latter’s wording reads:

“I kept pushing back my khimār, and he reached out to me with something in his hand,”

thereby omitting her phrase “from my neck.” The version in Muslim carries the soundest chain and the most reliable text, as I clarified in the Introduction. For that reason the Shaykh did not refer it to Muslim, and some of the blind imitators followed him—such as one Darwīsh in his Fasl (p. 43)—because the ḥadith stands as proof against them: linguistically the khimār does not cover the face, as has already been demonstrated, and she was, after all, performing ʿumrah.