Conversely, the opposite view is upheld by a report that Ibn Ḥibbān transmitted through Sulaymān ibn Mūsā. He was asked about a man looking at his wife’s private parts, and he answered, “I asked ʿAṭāʾ, and he said, ‘I asked ʿĀʾishah,’ who then related this ḥadīth with the same purport; it is explicit on the issue.”

I say: This shows the falsity of the narration ascribed to her in which she supposedly said, “I never saw the private part of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ at all.” Al-Ṭabarānī narrated it in al-Muʿjam al-Ṣaghīr, p. 27, and, through his chain, Abū Nuʿaym (8/147) and al-Khaṭīb (1/225). In its isnād appears Barakah ibn Muḥammad al-Ḥalabī—there is no blessing in him!—for he is a liar and a fabricator. Al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar, in Lisān al-Mīzān, listed this ḥadīth among his inventions.

Another chain for the same report is found in Ibn Mājah (1/226, 593) and Ibn Saʿd (8/136), but it contains ʿĀʾishah’s female servant, who is unknown. For that reason al-Būṣayrī declared its isnād weak in al-Zawāʾid.

A third route appears in Abū Shaykh’s Akhlāq al-Nabī ﷺ, p. 251; in it are Abū Ṣāliḥ—Bādhām, a weak narrator—and Muḥammad ibn al-Qāsim al-Asadī, a well-known liar.

Of similar tenor is the ḥadīth: “When one of you approaches his wife, let him cover himself and not both strip naked like two donkeys.” Ibn Mājah recorded it (1/592) from ʿUtbah ibn ʿAbd al-Sulamī; in its chain is al-Aḥwaṣ ibn Ḥakīm, and the narrator from him, al-Walīd ibn al-Qāsim al-Hamdānī, rated him weak.