In another wording she said: “Aflah then came to ask my permission to enter, but I refused him. He said, ‘Do you veil yourself from me when I am your uncle?’ I replied, ‘How can that be?’ He answered, ‘My brother’s wife nursed you with my brother’s milk.’
So I went to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and told him, and he said, ‘Aflah has spoken the truth; admit him—may your right hand be covered in dust!’
Taribat (“may you be soiled with dust”) is an idiom meaning, ‘may you fall into poverty’; the Arabs use it as a mild form of reproof without intending that the misfortune actually occur.
Unfamiliar terms:
• Aflah: pronounced with an initial hamzah followed by a quiescent fā’, then a lām and a ḥā’; it is diptote and therefore carries no tanwīn.
• al-Quʿays: qāf with ḍammah, then ʿayn, followed by a medial yā’ and a sīn.
• Al-Dāraquṭnī reports that his full name was Wāʾil b. Aflah al-Ashʿarī.
• Ādhana lahu (“he was given permission”): with a long alif in the first syllable.
After the verse of veiling was revealed, the women at the dawn of Islam—who had continued to appear unveiled in the lingering manner of the pre-Islamic period—were commanded to observe hijab. Allah Most High said: “O Prophet, tell your wives, your daughters, and the believing women to draw their outer garments over themselves” (Q 33:59). This took place in the fifth year after the Hijrah, whereupon they began to conceal themselves from unrelated men.
The jilbāb is a wrap-around cloak, like a loose mantle or abayah.
“May your right hand be covered in dust” is, again, a customary Arabic expression wishing poverty upon someone without the literal intent.
Overall meaning:
ʿĀʾishah (may Allah be pleased with her) had been nursed by the wife of Abū al-Quʿays. After Allah commanded the wives of the Prophet ﷺ, his daughters, and the believing women to observe hijab from non-maḥram men, the milk-brother of ʿĀʾishah’s father sought permission to enter. She refused, thinking that only the woman who had nursed her—not the man—established a suckling relationship, for, as she imagined, the milk belonged exclusively to the woman.
When the Messenger of Allah ﷺ came in and she informed him, he said, “Let him in, for he is your uncle.” ʿĀʾishah then realized that the milk a child drinks originates from the fluids of both husband and wife, and thereafter she would say: “Make unlawful through suckling whatever is unlawful through lineage.”
Points derived from the hadith:
- The hadith proves that the rulings of suckling apply equally to the husband of the wet-nurse and to his relatives, since he is the owner of the milk: it is produced by the fluids of both spouses. Accordingly, the suckling relationship attaches to both of them, and the resulting prohibition extends through both family lines alike. This is the position of the majority of the Companions, the Successors, the hadith scholars, and the juristic schools, in opposition to a small minority who claim that the prohibition spreads only through the woman—a view contradicted by the sound texts.