[Explanation]

The author—may Allah have mercy on him—relates from ʿĀʾishah (may Allah be pleased with her) a most unusual and striking incident. She said: “A woman entered my apartment with her two young daughters, asking for charity, for she was destitute. I found nothing with me except a single date—in one of the very houses of the Prophet ﷺ there was nothing but that one date!—so I gave it to her. She split it in two, handed half to one daughter and the other half to the second, and she herself did not eat a morsel.”

Later the Prophet ﷺ came in to see ʿĀʾishah, and she told him what had happened because it was such an extraordinary story. He said, “Whoever is tried with any of these girls and treats them well, they will be a screen for him from the Fire.”

His words “whoever is tried” do not here denote a calamity; rather they mean “whoever has been allotted,” just as Allah the Exalted says, “We test you with evil and with good as a trial, and to Us you will be returned” (al-Anbiyāʾ 21:35). That is, whoever has been granted two daughters and deals kindly with them, they will become a shield for him from the Fire on the Day of Resurrection. Allah will bar him from the Fire because of his benevolence toward his daughters. A girl is weak and unable to earn her own livelihood, whereas the earner is the man. Allah the Exalted says, “Men are caretakers of women because Allah has given one more strength than the other and because they spend of their wealth” (al-Nisāʾ 4:34).

Thus, the one who earns and provides for the household is the man, whereas the woman’s role is