down over her brow. He said, “It was a little short, so she had extended it with a leather strap.” He also said, “I never entered at the time for prayer without finding her in prayer.”
15- Muʿāwiyah—may Allah be pleased with him—narrated:
“I entered with my father upon Abū Bakr—may Allah be pleased with him—and I saw Asmāʾ standing at his bedside, fair-skinned, and I found Abū Bakr himself fair and slender.”
16- ʿUyainah ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān narrated from his father:
“A woman came to Samurah ibn Jundub and complained that her husband would not approach her. He questioned the man, who denied it, and wrote about the matter to Muʿāwiyah—may Allah be pleased with him. Muʿāwiyah wrote back: ‘Marry him to a woman at the expense of the public treasury who possesses both beauty and piety….’ So he did… Later the woman returned, fully veiled….” 1.}
(15) Al-Tabarani relates the report in al-Muʿjam al-Kabir (1/10/25) with a chain that is considered good for corroboration; all its transmitters are trustworthy except for Tabarani’s teacher al-Qasim ibn ʿAbbad al-Khattabi. Tabarani also narrates four hadiths from him in al-Muʿjam al-Awsat (2/3/1). Al-Haythami observes (9/42): “Its narrators are the men of the Sahih collections.”
(16) Al-Bayhaqi records it (7/228) with a hasan chain.
(1) I once erred by citing this report as evidence that women in the earliest period veiled their faces; I later discovered the opposite, for taqannuʿ refers to a woman covering her head while leaving her face uncovered, as I clarified in the introduction to this edition. This is therefore one of many proofs unwelcome to those who cling fanatically to their schools and adopt overly rigid views—Allah alone knows how they treat their own women—and for that reason I have relocated the report to this section.