the jilbab (full outer cloak), as Hafsa maintained. Ibn Jarir (18/114) transmits this explanation from Ibn Masud, Ibn Abbas, and several other Successors, and al-Qurtubi pronounces the chain sound. Jabir ibn Zayd—an authoritative tabiʿi who died in 93 AH—held that the word denotes the khimar (head-cover). This is reported by Ibn Jarir and by Abu Bakr al-Jassas (3/411). His reasoning may be what al-Qurtubi cites: “The Arabs say of an elderly woman who has laid aside her khimar: ‘she is wadiʿ.’” A further support is that God placed this verse in Surat al-Nur immediately after the earlier verse enjoining women to wear khimars; the earlier command is unrestricted, so it is as though God wished to qualify it and therefore inserted this verse in the same surah. God knows best. I have also found that Ibn Abbas explicitly affirmed this sense, stating that the verse concerning al-qawaʿid (elderly women) is an exception to the verse of the khimar. Abu Dawud (4111) and al-Bayhaqi (7/93) record this from him with a good isnad. It thus seems that Jabir ibn Zayd learned the view from Ibn Abbas, for he was one of Ibn Abbas’s prolific transmitters. The wording “their garments (thiyabahunna)”—a plural—also better suits this interpretation. Shaykh ʿAbd al-Rahman b. Nasir al-Saʿdi noticed the same point and wrote in his Tafsir (5/445): “That is, the outer garments such as the khimar and the like, about which God said: ‘and let them draw their khimars over their bosoms.’” The hadith scholar Abu al-Hasan b. al-Qattan had preceded him in this in al-Nazar ila Ahkam al-Nazar. (1) Some later scholars have supported what we have stated with the report narrated by Abu Dawud (1/389) through Faraj b. Fadala—ʿAbd al-Khabir b. Thabit b. Qays b. Shammas—from his father—from his grandfather, who related: “A woman called Umm Khalad came to the Prophet, peace be upon him, wearing a niqab and asking about her son… =”