to remain covered and veiled, rather than expose or display themselves. For this reason, it is not prescribed for a woman to raise her voice in the call to prayer or the pilgrimage invocation, to ascend al-Safā and al-Marwa, or to remove her usual clothing when entering ihrām (the state of pilgrimage consecration), as a man does. A man is commanded to uncover his head and not to wear ordinary garments—those made to fit particular parts of his body. Thus, he must not wear a shirt, trousers, a hooded cloak, or leather boots. However, because he needs something to cover his private parts and footwear to walk in, he was eventually permitted to wear trousers if he could find no waist-wrapper, and leather boots if he could find no sandals. These were allowed as substitutes to meet a general need, unlike clothing needed on account of a particular circumstance, such as illness or cold: wearing it requires expiation. Abū Hanīfa applied this analogy consistently, but most scholars disagreed with him because of the authentic hadith and the distinction between these two cases.

As for a woman, she has not been forbidden any kind of clothing, since she is commanded to remain covered and veiled, and the opposite is therefore not prescribed for her. She has, however, been forbidden to wear a niqāb (fitted face veil) or gloves, because these are garments made to fit a particular body part, and she has no need of them.

The jurists have differed over whether her face is analogous to a man’s head or to his hands. There are two positions on this within Ahmad’s school and elsewhere. Those who regarded her face as analogous to his head instructed her, when