wake up, even when the voices around them grew loud. Ṣafwān was one of that sort; once he slept, he sank into such a deep slumber that only Allah could rouse him—it was as though he were dead.

When he finally awoke and came forward, he found the Mother of the Believers ʿĀʾishah alone in the open desert. He had known her before the verse of ḥijāb was revealed, so he made his camel kneel and did not address her with a single word; he did not ask, “What kept you behind?” or “Why are you here?”

His silence arose out of reverence for the household of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ; he did not wish to speak to the Prophet’s wife in his absence. He merely caused the camel to kneel, placed his hand on its fore-leg, uttered nothing—not even “Mount.” She mounted, and he set off leading the camel on foot; he did not drive it from behind so that he would not look at her.

When he reached the army in the forenoon, after the sun had climbed high, the hypocrites were overjoyed, seeing in this an opening to malign the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. They accused this man in connection with the chaste, dignified, pure, and immaculate bed of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and began spreading the slander that he had committed the unthinkable. Three of the sincere Companions also slipped into the same error as the hypocrites: Miṣṭaḥ ibn Athāthah—the cousin of Abū Bakr—Ḥassān ibn Thābit, and Ḥamnah bint Jahsh.

The rumor spread, and people began saying, “What is this? How could it be?” Some were unsure, while others rejected it absolutely, declaring, “The bed of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ can never be defiled; it is the purest bed on earth.”

And Allah—exalted in might, power, and wisdom—decreed that when the Prophet ﷺ reached Madinah, she would fall ill—