“…they would pull the cloth down to the eyebrows,” that is, not over their faces, as al-Ṭabarī explained.

B. As for ʿĀʾishah, she said about the woman in a state of iḥrām:

“She may let her garment hang over her face if she wishes.”

Al-Bayhaqī transmitted it with an authentic chain.

I say: ʿĀʾishah’s giving the pilgrim woman a choice to drape the cloth is clear proof that, in her view, the face is not part of the ʿawrah; otherwise she would have made it obligatory, as the objectors contend. Hence the majority of those strict authors—foremost among them al-Tuwayjiri—concealed this statement of hers from their readers, and the author of “Faṣl al-Khiṭāb” even excised it from al-Bayhaqī’s narration! He has other alterations of this sort, which I have exposed there.

This sound report from her reinforces her marfūʿ hadith, a point of which those people were either ignorant or willfully oblivious—both alternatives are bitter indeed!

C. As for Asmāʾ, it is authentically reported that Qays ibn Abī Ḥāzim saw her: she was a fair-skinned woman with tattooed hands, as will be documented later in the book; this is one of the advantages of the present edition.

Fourth: the report of Ibn ʿAbbās cited earlier ⦗6⦘:

“She brings the jilbāb close to her face, without wrapping it tightly.”

Equally relevant is his explanation of the verse on adornment, “except what ordinarily appears” (Q 24:31), as meaning the face and the hands, mentioned earlier and to be discussed again in the book ⦗59⦘, along with a similar report from Ibn ʿUmar.

On this occasion I must draw attention to a painful reality, both as a lesson and a clarification