IHCST 117 - Geissinger - Gender and Muslim Constructions of Exegetical Authority - A Rereading of The Classical Genre of Qur Ān Commentary 2015 PDF
IHCST 117 - Geissinger - Gender and Muslim Constructions of Exegetical Authority - A Rereading of The Classical Genre of Qur Ān Commentary 2015 PDF
IHCST 117 - Geissinger - Gender and Muslim Constructions of Exegetical Authority - A Rereading of The Classical Genre of Qur Ān Commentary 2015 PDF
Islamic History
and Civilization
Studies and Texts
Editorial Board
Hinrich Biesterfeldt
Sebastian Günther
Wadad Kadi
VOLUME 117
By
Aisha Geissinger
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: 16th century Ottoman miniature showing Muḥammad (on the right) with a flaming halo;
seated with him (from right to left) are: his daughter Fāṭima, his wives ʿĀʾisha and Umm Salama, as well as
his client Umm Ayman. In the foreground is a servant with a gift for Fāṭima which has miraculously
descended from heaven. This scene is from a manuscript of the Siyer-i Nebi (Life of the prophet),
CBL T 419, f. 40b.
© The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin
Geissinger, Aisha.
Gender and Muslim constructions of exegetical authority : a rereading of the classical genre of Qur’an
commentary / by Aisha Geissinger.
pages cm. — (Islamic history and civilization ; v. 117)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-26935-4 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-29444-8 (e-book) 1. Women
transmitters of the Hadith. 2. Hadith—Authorities. 3. Qur’an—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title.
BP136.485.G424 2015
297.1’25082—dc23
2015009391
This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering
Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more
information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 0929-2403
isbn 978-90-04-26935-4 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-29444-8 (e-book)
Acknowledgments ix
List of Journal Abbreviations xi
Conclusion 275
Bibliography 289
Index of Quranic References 308
General Index 311
Acknowledgments
The writing of this book would not have been possible without the assistance
of a number of people. Over the course of researching and writing it I have
incurred many debts that I am glad to acknowledge.
First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to those who oversaw this
book’s initial incarnation. The careful direction, sound advice and support of
my thesis advisor Sebastian Günther were indispensable. I am particularly
thankful to him for introducing me to literary approaches to reading ḥadīths.
Todd Lawson, Michael Marmura and Walid Saleh were on the advisory com-
mittee, and I am very grateful for the time and effort that they expended on my
behalf. I would like to give special thanks to Walid Saleh for allowing me access
to his extensive collection of Quran commentaries in manuscript and print
form, which made it possible for me to carry out research of this scope, as well
as for giving me a quiet place to research and write. My thanks also go to
Camilla Adang, for encouragement and suggestions for sources in the early
stages of this project, as well as to Huda Khattab, Nadum Jwad, Barzan Ibrahim,
and Lynda Clarke, who helped me to obtain copies of several sources that I
needed. Lynda also provided me with a quiet place to write at a critical junc-
ture. Asma Afsaruddin served as the external examiner for my thesis and pro-
vided helpful and constructive feedback, for which I am grateful.
A number of individuals also helped make the revision process possible. I
am thankful to Sebastian Günther for his helpful advice, as well as for sending
me copies of several important sources. I am very grateful to Walid Saleh for
reading and commenting on drafts, for his generous sharing of his expertise in
tafsīr and Arabic, for access to his manuscripts of al-Thaʿlabī’s Quran commen-
tary, and for his constant advice and encouragement throughout. I will never
be able to thank him enough. Special thanks go to Laury Silvers for providing
me with copies of a number of key biographical sources, for reading and com-
menting on drafts, and for giving me a quiet place to write for several crucial
weeks, as well as for thought-provoking discussions about textual representa-
tions of women in classical Muslim sources. I would also like to thank her class,
RLG 457S at the University of Toronto (Winter 2013) for their feedback on an
earlier draft of Chapter One.
My sincere thanks go to Hinrich Biesterfeldt, Sebastian Günther, and Wadad
Kadi for including this book in the Islamic History and Civilization Series, as
well as to the two anonymous reviewers, who provided valuable suggestions
for improvement and saved me from a number of embarrassing errors. A word
of appreciation goes to Kathy van Vliet, Nienke Moolenaar, and Teddi Dols,
x Acknowledgments
editors at Brill, for their assistance during the various stages leading to this
book’s publication.
Finally, I would like to thank Barbara Stasiuk for her friendship and moral
support throughout this process, as well as my children, Hazhaar, Salman,
Maryam, and Khadijah for their endurance.
List of Journal Abbreviations
1 The span of time extending from the lifetime of Muḥammad (d. 11/632) to 338/950 is conven-
tionally designated as the formative period. However, the question of how best to periodize
Muslim history is an issue of ongoing debate.
2 Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorans ii, 163 n. 2.
3 Gilliot, The beginnings of quranic exegesis 8.
4 Some aspects of this have been discussed in a preliminary fashion in the following articles:
Geissinger, The exegetical traditions of ʿĀʾisha; Geissinger, The portrayal of the Ḥajj; Geissinger,
ʿAʾisha bint Abi Bakr. My thinking on a number of facets of this question has evolved signifi-
cantly as the field of Tafsīr Studies has advanced and I have carried out further research.
5 Calder, Tafsīr from Ṭabarī to Ibn Kathīr.
introduction 3
into the fire, all of the animals tried to extinguish it, with the exception
of the gecko. It blew on (the fire), so the Messenger of God ordered that
(geckos) be killed.6
This ḥadīth is quoted in the Tafsīr Yaḥyā b. Sallām, at the conclusion of its
commentary on Q 21:69—“But We said, ‘Fire, be cool and safe for Abraham.’ ”7
Abraham’s people are incensed that he has broken all but one of the statues of
their deities, and decide to burn him alive, but divine intervention ensures that
he is unharmed (Q 21:51–70).
The isnād of this ḥadīth (henceforth, “the gecko tradition”) as it is found in the
Tafsīr Yaḥyā b. Sallām immediately presents the audience/reader with a question:
While most of the names it contains are those of well-known transmitters—
Saʿīd b. al-Musayyab (d. 94/713), Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī (d. 131/713), Nāfiʿ the mawla
of Ibn ʿUmar (d. 117/735), and ʿĀʾisha bt. Abī Bakr8—who is Umm Sayāba? A
search through the standard biographical works on the Companions9 as well as
of later ḥadīth transmitters yields no biographical notice for a woman known
by this kunya.10 However, the Sunan Ibn Māja contains a similar ḥadīth that
Sāʾiba, the mawlāt (client) of al-Fākih b. al-Mughīra is said to have related from
ʿĀʾisha.11 “Umm Sayāba” may be a transmitter’s or copyist’s mistake, a result of
confusion with the female Companion Umm Sharīk, who is widely credited
with having transmitted ḥadīths recounting that the prophet instructed that
12 E.g.: Abū Bakr ʿAbdallāh b. al-Zubayr al-Ḥumaydī, Musnad al-Ḥumaydī i, 344; Abū Bakr b.
Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm b. Abī Shayba, Al-Muṣannaf vii, 126 (K. al-Ṣayd); Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal,
Musnad al-Imām Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal vi, 484; al-Bukhārī iv, 334 (K. Badʾ al-khalq); Muslim
b. al-Ḥajjāj al-Qushayrī, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 985 (K. al-Salām). Some biographical notices for
Umm Sharīk from works conventionally dated to the formative period attribute this
ḥadīth to her; see: Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 180; Landau-Tasseron, The history of al-Ṭabarī
xxxix, 204.
13 See for example: Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 177–82; Yūsuf b. ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd
al-Barr, Al-Istīʿāb fī maʿrifat al-aṣḥāb iv, 496–7; Jamāl al-Dīn Abū al-Ḥajjāj Yūsuf al-Mizzī,
Tahdhīb al-kamāl fī asmāʾ al-rijāl xxxv, 367.
14 These last three possibilities appear in different manuscripts of Ibn Abī Shayba’s
Muṣannaf; see: Ibn Abī Shayba vii, 127, n. 1 (K. al-Ṣayd).
15 Al-Mizzī, Tahdhīb xxxv, 192–193. Significantly, there is no entry for Sāʾiba in Ibn Saʿd’s
Ṭabaqāt.
16 Al-Bukhārī iv, 334 (K. Badʾ al-khalq).
17 Ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl āy al-Qurʾān xvii, 52. For a fairly similar pattern,
see: Abū Isḥāq Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Thaʿlabī, Al-Kashf wa-l-bayān fī tafsīr
al-Qurʾān al-maʿrūf bi-tafsīr al-Thaʿlabī iv, 246.
introduction 5
This raises some obvious questions about the provenance, “original” form
and transmission history of this ḥadīth. As is well known, Joseph Schacht con-
cludes that legal traditions with less complete isnāds are likely to be older than
ḥadīths with isnāds extending all the way back to Muḥammad that address the
same topics, because the latter were retrojected to the prophet in order that
they might function as effective proof-texts in legal debates.18
The ongoing debates about the authenticity of isnāds, and whether any
ḥadīths can be dated with confidence to the first/seventh century, as well as
about the historical reliability or otherwise of classical biographical dictionar-
ies are too well known to require detailed discussion here.19 A great deal of
effort has been expended by historical-critical scholars on questions of origins
and authenticity. In the process, some scholars have attempted to evaluate sev-
eral well known ḥadīths attributed to early Muslim women—most often, to
ʿĀʾisha bt. Abī Bakr—that often are quoted in Quran commentaries. The find-
ings of these scholars range from skepticism to cautious optimism.20
In my view, the work of scholars such as Harald Motzki allows for the work-
ing assumption that some of the traditions discussed in this study could con-
ceivably be dated as far back as the first/seventh century.21 Nonetheless, this
study will not attempt to date individual traditions. As Uri Rubin perceptively
points out, there is no way to know if a given ḥadīth does in fact go back to
the person to whom it is attributed, even if the process of attribution began in
his or her lifetime.22 Nor will this study utilize the ḥadīths or other exegetical
materials ascribed to female figures in order to attempt to reconstruct early
Muslim women’s interpretations of or responses to the Quran. In my view, it
is likely impossible to do so due to the myriad historical problems involved.
Among these problems are the roles played by authorial selectivity and
23 Brenner observes that “embedding, by definition, affects the indigenous sense of the
source text”; see her article: M text authority in biblical love lyrics 137.
24 E.g.: Beaumont, Hard-boiled: Narrative discourse in early Muslim traditions; Günther,
Fictional narration and imagination; see also his article: Modern literary theory.
25 See for example: Brown, The canonization of al-Bukhārī.
26 I owe this expression to Afsaneh Najmabadi; see her monograph, Women with mustaches 1.
For more on the concept of “cultural labour,” see below.
27 For the use of literary approaches to non-literary texts, see: Günther, Introduction esp.
xvi–xx.
28 For the isnād as a literary device, see: Berg, Competing paradigms 275.
29 For an overview of this genre, see: al-Qadi, Biographical dictionaries.
30 For some of the problems involved in mining biographical dictionaries as sources of “pure
information,” see: Malti-Douglas, Dreams, the blind, and the semiotics. For evidence of
literary shaping in entries devoted to several female Companions in order to downplay
“controversial” aspects of their personas, see: Afsaruddin, The first Muslims 161ff.
introduction 7
reasons already noted, the version of the gecko tradition under discussion here
is located at the lower ends of these spectra. Whatever the historical accuracy
of such determinations, they are an important aspect of the reception history
of this particular ḥadīth, and form part of the background of its presence or
absence in exegetical works.
Assessing the significance of the gecko tradition within the classical tafsīr
genre as a whole is a challenging task, to say the least. It seems that the earliest
surviving example of this ḥadīth being quoted in a Quran commentary is in
the tafsīr reportedly authored by Yaḥyā b. Sallām (d. 200/815). As is well known,
questions relating to the origins and early development of quranic commen-
tary have long been the focus of much attention in Tafsīr Studies,31 and it is
apparent that a number of historical issues are involved in interpreting the sig-
nificance of the quotation of the gecko tradition in the Tafsīr Yaḥyā b. Sallām
as it has come down to us.
According to the classical biographical literature, Yaḥyā was a scholar from
Baṣra who settled in Ifrīqiyya, where “(people) heard from him his tafsīr.”32 The
word “tafsīr” in such a context could be taken to mean that he simply engaged
in oral explanation of the Quran (without, however, producing any written
text), or that he wrote a commentary, which he also taught.33 Gregor Schoeler’s
research on several different types of sources conventionally dated to the for-
mative period points to a difference between the written personal notes used
by some teachers and transmitters and formal written texts in which the con-
tents and order are fixed.34 The printed edition of the Tafsīr Yaḥyā b. Sallām
was prepared using manuscripts from Tunisian libraries which have been
dated to the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries, and these appear to be
the oldest that have survived.35 Therefore, it is difficult to determine whether
or not the gecko tradition was “originally” part of Yaḥyā’s exegesis of Q 21:69.
31 There are numerous studies addressing various facets of the debate. Positions range from
dating the beginnings of quranic commentary to the first/seventh century, to a rejection
of the historicity of any isnāds (whether of individual exegetical ḥadīths, or of exegetical
works) prior to 200/815. For an overview of these debates that takes a skeptical position,
see: Berg, Development, esp. 65–111. For fairly “centrist” attempts to outline early stages of
quranic exegesis that take these debates into consideration, see: Gilliot, Beginnings 1–27;
Shah, Introduction 3–16, 53–61.
32 “wa-samiʿū minhu tafsīrahu” (al-Dhahabī, Siyar ix, 397). Similarly: Shams al-Dīn
Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. Aḥmad al-Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt al-mufassirīn 549.
33 For these two senses of the word in classical texts’ discussions of reputed exegetes of the
formative period, see: Gilliot, Beginnings 2–3.
34 Schoeler, The oral and the written in early Islam.
35 Sezgin, Geschichte des Arabischen Schrifttums i, 39; Shalabī, Introduction i, 21–4.
8 introduction
While the existence of two Quran commentaries that are based on the Tafsīr
Yaḥyā b. Sallām—that authored by the third/ninth century ʿIbāḍī exegete,
Hūd b. Muḥakkam (or Muḥkim),36 as well as the Tafsīr of Ibn Abī Zamanīn
(d. 399/1008)—might be expected to provide an indication, unfortunately nei-
ther quotes this ḥadīth in their discussions of this verse.
Given the well-known methodological problems involved in utilizing
tafsīr texts conventionally dated to the second/eighth century in any histori-
cal study, it might well be asked what sorts of results can be expected. Debate
continues regarding the age and provenance as well as history of redaction of
a number of the exegetical works used in this study, which will be noted as
we proceed. Moreover, a significant number of tafsīr texts that were report-
edly authored during the formative period do not appear to have survived to
the present day,37 and it is unclear how representative those exegetical works
that have come down to us might be of what once existed. Conclusions about
the state of quranic exegesis in the second/eighth century are thus unavoid-
ably provisional. Nonetheless, fragmentary as our evidence from this period is,
it can provide some insight into the historical background of the fascinating
phenomenon apparent in some third/ninth century tafsīr works: the quota-
tion of a small yet noticeable number of ḥadīths, āthār and several other types
of exegetical materials ascribed to women.
While there is usually little controversy about the dating of tafsīr texts from
third/ninth century and later, these works present another type of challenge:
how to go about assessing significance. When even the place of mammoth
Quran commentaries themselves within the classical tafsīr genre is a question
of debate (as we will see), how can the significance of individual ḥadīths or
other exegetical materials attributed to early Muslim women within this genre
be determined?
Norman Calder observes that classical tafsīr involves the systematic juxta-
position of the quranic text and the disciplines involved in the study of the
Arabic language (such as grammar, vocabulary, syntax and rhetoric) as well as
other medieval Muslim fields of religious learning: law, theology, eschatology,
prophetic biography (i.e. of Muḥammad as well as of earlier prophets), and
mysticism (taṣawwuf ).38 He demonstrates that the hermeneutical approach
employed and promoted by late medieval Quran commentator Ibn Kathīr
36 For Hūd’s commentary, see: Gilliot, Le commentaire coranique. For more on Ibn Abī
Zamanīn, see Chapter Two.
37 See for example the list of non-extant tafsīr works utilized by al-Thaʿlabī in his Quran
commentary in: Saleh, The formation of the classical tafsīr 245–9.
38 Calder, Tafsīr from Ṭabarī to Ibn Kathīr 105–6.
introduction 9
43 Abū l-Layth Naṣr b. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Ibrāhīm al-Samarqandī, Tafsīr al-Samarqandī
al-musammā Baḥr al-ʿulūm ii, 372.
44 Al-Ḥusayn b. Masʿūd al-Farrāʾ al-Baghawī, Tafsīr al-Baghawī al-musammā Maʿālim
al-tanzīl iii, 221.
45 Norman Calder’s discussion of Ibn Kathīr’s exegetical use of the gecko tradition focuses
on its multiple quotations in the latter’s Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ. Ibn Kathīr also includes a ver-
sion of this ḥadīth in his Quran commentary; see: ʿImād al-Dīn Abū l-Fidāʾ b. Kathīr, Tafsīr
al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓīm v, 205. All references to Ibn Kathīr’s Quran commentary are to this edi-
tion, unless otherwise specified.
46 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī, Al-Durr al-manthūr fī l-tafsīr al-maʿthūr v, 638–9.
Al-Suyūṭī includes two versions of this ḥadīth.
47 Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Shawkānī, Fatḥ al-qadīr al-jāmiʿ bayna fannay
al-riwāya wa-l-dirāya min ʿilm al-tafsīr 1138.
48 The discussion of Q 21:68–69 in the encyclopedic commentaries of the following exegetes
were consulted: al-Ṭabarī, al-Māturīdī, al-Thaʿlabī, al-Ṭūsī, al-Wāhidī (his al-Basīṭ), Ibn
ʿAṭiyya, al-Ṭabrisī, al-Rāzī, al-Qurṭubī and Abū Ḥayyān al-Gharnāṭī.
49 For the characteristics of encyclopedic commentaries, see: Saleh, Formation 17–21; Saleh,
Preliminary remarks 20.
50 For more on these particular works, see below.
51 Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Qurṭubı, Al-Jāmiʿ li-l-aḥkām al-Qurʾān xi, 304.
introduction 11
52 Yet another example is Ibn al-Jawzī’s (d. 597/1200) Zād al-masīr, which he wrote so as
to enable students to memorize it. For his hermeneutics, see: McAuliffe, Ibn al-Jawzī’s
exegetical propaedeutic 107.
53 Saleh, Formation 21–2; Saleh, Preliminary remarks 21. This is not to imply that particular
theological, sectarian or hermeneutical perspectives did not shape the contents of ency-
clopedic commentaries, as will become evident.
54 For an overview of the historical development of this approach, as well as its main rep-
resentatives, see: Saleh, Preliminary remarks 25–30. However, for reasons discussed in
Chapter Four, I do not agree that the tafsīr chapters found in several third/ninth century
Sunnī ḥadīth compilations should be deemed to belong to this hermeneutical category.
55 Ibn Abī Ḥātim i, 14. For a translation of Ibn Abī Ḥātim’s introduction to his commentary
with a few brief remarks on his hermeneutic, see: Dickinson, The development 37. For
more on this commentator, see below.
12 introduction
56 For Ibn Abī Ḥātim’s usage of ḥadīths transmitted by unknown persons or persons of dubi-
ous reliability, see: Koç, Isnāds and rijāl expertise 155ff.
57 The latter two also mention that this ḥadīth appears in several ḥadīth compilations,
including those of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 241/855), Abū Yaʿlā (d. 307/919), and al-Ṭabarānī
(360/971). Al-Shawkānī also notes its presence in the ḥadīth compilations of Ibn Māja and
Ibn Ḥibbān (d. 354/965) respectively.
58 For Ibn Mardawayh’s Quran commentary, see: Saleh, Formation 3 n. 6, 210, 217 n. 47, 226.
This work does not appear to have survived.
59 The version that al-Baghawī cites is credited to Umm Sharīk, and its isnād indicates that
he received it through oral transmission. Apparently, he is neither quoting Ibn Abī Ḥātim
nor ḥadīth compilations.
60 Saleh, Formation 209, n. 17; Saleh, Preliminary remarks 20.
61 For al-Khāzin’s Quran commentary, see: Saleh, Formation 209; Shah, Introduction 37–8.
introduction 13
62 Creatures belonging to this category include: scorpions, rats and crows, as well as rabid
dogs and some types of snakes; e.g.: al-Bukhārī iii, 33–5 (Abwāb al-Muḥṣar wa-jazāʾ
al-ṣayd); iv, 334–5 (K. Badʾ al-khalq).
63 Saleh, Formation 195–6.
14 introduction
64 For a critical survey of several recent Arabic-language works on the history of quranic
exegesis, see: Saleh, Preliminary remarks 6–17. For a study of a twentieth-century Sunnī
(non-Salafī) historical overview of tafsīr, see: Saleh, Marginalia and peripheries.
65 See: Saʿūd b. ʿAbdallāh al-Fanīsān, Marwiyyāt Umm al-Muʾminīn ʿĀʾisha; ʿAbdallāh Abū
l-Saʿūd Badr, Tafsīr Umm al-Muʿminīn ʿĀʾisha.
66 See: Nadwi, Al-Muḥaddithāt 275–7.
introduction 15
that is found in Ibn Abī Shayba and Ibn Māja, except that as his Quran com-
mentary has come down to us, this mawlāt is left unnamed. It is unclear why;
it is possible that her name dropped out in the process of transmission of the
work. Ibn Kathīr quotes Ibn Abī Ḥātim directly when he includes this ḥadīth
in his Quran commentary. Some surviving manuscripts of Ibn Kathīr’s Quran
commentary simply state that this was related from “the mawlāt of al-Fākih b.
al-Mughīra,” but a couple render it as “mawlā”—i.e. a male client of al-Fākih’s.67
In addition to the obvious historical problems (as discussed above) that
anomalies of this type present, they also raise interpretive questions. Perhaps
in the very act of examining the textual functions of ḥadīths ascribed to women
such as the gecko tradition, we over-value them? Why devote sustained atten-
tion to material that is often marginal on multiple levels? I would argue that
studying what is comparatively marginal or even widely regarded as dispens-
able in a given historical context can provide significant, even at times unpar-
alleled insight into the worldviews of the time, as reflected in its constructions
of memory. As Jan Assmann observes, forgetting is an essential component of
remembering, because “[r]emembering means pushing other things into the
background, making distinctions, obliterating many things in order to shed
light on others.”68
This study examines the various types of “cultural labour” that exegeti-
cal materials attributed to female figures perform in tafsīr works. Afsaneh
Najmabadi uses this expression in her explanation as to how writing Iranian
women’s history differs from using gender as an analytical category in Iranian
historical studies. Adapting the questions that she poses about early modern
Iranian history to my research, I ask: what cultural labour did gender perform
in the making of the classical Sunnī tafsīr genre, and how? If concepts that are
central to the development and methodologies of pre-modern quranic exege-
sis are gendered, how are they gendered, and what effects did their gendered-
ness produce?69
Within the fields of Quranic and Tafsīr Studies, a commonly held assump-
tion has been that pre-modern quranic scholarship was almost exclusively a
67 Abū l-Fidāʾ Ismāʿīl b. ʿUmar b. Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm v, ed. Muḥammad al-Salāma
1997, 352, n. 10.
68 Assmann, Religion and cultural memory 3.
69 The original wording of these questions posed by Najmabadi is: “What work did gender
do in the making of Iranian modernity, and how did it perform this cultural labor? If
central concepts of Iranian modernity were gendered, how were they gendered, and what
effects did their genderedness produce. . . .” (Women with mustaches 1). The italics are in
the original.
16 introduction
male domain. “Gender” has also often been implicitly equated with “women,”
with the resultant tendency to presume that gender is only a relevant factor in
the academic study of the Quran or its history of interpretation when female
figures (such as Mary) or matters directly pertaining to women (such as veiling
or marriage) are mentioned in the text. As a result, gender has typically been
treated as a specialized sub-topic in Tafsīr Studies rather than as an integral
aspect of the history of the classical genre of quranic exegesis.
The presumption that pre-modern quranic scholarship was almost entirely
a male domain is accurate in the sense that this is how it typically presents
itself. In medieval biographical dictionaries of exegetes, Quran reciters, and
other specialists of various aspects of quranic study, entries for women are vir-
tually absent. Farid Esack characterises the study of the Quran by medieval
and modern Muslims (as well as by others) in terms of a heterosexual male
approach to a female body.70 While such a characterisation can become a jus-
tification for treating Muslim approaches to the Quran in an androcentric way,
literally consigning any evidence of women’s involvement to the footnotes, it
can also draw our attention to the fact that the entire enterprise of quranic
exegesis (as well as the field of Tafsīr Studies) is far from being gender-neutral.
On the contrary, its foundational concepts are based on gendered notions that
have more often been taken for granted than critically examined.
Gender is a social construction, and gendered categories, whether of per-
sons or concepts, take different forms in various cultural, religious and histori-
cal contexts. As Judith Butler contends, the conceptions of gender that any
society has are not “natural” or simple reflections of human biology. On the
contrary, gender categories (such as “male” and “female”) are historically con-
tingent, and have to be constantly (re)created and performed on both indi-
vidual and societal levels through a variety of means, such as bodily practices,
attire, and legal strictures.71 Rather than simply engaging in the regulation of
self-evidently, always already-existing “men” and “women” through their inter-
pretations of quranic strictures, exegetes textually negotiate and (re)construct
gender—including (if not especially) the gender categories that they them-
70 Esack, The Quran: A short introduction 1–10. For the assertion that classical Muslim episte-
mology in general conceived of knowing as akin to (a man’s) unveiling of a female body,
see: Saleh, The woman as a locus 140.
71 Butler, Gender trouble, esp. 32–3. A pioneering article that applies such insights to early
modern Iranian history is Najmabadi’s Beyond the Americas. For an introduction to some
of the debates that Butler’s ideas on gender performance have sparked, see: Hall, Queer
theories 72–6.
introduction 17
72 Such textual constructions are neither unique to either classical Muslim texts nor to
tafsīr works. For textual constructions of gender in rabbinic Jewish writings, see: Boyarin,
Carnal Israel; Peskowitz, Spinning fantasies. For textual constructions of gender in early
modern Iran, see: Najmabadi, Women with mustaches.
73 For a recent summary of these debates, see: Shah, Introduction 53–61. These tafsīr texts
will be discussed in more detail in Chapter Two.
18 introduction
best a highly selective one, which has passed through multiple layers of fil-
tration before it reaches us. All we have is what later generations of subse-
quent Muslim scholars deemed worthy of preservation, most often, in only one
surviving recension, which may not have been the most “complete” or “accu-
rate” one.
In view of the considerable challenges involved in working with ostensibly
early tafsīr texts and the many unanswered historical questions surround-
ing them, it might well be asked why this study examines them in such detail
rather than, say, making the focus of this project an analysis of the exegetical
materials attributed to women in a classical Quran commentary whose date
of composition and history of transmission are not topics of ongoing debate.
There are several important reasons for choosing to do so.
By far the majority of such exegetical materials credited to female figures
in classical tafsīr works are ascribed to female Companions and (much less
often) to female Successors. It should be emphasized that this is the inverse
of the situation for male authorities who are cited by name in classical Sunnī
Quran commentaries belonging to the exegetical “mainstream,” in which male
Companions are clearly outnumbered by male Successors, who are in turn out-
numbered by a profusion of later male figures ranging from grammarians to
jurists.74 A number of the exegetical materials ascribed to female figures in
the Quran commentaries of al-Ṭabarī and al-Thaʿlabī (for instance) are related
on the authority of or via second/eighth century authorities who are said to
have authored a tafsīr text, and in some cases, it would seem that such texts
have come down to us. Whether or not all the historical questions associated
with these texts can ever be definitively resolved, they do end up being granted
what could be termed an existence in memory in the classical tafsīr genre.75
Moreover, certain patterns in the citation and use of exegetical materials attrib-
uted to female figures which characterise some classical Quran commentaries
are also apparent in tafsīr texts conventionally dated to the formative period.
These factors make such ostensibly early exegetical works directly relevant to
the study of literary invocations of the sacred past through quotations of exe-
getical materials ascribed to female figures in classical Quran commentaries.
For these reasons, the formative period as well as the tafsīr texts convention-
ally dated to it loom much larger in any historical study of exegetical materials
74 For an overview of the roles in exegesis attributed to some of these figures from the for-
mative period from the Companions to various early grammarians in classical Sunnī tafsīr
works, see: Shah, Introduction 5–16.
75 As in al-Thaʿlabī’s list of sources that he used, for example. For more on this, see
Chapter Two.
introduction 19
ascribed to female figures in a work belonging to the classical tafsīr genre than
it would if the focus of attention were exegetical materials attributed to male
figures. While our findings are necessarily provisional, the aim here is to lay the
groundwork for future research on representations of female figures as sources
of materials deemed relevant to exegesis in medieval Quran commentaries,
setting out what can be known at present about the early development of this
phenomenon and opening up new avenues of investigation.
In this study, I have utilized several encyclopedic tafsīr works from the third/
ninth and fourth/tenth centuries extensively: the Quran commentaries of
al-Ṭabarī, al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944), and al-Thaʿlabī.
With its famously extensive quotation of traditions as well as a significant
number of variant quranic readings, the commentary of Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad
b. Jarīr b. Yazīd al-Ṭabarī76 is an important witness for the incorporation of sev-
eral types of exegetical materials credited to women into Sunnī exegetical dis-
courses in the third/ninth century.77 Moreover, the inclusion of a given item of
exegetical material credited to a woman in al-Ṭabarī’s tafsīr is at times a fairly
accurate predictor of whether it will be quoted in several later Quran commen-
taries. In part, this is because their authors utilized al-Ṭabarī to various extents,
though in some cases the more salient factor is likely that the item in question
was well known in exegetical circles.
Ibn Kathīr and al-Suyūṭī (in his Durr) cite al-Ṭabarī extensively,78 as does
al-Shawkānī. More importantly, several tafsīr works belonging to the Sunnī
exegetical mainstream also use him. Al-Māwardī’s (d. 450/1058) Al-Nukat wa-l-
ʿuyūn is based on al-Ṭabarī, while another madrasa Quran commentary, Ibn
al-Jawzī’s (d. 597/1200) Zād al-masīr, also cites him. The encyclopedic Quran
commentary of Ibn ʿAṭiyya (d. 546/1151)79 makes significant use of al-Ṭabarī,
and al-Qurṭubī also quotes from the latter now and again.
76 For him, see: al-Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt 374–9. For a study of his Quran commentary, see: Gilliot,
Exégèse, langue et théologie en Islam. For several theological aspects of his exegesis, see:
Shah, Al-Ṭabarī and the dynamics of tafsīr. See also the bibliography of the latter article
for a recent list of studies of al-Ṭabarī and his exegesis.
77 For al- Ṭabarī’s hermeneutics, see: McAuliffe, Quranic hermeneutics. However, it should
be noted that al- Ṭabarī’s commentary is not an example of tafsīr bi-l-maʾthūr; see: Saleh,
Marginalia 297–8. For a history of the term “tafsīr bi-l-maʾthūr,” see: Saleh, Preliminary
remarks 31–7.
78 Saleh, Formation 208.
79 For Ibn ʿAṭiyya’s importance in charting the history of tafsīr, see: Saleh, Marginalia 301,
303. For a brief discussion of his approach to exegesis, see: Shah, Introduction 36.
20 introduction
80 For him, see: al-Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt 50–1. For a study of his commentary, see: Saleh,
Formation.
81 Saleh, Formation 8–9.
82 Saleh, Formation 4–5. For the origins of the notion that al-Ṭabarī’s commentary played
a key role in the development of the classical Sunnī tafsīr genre, see: Saleh, Marginalia
298–9.
83 Saleh, Formation, 208ff. Al-Wāḥidī was al-Thaʿlabī’s student (Saleh, Formation 28). For
al-Wāḥidī’s Quran commentaries, see: Saleh, The last of the Nishapuri School. For a study
on al-Zamakhsharī, see: Lane, A traditional Muʿtazilite Qurʾān.
84 For instance, in the tafsīr of Ibn Abī Zamanīn, Ibn al-Jawzī’s Zād al-masīr, and al-Suyūṭī’s
Durr al-manthūr.
85 Bondarev, Arabic and Old Kenembu tafsīr.
86 As the printed version of al-Thaʿlabī’s tafsīr used in this study is not a critical edition, in
every instance where my contentions depend on the isnād of a given tradition or on the
precise wording of its matn, or where the isnāds or wordings of traditions appearing in
the printed edition seemed doubtful, I checked them against manuscript copies of the
work: Veliyuddin Efendi, nos. 131, 132 and 133 (henceforth, VE), and Maḥmūdiyya, no. 99
(henceforth, M), from the personal collection of Walid Saleh (for these manuscripts, see:
Saleh, Formation 231–41). All references below are to the printed edition, except in the
introduction 21
While these two Quran commentaries need little introduction, I have also
used a couple of other encyclopedic commentaries from the same time period
that are less well known. Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm b. al-Mundhir (d. ca. 318/930),
was a scholar originally from Nīshāpūr who lived in Mecca. He appears to have
been chiefly remembered as a jurist who exercised his own independent legal
judgment (ijtihād), and wrote a number of books on fiqh. Nonetheless, he also
authored a Quran commentary.87 Most of it does not appear to have survived,
but a small portion of it has been published: the commentary for verses 272 to
the end of Sūrat al-Baqara (S. 2, “The Cow”), all of Sūrat Āl ʿImrān (S. 3, “The
Family of Imran”), and verses 1 to 92 of Sūrat al-Nisāʾ (S. 4, “Women”).
The impact of Ibn al-Mundhir’s Quran commentary on the development
of tafsīr appears to have been very limited. Al-Qurṭubī quotes him at times,
and al-Suyūṭī cites him extensively in his Durr, although it is hard to say if/
when either commentator is referring to Ibn al-Mundhir’s tafsīr or his legal
works. Al-Suyūṭī’s frequent quotation of Ibn al-Mundhir is likely due to Ibn
Taymiyya’s (d. 728/1328) endorsement of him as a supposed practitioner of
ḥadīth-based exegesis,88 although in actuality, Ibn al-Mundhir’s commentary
cites the views of Abū ʿUbayda (d. 210/825) on linguistic issues as well as lines
of poetry (shawāhid) alongside ḥadīths. As he was a contemporary of al-Ṭabarī
(and interestingly, al-Thaʿlabī does not include Ibn al-Mundhir’s commentary
in the list of sources that he used), I refer to his tafsīr when possible as an
additional witness to the quotation of exegetical materials credited to female
figures in Quran commentaries at that time.
In this study, I make fairly extensive use of the Taʾwīlāt ahl al-sunna authored
by Abū Manṣūr Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Māturīdī. A Ḥanafī theologian,
jurist and exegete, he is celebrated as the founder of the Māturīdī school
of Sunnī theology.89 According to a later commentator on this work, ʿAlāʾ
al-Dīn Aḥmad b. Muḥammad Abū Bakr al-Samarqandī (d. around 540/1145),
al-Māturīdī did not write the Taʾwīlāt himself; rather, it is a compilation of his
teachings that was prepared by his students.90 This is possible, as in some parts
of the text the line of argument is rather convoluted and repetitious and does
not appear to have been composed by a single author.
rare instances where the differences between it and the manuscripts are significant for
this study.
87 Al-Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt 337–8.
88 See: Saleh, Ibn Taymiyya 140, 159, n. 59.
89 For a study of his commentary, see: Götz, Māturīdī and his Kitāb 181–214.
90 Götz, Māturīdī 184.
22 introduction
Frequent reference is made to this work in this study for several reasons:
Al-Māturīdī, who was a contemporary of al-Ṭabarī, is also a key source for
the development of quranic exegesis at that time,91 including the citation of
exegetical materials credited to women in tafsīr texts. As the hermeneutical
approach in this commentary92 is significantly different from that of al-Ṭabarī
or al-Thaʿlabī (or Ibn al-Mundhir), when the Taʾwīlāt incorporates ḥadīths,
āthār or variant readings attributed to early female figures, it does so from a
distinct perspective. Also, al-Māturīdī often indicates what the theological or
sectarian issues at stake in debates over the meanings of a given verse are, when
other exegetes merely hint at these or pass them over in silence. Therefore, the
Taʾwīlāt can provide unparalleled insight into the gendered workings of tafsīr
during that period.
In addition, this study refers to several other encyclopedic tafsīr works as
needed. This has usually been done in order to chart the quotation of specific
traditions ascribed to female figures in Sunnī Quran commentaries written
after the fourth/tenth century—or in some cases, to provide a Twelver Shiʿi
perspective on a particular exegetical debate.
Several madrasa-style tafsīr works are also referred to in this study. In par-
ticular, I have often used what has survived of the Quran commentary of the
ḥadīth scholar Ibn Abī Ḥātim al-Rāzī.93 Useful in order to gauge the circula-
tion of traditions attributed to women in exegetical contexts, it is a particularly
interesting source in view of his hermeneutical theory. According to Ibn Abī
Ḥātim, it is designed to be a “stripped down” (mujarrad) approach to quranic
exegesis, based on traditions that he deems “soundest with regard to isnād and
most full in regard to substance”94 and giving preference to those ḥadīths that
91 For the significance of al-Māturīdī’s commentary to the study of early tafsīr, see: Saleh,
Marginalia 295–6.
92 For aspects of al-Māturīdī’s hermeneutical approach, see: Gilliot, Maturidi’s treatment;
Saleh, Medieval exegesis.
93 For him, see: al-Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt 198–9. Much of Ibn Abī Ḥātim’s commentary does not
seem to have come down to us. One printed version only comments on parts of Sūras
1–3 (Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓīm musnad ʿan al-rasūl wa-l-ṣaḥāba wa-l-tābiʿīn li-Ibn Abī Ḥātim
al-Rāzī). Of the other version, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓīm musnadan ʿan Rasūl Allāh wa-l-
ṣaḥāba wa-l-tābiʿīn, 14 vols, the following portions are based directly on manuscripts:
Sūras 1-mid-3, 3–4, 5–8, 8–13, and 23–29; the rest is based on quotations. All references are
to the latter edition unless otherwise noted. Mehmet Akif Koç notes that as of yet, there
is no critical edition of this Quran commentary (Isnāds and rijāl expertise 146–7).
94 “. . . aṣaḥḥ al-akhbār isnādan wa ashbahahā matnan” (Ibn Abī Ḥātim i, 14). The translation
is Dickinson’s (Development 37).
introduction 23
can be traced all the way back to Muḥammad.95 While Ibn Abī Ḥātim does not
always adhere to these exacting standards (as was noted above), the fact that
he elects to incorporate a number of traditions credited to women in his Quran
commentary sheds some light on the gendered dimensions of the efforts of
some ḥadīth critics to intervene in the process of quranic exegesis.
Although a significant proportion of Ibn Abī Ḥātim’s Quran commentary
is not extant, quotations from it do survive through Ibn Kathīr, al-Suyūṭī (in
his Durr al-manthūr), and al-Shawkānī. I have at times noted the presence of
a given ḥadīth related on the authority of Ibn Abī Ḥātim in al-Suyūṭī’s Durr.
Nonetheless, in view of the well-known historical problems involved in using
later sources in order to attempt to reconstruct earlier, now-lost works,96 such
quotations should only be regarded as suggestive of what Ibn Abī Ḥātim’s com-
mentary might have contained.
Several other madrasa-style commentaries have been referred to as needed,
primarily in order to further illuminate aspects of the circulation of exegeti-
cal materials ascribed to female figures in the fourth/tenth century and later.
Chief among these is Abū l-Layth al-Samarqandī’s (d. 375/985) Baḥr al-ʿulūm.97
This work appears to be the first madrasa-style Quran commentary intended
to summarise Sunnī exegesis as it then existed to have been written—in many
ways, as a reaction to al-Ṭabarī’s enormous tafsīr.98
A couple of linguistically-focused exegetical works have also been uti-
lized in this study: the Maʿānī l-Qurʾān of al-Zajjāj (d. 311/923), and al-Naḥḥās’
(d. 338/949) Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān. Al-Zajjāj’s interpretive approach differs greatly
from his contemporary al-Ṭabarī, dealing chiefly with the Quran’s linguistic
aspects and granting traditions very little attention in his exegesis.99 While
al-Naḥḥās is mainly concerned with linguistic issues as well, his work does con-
tain some traditions, including a number attributed to early Muslim women.
95 Ibn Abī Ḥātim i, 14. For Ibn Abī Ḥātim’s hermeneutics, see: Saleh, Preliminary remarks
27–9.
96 Regarding such issues, see: Landau-Tasseron, On the reconstruction. It is often unclear
whether such quotations from Ibn Abī Ḥātim were known to al-Suyūṭī through the for-
mer’s tafsīr, or from other works that he authored, or perhaps even from a quotation
found in the book of yet another author.
97 For him, see: al-Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt 530–1. For a brief discussion of his interpretive approach,
see: Shah, Introduction 21.
98 Saleh, Personal communication.
99 For al-Zajjāj, see: al-Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt 13–15. It should be noted that his Maʿānī l-Qurʾān is
an epitome of his larger work, Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān wa-maʿāniyahu; see: Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm b.
Muḥammad b. al-Sarrī al-Zajjāj, Maʿānī al-Qurʾān wa-iʿrābuhu al-musammā Al-mukhtaṣar
fī Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān wa-maʿāniyahu i, 34.
24 introduction
Both are particularly useful for illuminating the grammatical issues at stake in
particular exegetical debates; al-Naḥḥās also at times serves as a witness for the
circulation of several types of exegetical materials—āthār, ḥadīths and variant
readings attributed to early Muslim women.
A few aḥkām al-Qurʾān works have also been referred to as appropriate: in
the main, that of al-Jaṣṣāṣ (d. 370/980), which takes a Ḥanafī legal approach,
and occasionally, the one authored by Abū Bakr b. al-ʿArabī (d. 543/1148), the
Mālikī traditionist and judge from Seville.100 Both summarize legal debates
surrounding particular quranic verses and contain a number of traditions
ascribed to women as well.
A wide array of exegetical works written from various sectarian, theologi-
cal and mystical perspectives have come down to us, and a number of these
contain traditions or other types of exegetical materials attributed to women.
However, practical considerations have led me to focus this study on the liter-
ary functions of such materials in certain select proto-Sunnī or Sunnī commen-
taries. Nonetheless, one Ibāḍī Quran commentary—that of Hūd b. Muḥakkam
(or Muḥkim)—and several Twelver Shiʿi tafsīr works101 have been referred to
at times for comparative purposes. Sunnī exegetical debates did not unfold
in isolation, and cannot be fully understood apart from those of commenta-
tors writing from other sectarian perspectives. Sufi Quran commentaries are
not used in this study. However, it should be noted that a few Sufi biographi-
cal works occasionally depict ascetic or Sufi women interpreting the Quran.102
Whether the interpretations attributed to such women were ever conceived
of as “exegetical,” much less suitable for inclusion in any Sufi (or other) tafsīr
work, is hard to say.103
This variety of exegetical works has been utilized for this study because
when taken together, they provide insight into different levels of exegetical
100 Not to be confused with the Sufi Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī (d. 637/1240). For Abū Bakr
Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh al-Maʿāfirī Ibn al-ʿArabī, see: al-Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt 411–14.
101 These are: the Tafsīr al-Qummī (d. 307/919), what has survived of the Tafsīr al-ʿAyyāshī
(d. 320/932), al-Ṭūsī’s (d. 460/1067) Al-Tibyān fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān, the Majmaʿ al-bayān of
al-Ṭabrisī (d. 548/1153) and the Tafsīr al-Ṣāfī of Muḥsin Fayḍ al-Kāshānī (d. 1089/1697). For
early Twelver Shiʿi tafsīr, see: Bar-Asher, Scripture and exegesis. For late medieval Twelver
exegesis, see: Lawson, Akhbārī Shiʿi approaches.
102 Cornell, Early Sufi women 84–5, 104–5, 126–7.
103 Some similar anecdotes appear in medieval literary (adab) works; for a few examples, see:
Malti-Douglas, Playing with the sacred 57–8. However, this does not necessarily mean
that such depictions of Sufi women would not have been incorporated into any Quran
commentary; for al-Thaʿlabī’s use of adab materials in his tafsīr, see Saleh, Formation
173–5.
introduction 25
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
In Chapter Three, I take a closer look at the patterns that became apparent
in the exegetical materials surveyed in Chapter Two, situating these configu-
rations within their literary-historical contexts, and examining the gendered
“labour” that these exegetical materials attributed to female figures perform.
A number of these gendered patterns are precursors of several significant
developments in quranic exegesis in the century or so following.
There are several different genres of exegetical materials attributed to
early female figures in these sources—āthār, ḥadīths, quranic readings, lines
of poetry, and stereotyped speech. In general, each genre implies different
degrees of interpretive intentionality on the part of the putative female speaker.
Typically, the intention of the putative female source—whether to interpret,
or to make her interpretation generally known (or both)—is either ambiguous
or altogether absent. This is part of the way that the tafsīr texts discussed in
this chapter construct exegetical authority as “masculine.” Nonetheless, some
of these exegetical materials depict a woman who clearly intends not only to
interpret a particular verse or passage of the quranic text, but also to convey
introduction 27
her view to the community at large. Portrayals of this latter type serve as partic-
ularly effective vehicles for exegetes’ negotiation of hermeneutical questions.
Chapter Four
Ḥadīths ascribed to early Muslim women are quoted in small yet notice-
able quantities in third/ninth and fourth/tenth century Quran commentar-
ies. In this chapter, this practice is examined primarily through the lens of
the traditions credited to women in the tafsīr chapters found in four ḥadīth
collections—those of al-Bukhārī (d. 256/870), al-Tirmidhī (d. 279/892),
al-Nasāʾī (d. 303/915–16), and al-Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī (d. 405/1014). These tafsīr
chapters provide a particularly useful vantage point from which to survey this
phenomenon for several reasons: they provide a manageable yet representa-
tive sample of traditions credited to women that were deemed by some in the
third/ninth century to be relevant in one way or another to quranic exegesis.
They also provide an overview of the main types of ḥadīths credited to women
that were being quoted in Quran commentaries at this time. The tradition-
ists who compiled these tafsīr chapters were both critiquing the traditions
already in circulation among exegetes in the third/ninth and fourth/tenth cen-
turies, and putting forward ḥadīths that they regarded as more reliable. In this
attempt by traditionists to intervene in exegetical discourses, gendered voices
and gendered bodies serve as important vehicles for this construction of the
sunna as all-embracing and preeminently authoritative.
These tafsīr chapters are also worth examining in and of themselves. They
compile statistically significant number of ḥadīths attributed to women for the
purpose of Quran commentary, a development that appears to have few, if any,
precedents. Moreover, these chapters make ḥadīths of this type readily avail-
able for exegetical use, which had some impact on the medieval Sunni genre
of tafsīr from the fifth/eleventh century onward. Finally, some tafsīr chapters
undergo further elaboration or commentary—or even abridgement intended
to make them more accessible to laypersons. This latter phenomenon raises
some interesting questions about the “popular” and gendered dimensions of
medieval tafsīr.
Chapter Five
In the Quran, the abode of the prophet’s wives is presented as a site where
divinely-ordained values revealed to Muḥammad ought to be exemplified,
although there is a decided tension in the quranic text between such an ideal
28 introduction
and lived reality. This chapter examines the ways that exegetes elect to memo-
rialize this abode and the implications of this for their constructions of inter-
pretive authority. Classical Sunni exegetes construct this site as an imagined,
idealized physical space demarcated by the secluding curtain and transcend-
ing space and time, and also evoke it through quoting traditions attributed to
particular wives (most notably, to ʿĀʾisha). Within this imagined space, these
exegetes attempt to debate and authoritatively resolve interpretive issues
involving legal, theological, sectarian and other boundaries. The abode of the
wives of the prophet is a particularly attractive site for such fraught interpre-
tive negotiations in part because invoking it simultaneously evokes its image
as an authoritative source of norms as well as the various controversies and
ambiguities associated with it.
Moreover, these works construct the exegetical gaze in what I term “pri-
mary” and “secondary” modes. The primary exegetical gaze is constructed as
an omniscient gaze that surveys the body of the quranic text, other texts that
the possessor of this gaze regards as relevant to the interpretation of the Quran,
and also the Muslim communal body as a whole. This gaze, which (re)affirms
the social and religious power and authority of (free) men, is the gaze that the
authors of tafsīr works claim for themselves. The secondary exegetical gaze
is textually constructed as subordinate to and dependent upon the primary
exegetical gaze. Limited in its scope as well as its interpretive authority, this
is the gaze that the holder of the primary exegetical gaze (i.e. the Quran com-
mentator) concedes to the authorities and sources of exegetical materials—
who could be female as well as male—that he elects to quote in his tafsīr. This
chapter examines the potential as well as the limitations inherent in the sec-
ondary exegetical gaze. ʿĀʾisha is sometimes depicted as a mediator between
Muḥammad and later generations of believers, and she as well as Umm Salama
are quoted as authoritative sources of ḥadīths or opinions on legal-exegetical
questions. Yet, they do not ultimately control how such exegetical materials
will be used or to what ends. Some of the ḥadīths ascribed to them and widely
quoted in pre-modern Quran commentaries arguably contribute towards con-
structing interpretive authority as very rarely legitimately attainable by women
of later generations.
Chapter Six
One day, two people were visiting with one of the prophet’s wives, Hind bt. Abī
Umayya b. Mughīra (d. ca. 59/679), or Umm Salama, as she is more commonly
known, her brother ʿAbdallāh, and a mukhannath. As Muḥammad entered in
upon the small gathering, the mukhannath was telling ʿAbdallāh, “If God grants
you victory at al-Ṭāʾif tomorrow, I direct you to the daughter of Ghaylān—she
approaches with four, and departs with eight!”
“Ah, I see that this one knows what is what!” Muḥammad observed. And,
addressing his wives, he said, “Do not allow this one to visit you.”1
Al-Māturīdī recounts this anecdote in the form of a tradition on the author-
ity of Umm Salama, as well as a variant version of it on the authority of ʿĀʾisha
bt. Abī Bakr, in the course of his exegesis of a quranic phrase—who have no
sexual desire (ghayr ūlī l-irba).2 While this ḥadīth (henceforth, “the Ghaylān’s
daughter tradition”) is rather obscure for most contemporary readers, it was
evidently in wide circulation by al-Māturīdī’s time. That it had become a rec-
ognized part of the exegetical discourse on this quranic expression by the
late third/ninth century is clear from the fact that the Quran commentaries
of al-Ṭabarī, Ibn Abī Ḥātim, al-Jaṣṣāṣ and al-Thaʿlabī all recount at least one
version of it,3 although these four exegetes all take significantly different her-
meneutical approaches.
1 Abū Manṣūr Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd al-Māturīdī, Taʾwīlāt Ahl al-Sunna vii,
552. We begin here with this version from al- Māturīdī because it is particularly illustrative for
the purposes of this discussion. For other versions, see below.
2 This phrase appears in Q 24:31. The entire verse reads: “And tell the believing women that
they should lower their glances, guard their private parts, and not display their charms
beyond what [it is acceptable] to reveal; they should let their head coverings fall to cover
their necklines and not reveal their charms except to their husbands, their fathers, their hus-
bands’ fathers, their sons, their husbands’ sons, their brothers, their brothers’ sons, their sis-
ters’ sons, their womenfolk, their slaves, such men as attend them who have no sexual desire,
or children who are not yet aware of women’s nakedness; they should not stamp their feet so
as to draw attention to any hidden charms. Believers, all of you, turn to God so that you may
prosper.”
3 Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xviii, 148; Ibn Abī Ḥātim viii, 2579; Abū Bakr b. ʿAlī al-Rāzī al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Aḥkām
al-Qurʾān iii, 318–19; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf iv, 368.
4 Mālik b. Anas, Muwaṭṭaʾ al-Imām Mālik 685; Ibn Abī Shayba viii, 587 (K. al-Adab).
5 Ibn Ḥanbal vi, 323; Muslim 964 (K. al-Salām); Abū Dāwūd Sulaymān b. al-Ashʿath
al-Sijistānī, Sunan Abī Dāwūd iv, 30 (K. al-Libās) and 307, (K. al-Adab); Ibn Māja i, 613
(K. al-Nikāḥ). Al-Bukhārī also has a few versions of it; see n. 7.
6 As is fairly typical of ḥadīths in general, several variant versions of this tradition with
different isnāds that go back to male as well as female Muslims of the Companion gen-
eration were in circulation. For an overview of this phenomenon, see: Speight, A look at
variant readings 79–89.
7 Al-Bukhārī vii, 514 (K. al-Libās). For another slightly different version of this tradition; see:
al- Bukhārī vii, 118–19 (K. al-Nikāḥ). The Arabs of the time regarded plumpness as a very
desirable female attribute.
8 Al-Jaṣṣāṣ iii, 318–19.
9 Al-Ḥumaydī i, 309; al-Bukhārī v, 429 (K. al-Maghāzī). For a biographical notice on Hīt
in a seventh/thirteenth century biographical compendium, see: ʿIzz al-Dīn Ibn al-Athīr
Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Jazarī, Usd al-ghāba fī maʿrifat al-ṣaḥāba v, 395–6.
However, another version of this tradition (on the authority of a male Companion) gives
the name of the mukhannath as Matīʿ (Usd al-ghāba v, 3–4). A discussion of the manifold
historical questions that this tradition raises is beyond the scope of this study.
10 Although the situation was different in legal works. For more on mukhannaths, see below.
32 CHAPTER 1
During the formative period, mukhannaths were a class of male singers and
entertainers who were apparently known for speaking and moving in a man-
ner that was stereotypically associated with women, as well as for certain
types of personal adornment that males did not typically use, such as decorat-
ing their hands and feet with henna.11 As they were presumed to lack sexual
interest in females, mukhannaths were permitted to visit with elite secluded
women who did not as a rule interact informally with free males who were not
close relatives.12
13 Several centuries later, “mukhannath” came to mean a man who seeks to play the “pas-
sive” role in same-sex anal intercourse (Rowson, The effeminates 675–6, 686). However,
its older meaning evidently continued to be regarded as straightforwardly comprehen-
sible; see for example Ibn Manẓūr’s (d. 711/1311–12) quotation of the Ghaylān’s daughter
tradition in his definition of the word “mukhannath” (Lisān al-ʿArab li-Ibn Manẓūr v, 163).
14 For the historical development of these notions in North America and Europe, see:
Dreger, Hermaphrodites.
15 For reflections on similar terminological and conceptual problems, see: Najmabadi,
Beyond the Americas.
16 While these notions are based on popular, commonsensical assumptions that are often
alleged to be scientifically demonstrable, they arguably owe their centrality in contempo-
constructions of gender in pre-modern quran commentaries 35
rary Muslim religious discourses to their evident usefulness to apologists seeking logical-
sounding rationalizations for markedly inegalitarian laws and practices.
17 Musallam, Sex and society 40–1; Gadelrab, Discourses on sex 51, 53–61. I would like to
thank Noor Naga and Laury Silvers for bringing this article to my attention.
18 For a few examples of ḥadīths affirming that women produce semen—as was asserted
in the Hippocratic corpus as well as by Galen, but denied by Aristotle—see: Gadelrab,
Discourses on sex 78. The apparent influence of such medical debates and theories on the
ḥadīth literature is a topic that needs further research.
19 For examples, see below.
20 Laqueur, Making sex.
21 Ze’evi, Producing desire 23.
22 Rowson, Gender irregularity 63.
23 For a more historically nuanced discussion of the situation in Europe than that offered by
Thomas Laqueur’s Making sex, see: Cadden, Meanings of sex.
36 CHAPTER 1
24 Gadelrab, Discourses on sex 62–79. Unlike Galen, Aristotle held that male and female
reproductive organs are distinctly different, and that when a child is conceived the father
contributes the seed, while the mother’s contribution only consists of matter (ibid.
49–50).
25 For example, Dror Ze’evi finds that in the Ottoman Empire, medical treatises reflected the
notion of the one-sex body; see his Producing desire 22–45. Moreover, he asserts that it
was not until the latter part of the nineteenth century that binary conceptions of gender
began to be introduced to Ottoman urban elites. For a detailed study of the transforma-
tion in prevalent views of gender which occurred in Iran during the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, see: Najmabadi, Women with mustaches.
26 I owe this expression to Najmabadi, Are gender and sexuality 12.
27 The extent to which this continues to be the case in many countries in North America
and Europe is illustrated by the number of government-issued documents and forms (to
say nothing of those produced by the private sector) that require individuals to identify
themselves as either “male” or “female” and do not provide any other possibilities.
constructions of gender in pre-modern quran commentaries 37
seen as falling short of free, adult maleness.28 But while the mukhannaths could
be thus explainable in commonsensical and medical terms, this did not mean
that jurists in the formative period (or later) regarded their existence with
equanimity.29 Even in conceptions of gender as a spectrum, social categories
were nonetheless hierarchical. The classical texts examined in this study typi-
cally insist that social-hierarchical distinctions be clearly marked, often visibly,
through social role, dress, deportment and access to space for example.30 They
also evince concern that people will not stay in place, either through their own
“inappropriate” actions, or due to events beyond their control. In some cases,
such shifts might implicitly call into question the stability of the social order.
The Ghaylān’s daughter tradition vividly illustrates the difficulties that might
result from such a turn of events. By this later stage of Muḥammad’s career, his
wives are secluded, as was thought befitting for free, elite women.31 Therefore,
males who are not their close relatives or slaves are not permitted to address
them face to face (Q 33:55). The mukhannath is allowed to interact with them
freely because, as the version attributed to ʿĀʾisha recounts, up to this point, it
has been assumed that he is among “those who have no sexual desire.”32 That
is, as a “not-male,” he apparently lacks the desire to sexually dominate females.
This desire was highly valued as integral to a (free) man’s performance of mas-
culinity and thus his dominant status on the gendered spectrum, but was at
the same time regarded as a potential source of social havoc if directed toward
the “wrong” object.
But while this tradition depicts the seclusion of free elite women from the
sight of men who are not closely related to them as appropriate, it simply takes
for granted the notion that enslaved women do not merit such protection from
28 For several examples in the Abbasid period, see: Rowson, Gender irregularity.
29 For medieval jurists’ attempts to classify all persons as either “male” or “female,” see:
Sanders, Gendering the ungendered 74–95. The attitudes of individual jurists to the dif-
ferent Greek medical theories and how these variously informed their work is another
complex issue that has barely been researched to date.
30 See for example a summary of the ḥadīths cursing mukhannaths, men who dress or
behave like women, and women who wear men’s attire or conduct themselves like men in
Rowson, The effeminates 673–5. For examples from exegetical works, see below.
31 Available evidence suggests that in pre-Islamic Arabia, free, elite women were veiled and
secluded, in contradistinction to slaves (Stetkevych, The poetics 11). The origins of the veil-
ing practices propounded by pre-modern jurists and exegetes are disputed, due to the
scarcity of unambiguous evidence as well as contemporary controversies surrounding
Muslim women’s dress and comportment; see: Stowasser, The ḥijāb 87–104. For an over-
view of the evidence from the ḥadīth literature, see: Clarke, Ḥijāb 214–86.
32 Al-Māturīdī vii, 551–2.
38 CHAPTER 1
Interpreters of the Quran in the formative and medieval periods maintain that
all sane, adult persons, regardless of their position in the social hierarchy, are
responsible before God for fulfilling a number of basic obligations of belief
and ritual, and that therefore, all must acquire sufficient knowledge to enable
them to do so correctly—a doctrine that I term the “monotheistic imperative.”33
However, this doctrine is not a central focus of their elaborations of the gen-
dered social order. An examination of how exegetes during the formative
period (and later) dealt with quranic verses that discuss the creation of the
first human beings, human bodies, and laws governing family order, among
others, makes this clear. Various mythological, legal, linguistic, and at times
medical discourses are employed in their interpretations of verses of these
types. Through the intertwining of these discourses with the quranic verses in
34 While a historical-critical investigation into the ways that gender is constructed in the
quranic text itself that avoids ahistorical or theological approaches is highly desirable, it
is beyond the scope of this study.
35 For an overview of the quranic retellings of the story of Adam and his wife, as well as how
classical Quran commentators further elaborated upon it, see: Stowasser, Women in the
Qurʾan 25–34.
36 Al-Bukhārī i, 181–2 (K. al-Ḥayḍ); Muslim 90 (K. al-Īmān). For its circulation, see: Juynboll,
Some isnād-analytical methods 379–81. For its medieval interpretation, see for example:
Shihāb al-Dīn Abū l-Faḍl al-ʿAsqalānī al-maʿrūf bi-Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ al-bārī bi-sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ
al-Bukhārī i, 421–2 (K. al-Ḥayḍ). For a brief overview of two contemporary Muslim
approaches to this ḥadīth, see: Bauer, ‘Traditional’ exegeses 136–7. The fact that it is often
seen today as in need of special “explanation” (whether by Muslims writing from confes-
sional perspectives, or by secular academics) is a telling indication of the degree to which
contemporary commonly accepted views about gender differ from those reflected and
(re)affirmed by such ḥadīths. For more on this ḥadīth, see below.
40 CHAPTER 1
interpretations of verses such as Q 4:1 often diverge markedly from those typi-
cally found in classical tafsīr works vividly illustrates the significant differences
between the commonsensical notions of gender that typically inform pre-
modern and contemporary quranic exegesis respectively.37
The opening verse of Sūrat al-Nisāʾ (“The Women,” S. 4) in the Quran alludes
to the creation of human beings: “People, be mindful of your Lord, who created
you from a single soul, and from it created its mate, and from the pair of them
spread countless men and women far and wide. . . .” Quran commentaries
from the formative period onwards typically interpret this “single soul” (nafsin
wāḥida) as a reference to Adam, and “its mate” (zawjahā) as Eve (Ḥawwāʾ), who
is usually also said to have been created from Adam’s rib.38
Some exegetes note that the word “nafs” is grammatically feminine, and
then go on to assert that it is nonetheless linguistically possible to identify this
“single soul” with a male figure.39 Al-Zajjāj even goes as far as to state that recit-
ing this phrase as “nafsin wāḥid” (thus getting rid of the feminine suffix which
calls attention to the grammatical gender of “nafs”) would be permissible.40 In
this way, they attempted to counter any doubts about the usefulness of the
rib story in order to interpret this verse—apparently over against a Muʿtazilī
interpretation maintaining that “. . . and from it created its mate” means “from
the same kind as it.”41
It should be noted that the possibility of interpretations of this verse that
we might describe today as “non-patriarchal” or “egalitarian” is not what is at
37 The quranic creation story has been a particular focus of contemporary Muslim reinter-
pretation from various perspectives. For conservative and Islamist reinterpretations, see:
Stowasser, Women in the Qur’an 34–8. For a brief summary of a few feminist reinterpreta-
tions, see for example: Barlas, Women’s readings 259–60.
38 E.g. Abū al-Ḥasan Muqātil b. Sulaymān b. Bashīr al-Azdī, Tafsīr Muqātil b. Sulaymān i,
213; al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ v, 270–2; Ibn Abī Ḥātim iii, 852; Hūd b. Muḥakkam al-Huwwārī, Tafsīr
Kitāb Allāh al-ʿazīz i, 345; Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm Ibn al-Mundhir al-Naysābūrī,
Kitāb Tafsīr al-Qurʾān ii, 547.
39 E.g. al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ v, 270; Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl b. al-Naḥḥās, Iʿrāb
al-Qurʾān i, 197.
40 Al-Zajjāj ii, 3.
41 “ayy min jinsihā.” This interpretation is attributed to Abū Muslim Muḥammad b. Baḥr
al-Iṣbahānī, who reportedly pointed to a similar grammatical construction in Q 3:164,
9:128, and 16:72 in support of his argument; Nabhā, Tafsīr Abī Bakr al-Aṣamm ʿAbd
al-Raḥmān b. Kaysān (d. 225 H) ii, 96. While centuries later, al-Rāzī mentions this inter-
pretation of Q 4:1, he does so only to reject it; see: Fakhr al-Dīn Muḥammad b. ʿUmar b.
al-Ḥusayn b. al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī al-Tamīmī al-Bakrī al-Rāzī, Al-Tafsīr Al-kabīr aw Mafātīḥ al-
ghayb ix, 131.
constructions of gender in pre-modern quran commentaries 41
issue here. Pre-modern exegetes did not equate casting doubt on the veracity
of the story of Eve’s creation from Adam’s rib or the tale’s relevance to Q 4:1
with denying that Adam was created first—nor with a less hierarchical view of
how human society “should” be organized, as the commentary of al-Ṭūsī makes
clear.42 Rather, the story was widely appreciated as a vivid yet economical way
of conveying a number of ideas about what commentators regarded as the
divinely designed ontological and social order. Traditions that assert that Eve
was created expressly for Adam’s sake, in order that he might find rest in her43
are congruent with such a vision of Eve’s creation, as is the notion that the only
workable social order is an unambiguously patriarchal one. In his exegesis of
Q 4:1, Ibn Abī Ḥātim recounts on the authority of Ibn ʿAbbās, “The woman
was created from the man; therefore, she desires men. The man was created
from the earth, therefore, he desires land. So, sequester your women!”44 In a
particularly pointed fashion, this tradition expresses the notion that as women
lack self-restraint, they require constant supervision and control by their male
relatives—who fortuitously enough are presumed to be innately inclined to
acquisition and conquest.
Examples of traditions in a similar vein that are cited by exegetes could be
multiplied. Tellingly, traditions attributed to women do not make an appear-
ance in the discussions of this verse in any of the commentaries consulted for
this study. In part, this likely stems from the fact that comparatively few of the
traditions that are traced back to early Muslim women deal with the stories of
the prophets.45 But it is also a reflection of how the very act of exegesis comes
to be constructed as a performance of (free) masculinity. To be an exegete is to
claim the right to authoritatively define the human condition past and pres-
ent in the course of one’s explication of scripture, and for reasons that will
become apparent, such an entitlement was typically presented as emblemati-
cally masculine.
42 Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Ṭūsī, Tafsīr al-Tibyān li-Shaykh al-ṭāʾifa Abī Jaʿfar Muḥammad
b. al-Ḥasan al-Ṭūsī iii, 99. See also his interpretation of Q 4:34 (below).
43 E.g. al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ v, 270–2.
44 Ibn Abī Ḥātim iii, 582.
45 I.e. stories of the lives of prophets other than Muḥammad. For more on this point, see
Chapter Four.
42 CHAPTER 1
46 “al-rijālu qawwāmūna ʿalā l-nisāʾ.” While Abdel Haleem translates this phrase as
“Husbands should take good care of their wives,” I have used Majid Fakhry’s translation
here, as it is more in keeping with pre-modern exegetes’ understandings of this verse.
For a comparison and discussion of different translations (and hence, interpretations) of
Q 4:34, see: Ali, Sexual ethics and Islam 117–22.
47 As such, there is a large and growing literature on it. See for example: Marín, Disciplining
wives 5–40; Chaudhry, Domestic violence. It should be noted that a number of other verses
and portions of verses—such as “. . . and men have a degree over them” (Q 2:228)—have
also been historically important in pre-modern exegetes’ constructions of hierarchical
models of gender and have been read in tandem with Q 4:34; for more on Q 2:228, see
Chapter Six.
48 “bi-mā faḍḍala ‘llāhū baʿḍahum ʿalā baʿd”
49 Muqātil i, 227. Muqātil does allow for retaliation in cases involving death or injury; other
exegetes also permit it in the case of the first, but disagree about the second. Al-Thaʿlabī,
for instance, states that retaliation is not permitted for anything short of death, even if a
man fractures his wife’s skull (al-Kashf ii, 279). Retaliation most unproblematically takes
place between two parties of like social status: “the free man for the free man, the slave for
the slave, the female for the female” (Q 2:178).
50 See for example al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ v, 74–6; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf ii 279; al-Māturīdī iii, 158–9.
For a detailed discussion of pre-modern exegetes’ interpretations of Q 4:34, see: Chaudhry,
Domestic violence 29–94.
constructions of gender in pre-modern quran commentaries 43
she is legally required to grant him sexual access and to obey him; if she is
disobedient, he has the right and duty to discipline her, through physical chas-
tisement if he deems this necessary. A man also has the right to end a marriage
at any time by unilaterally divorcing his wife, should he wish to do so.51 In the
jurists’ eyes, each of these rights and duties is gendered, as well as integral to
their vision of marriage. Therefore, they did not countenance the possibility
that these duties and rights might be apportioned differently.52
The textual and ritual functions of gendered violence in classical exegeses
of Q 4:34 should be noted. The references to hitting wives, as well as the discus-
sions of whether any injuries short of death would give the wife (or her heirs)
the right to retaliation (re)construct and (re)affirm idealised conceptions of
an unambiguously hierarchical social order. The distinction between the
authority of the husband and the subordinate position of the wife in relation
to him (as well as her status as a “not-male”) is textually and physically marked
and enacted upon her body. Moreover, every time these exegeses were read,
whether aloud to an audience or by an individual reader, as well as taught,
quoted, epitomised or glossed by medieval scholars, or expounded upon by
preachers, these visions of a hierarchical social order—not society as it existed,
but as it “ought to” be—were ritually (re)affirmed.53 Through such historical
interactions with these exegetical works, gender as well as gendered religious
authority was performed, individually as well as in more “public” venues.
Classical interpretations of Q 4:34 are ultimately based on ontological
beliefs.54 Quran commentators in the formative and early medieval periods
matter-of-factly explain that men excel women because men possess ritual
51 For a detailed discussion of how pre-modern jurists of the four surviving Sunni legal
schools interpreted Q 4:34, see: Chaudhry, Domestic violence 95–132.
52 A few jurists in the formative period posed the theoretical question of whether a wife
could be the one to give instead of receive the mahr, and if she were would this entitle
her to require her husband to have sex with her, or allow her to unilaterally divorce him?
However, they agreed that such arrangements are not permissible; see: Ali, Sexual ethics
94–5.
53 For a suggestive example of how lived realities could be more complex than such ideals,
see Marín’s discussion of al-Qurṭubī’s statement in his exegesis of Q 4:34 that disobedient
wives of high social status should only be admonished, while those of lower social status
could be whipped. She links this to a notion of wifely obedience that varied depending on
the woman’s social class (Disciplining wives 26, 34–5).
54 Ayesha Chaudhry has recently discussed this issue in detail, pointing out that pre-mod-
ern exegetes presented husbands as “shadow deities” who “mediated their wives’ relation-
ship with God” (Domestic violence, esp. 40–4).
44 CHAPTER 1
55 For different dimensions of this, see: Hūd i, 377, and Ibn Abī Ḥātim iii 939.
56 Al-Thaʿlabī lists all of these possibilities, neither accepting nor rejecting any (al-Kashf
ii, 279).
57 E.g. al-Zajjāj ii, 28.
58 E.g. al-Naḥḥās i, 212.
59 E.g. Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. Ḥabīb al-Māwardī al-Baṣrī, Al-Nukat wa-l-ʿuyūn
Tafsīr al-Māwardī i, 480; similarly, al-Ṭūsī iii, 189.
60 Al-Samarqandī i, 351. See also: al-Qurṭubī v, 169.
61 The takbīrāt al-tashrīq is a traditional chant in praise of God that is recited aloud by pil-
grims near the conclusion of the ḥajj, as well as by non-pilgrims before and after the Eid
prayer, and following the five daily prayers for the next few days. While Abū Ḥanīfa report-
edly held that it was to be recited only by men who were resident in a town following their
congregational performance of one of the five daily prayers, Abū Yūsuf is said to have
taught that anyone, whether male or female, resident or travelling, living in the town or
constructions of gender in pre-modern quran commentaries 45
[And for men are] witnessing in [cases of] ḥudūd62 and retribution, and
a greater share in inheritance and in blood-money, [as well as] the taking
of oaths in case of murder,63 the authority (wilāya) in marriage, divorce
and revocation of divorce, and in [determining] the number of wives.
Lineage passes through [men], and they are the possessors of beards and
turbans.64
the country, and praying in congregation or alone should chant it; see: Kitāb al-Mabsūṭ
li-Shams al-Dīn al-Sarakhsī, ii, 44 (K. al-Ṣalāt).
62 Ḥudūd (sing. ḥadd) are defined by the jurists as crimes against God that have fixed penal-
ties specified by the Quran. Among these are: theft, highway robbery, zinā (fornication/
adultery), and making a false accusation of zinā.
63 “al-qasāma.” According to the Ḥanafīs, if the body of a murder victim is found and his
relative comes to demand justice from the people of the locale, the free men among the
latter are bound to take an oath declaring where the corpse was found, and that they do
not know who the killer is. However, a free woman is not to take part in such an oath,
unless the body was found on property belonging to her; see: Abū l-Zuhra, Mawsūʿat al-
fiqh al-Islāmī ii, 256.
64 Jār Allāh Abū l-Qāsim Maḥmūd b. ʿUmar al-Zamakhsharī, Al-Kashshāf ʿan Ḥaqāʾiq
ghawāmiḍ al-tanzīl wa-ʿuyūn al-aqāwīl fī wujūh al-taʾwīl ii, 67.
65 Al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf ii, 279.
66 Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh Ibn al-ʿArabī, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān i, 416.
67 Some medieval Muslim scholars theorized (based on humoral medicine) that men are
able to grow beards because their bodies have greater heat; it was also suggested that
beards are connected by veins to men’s testicles. Beards were given symbolic value in part
because they served to distinguish men from women, eunuchs, and children (Gadelrab,
Discourses on sex 77).
46 CHAPTER 1
68 For example, while free men could serve as witnesses in almost every situation (barring
specific circumstances that could invalidate a given individual’s testimony, such as con-
flict of interest), according to most jurists, slave men could not. Exegetes thus routinely
interpret the directive in Q 2:282 to “call in two men as witnesses” as referring to free men
only; see for example: al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ iii, 153; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf i, 475.
69 For slavery and class in medieval Muslim societies, see: Keddie, Women in the Middle
East 41–2.
70 For the existence of slavery as a foundational assumption in classical Islamic legal debates
about marriage and divorce, see: Ali, Marriage and slavery.
71 For performative utterances, see: Austin, How to do things with words.
72 Similarly: Q 2:117, 3:59, 19:35. For a discussion of the theological centrality of the spoken
and written word in classical Muslim thought, see: Saleh, Word 356–76.
constructions of gender in pre-modern quran commentaries 47
Free males are given the broadest access to this power in the Quran,73 and the
jurists both affirmed and further extended this pattern. A man’s ability to uni-
laterally divorce his wife for any—or no—reason at all (as well as the right of a
male or female slave-owner to manumit his or her slave) by simply pronounc-
ing certain words is, as Yossef Rapoport observes, “an extreme manifestation of
patriarchal authority.” Through these performative utterances, the speaker uni-
laterally breaks the social bonds that make up a household at his74 discretion.75
Moreover, al-Zamakhsharī here presents differential access to “words of
power” as much more than a mere social arrangement, as he identifies the
prophets down through the ages as male figures. Receiving the divine word as
well as proclaiming it in order to guide humanity, acts that the Quran depicts as
the most theologically central to human history, are presented here as intrinsi-
cally masculine. It is no accident that al-Zamakhsharī mentions the ʿulamāʾ
right after the prophets. As the “heirs of the prophets,”76 it is the ʿulamāʾ who
are empowered to authoritatively interpret the Quran as well as the teachings
and life-example of Muḥammad.
73 The Quran speaks of men as the ones who pronounce and revoke ṭalāq (e.g. Q 2:228–9),
and who have the power to suspend their marriages by pronouncing īlāʾ (2:226) and ẓihār
(Q 58:2–4). Significantly, while the practice of ẓihār is condemned in these verses, the
husband’s words are nonetheless presented as effective.
74 Or her, in the case of a female slave-owner manumitting a slave.
75 Rapoport, Marriage, money and divorce 108–9.
76 According to a well-known statement from a longer ḥadīth, “. . . The ʿulamāʾ are the heirs
of the prophets . . .”; e.g.: Abū Dāwūd iii, 313 (K. al-ʿIlm); Ibn Māja i, 81 (Bāb faḍl al-ʿulamāʾ
wa-l-ḥathth ʿalā ṭalab al-ʿilm).
77 E.g. al-Ṭabarī xxv, 66; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf v, 408–9; al-Samarqandī iii, 204.
48 CHAPTER 1
Yet they assign some of His own servants to Him as offspring! Man is
clearly ungrateful!
Has He taken daughters for Himself and favoured you with sons?
When one of them is given news of the birth of a daughter, such as he so
readily ascribes to the Lord of Mercy, his face grows dark and he is
filled with gloom
Someone who is brought up amongst trinkets, who cannot put together
a clear argument?
They consider the angels—God’s servants—to be female. Did they
witness their creation?
Their claim will be put on record and they will be questioned about
it. . . . (Q 43:15–19)
What has survived of the commentary attributed to Ibn Wahb simply reports
that according to Ibn Zayd, the verse refers to the deities (aṣnām) which were
worshipped by the Arabs before Islam.78 However, Mujāhid b. Jabr (d. 104/722)
is said to have interpreted the verse as referring to “girls” ( jawārī),79 adding
by way of explanation: “they [i.e. the pagans] claimed that these females are
God’s offspring—how wrongly they judge!”80 Muqātil b. Sulaymān informs
us that the first half of the verse—“someone who is brought up amongst
trinkets”—refers “those who grow up in adornment, i.e. jewellery, in the com-
pany of women, that is, daughters (banāt),” while the second half—“who can-
not put together a clear argument”—means that “this female offspring is frail,
weak in stratagem, and it does not speak eloquently in debates or disputes, due
to her impotence.”81
The ambiguity inherent in the interpretations credited to Mujāhid and
especially Muqātil is noteworthy. Is this verse about the pagan Arab statues of
78 ʿAbdallāh Ibn Wahb, al-Ǧāmiʿ: Tafsīr al-Qurʾān (Die Koranexegese) 1993, fol. 23a, 1–2.
79 Abū ʿUbayda also gives this synonym (Abū ʿUbayda Maʿmar b. al-Muthannā, Majāz
al-Qurʾān ii, 203).
80 Mujāhid b. Jabr al-Makkī, Tafsīr al-Imām Mujāhid b. Jabr 593; Bukhārī vi, 328 (K. al-Tafsīr).
This explanation intentionally echoes quranic phraseology; see for example Q 37:149–58.
81 “hādhā l-walad al-unthā ḍaʿīf qalīl al-ḥīla wa-huwa ʿinda l-khuṣūma wa-l-muḥāraba ghayr
bayyin daʿīf ʿanhā” (Muqātil iii, 187).
constructions of gender in pre-modern quran commentaries 49
female deities, or pagan beliefs that angels are the daughters of God, or about
human females—or perhaps all three? With the argument that the pagans
were obviously wrong to give divine status to something as supposedly incapa-
ble as a female, the horror of “idolatry” slides almost seamlessly into misogyny,
so that the one becomes hardly separable from the other in this interpretive
discourse.
Parallel to such periphrastic interpretations,82 exegetical works with a pre-
dominantly linguistic focus note the existence of several different ways of
reciting as well as of writing it. Al-Farrāʾ (d. 207/822) notes several, including
one recitation attributed to the Companion Ibn Masʿūd (which “clarifies” its
meaning by adding a couple of words),83 and al-Zajjāj provides yet another.84
The issue at stake is whether the “someone” (man) referred to in this verse
could have been manufactured (i.e. like an inanimate object such as a statue) or
has grown and developed, and is therefore human.85 Al-Farrāʾ informs us that
the second half of the verse—“who cannot put together a clear argument”—
means that this one is not able to attain the degree of debating skill that men
can reach.86 Similarly, al-Zajjāj states that a female (unthā) is not able to pres-
ent a complete argument or to make her meaning clear; therefore, it is said
that a woman cannot articulate any argument that is not in actuality an argu-
ment against her.87 While the view that Q 43:18 refers to the “idols” of the pagan
Arabs is often mentioned by proto-Sunni and Sunni exegetes from the forma-
tive period onwards,88 they clearly prefer interpretations holding that the verse
is referring to “females,” “girls” and/or “women.”89
82 I.e. interpretations which briefly provide synonyms or short phrases in order to clarify the
meaning of a particular word, expression or verse.
83 According to the reading of Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim, which is the most widely used reading today,
the word is recited as “yunashshaʾu.” Al-Farrāʾ relates that Yaḥyā b. Wathāb, al-Ḥasan
al-Baṣrī, and the students of Ibn Masʿūd wrote it slightly differently, but it seems that the
sound would have been the same nonetheless; ʿĀṣim and the people of Ḥijāz recited it as
“yunshaʾu” (Abū Zakariyya Yaḥyā b. Ziyād al-Farrāʾ, Maʿānī l-Qurʾān iii, 29).
84 “yunassaʾa” (al-Zajjāj iv, 106).
85 E.g. al-Naḥḥās iv, 68–9.
86 “lā yablugh min al-ḥujja mā yablugh al-rijāl” (al-Farrāʾ iii, 29).
87 Al-Zajjāj iv, 106.
88 E.g. al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xxv, 66; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf v, 409; al-Ṭūsī, al-Tibyān ix, 189. Al-Māturīdī
discusses this view, as well as the “mainstream” Sunni opinion that it refers to women, but
seems dubious about both (Taʾwīlāt ix, 155).
89 By contrast, some early Twelver Shiʿi commentators regard Q 43:18 as a sarcastic com-
ment made about Moses by Pharaoh; see: Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm al-Qummī, Tafsīr
al-Qummī ii, 256. However, al-Ṭūsī’s discussion of the verse replicates that of Sunni exe-
getes (al-Tibyān ix, 189–90).
50 CHAPTER 1
. . . on the authority of Mujāhid, (who) said, “Women have been given a
legal concession allowing them to wear silk and gold,” and he90 recited,
“ ‘Someone who is brought up amongst trinkets, who cannot put together
a clear argument’ (Q 43:18)—meaning, the woman.”91
linguistic ability than others, thereby raising some above others in rank. Both
quranic and human eloquence are gendered masculine in his discussion, in
part through his citation of Q 43:18.106
Such interpretations illustrate that gender categories are far from being
static, universally agreed-upon textual entities in medieval Quran commen-
taries. Rather, they are continuously constructed and ever (re)negotiated. The
main issue at stake for exegetes, however, is the establishment and mainte-
nance of social order rather than gender per se. Not only was it their convic-
tion that the Quran provided the wherewithal for them to make sense of their
world—and that world was replete with hierarchies—but for them, a “true”
religion is one that establishes and sustains a hierarchical social order.107 They
viewed the Quran’s ability to realize the latter as a proof of the veracity of its
message.
Moreover, we see that as exegetes construct and (re)produce gender cat-
egories, they also construct their own interpretive authority as emblematically
masculine, over against what they regard as the Quran’s equation of female-
ness with intrinsic physical, intellectual and spiritual deficiency. It would not
be too much to say that they brought into being a quranic text that appears
to virtually refuse the possibility that any woman could possess the authority
to legitimately interpret it. Yet, because both the gender categories that exe-
getes construct as well as interpretive authority are continually being textually
(re)negotiated, the historical situation is more complex than this observation
might suggest.
As we have already seen, a number of exegetes in the formative and early
medieval periods and later did at times quote traditions in their Quran com-
mentaries that are attributed to early Muslim women, particularly to a few of
the wives of the prophet. Examining the interpretive history of two quranic
verses which appear to grant the wives of the prophet a degree of authority
provides further insight into the ways that exegetes gendered interpretive
authority.
108 For a discussion of these verses, see: Stowasser, Women in the Qurʾan 85–102; Ahmed,
Women and gender 52–7.
109 But cf: Abbott, Aʾishah the beloved 57. It is interesting to note the structural parallel with
the title, “amīr al-muʾminīn”, which was used to refer to a man exercising military com-
mand during the lifetime of Muḥammad, and was first adopted as the title of the caliph
constructions of gender in pre-modern quran commentaries 55
by ʿUmar. Its origins are unclear, though it is thought to have been inspired by Q 4:59—
“O you who believe, obey God and obey the Messenger and those who are in authority
among you (ūlī-l-amri minkum)”; see: Gibb, Amīr al-Muʾminīn, EI i: 445a.
110 Ascha, The ‘Mothers of the Believers’ 92–3.
111 Ahmed, Women and gender 57.
112 Spellberg, Politics, gender and the Islamic past 154.
113 Stowasser, The status of women 12. Cf.: Spellberg, Politics 154.
114 Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 230–1.
115 Brooten, Women leaders 70; Kraemer, Her share of the blessings 121. This title has anteced-
ents in both the Hebrew Bible and in Greco-Roman culture. Deborah, a prophet, judge,
and leader, is called “a mother in Israel” (Judg. 5:7). Greco-Roman public benefactors who
made generous contributions to temples or other civic institutions held titles such as
“mother (or father) of the city” (Kraemer, Her share 88).
56 CHAPTER 1
who headed monasteries in Egypt bore the honorific title of “amma,” meaning
“mother.”116
It has been observed that such titles can express or be used to legitimate
female religious authority, but can also become the means through which
female religious authority is limited or even contested. Some scholars who
have studied the use of titles of this type in the Hebrew Bible have suggested
that such titles ostensibly honour influential women, while at the same time
minimizing their power and the possible threat that this might pose to dom-
inant gender ideologies, by rhetorically situating them within the sphere of
home and family.117 Nonetheless, others have pointed out that titles of this type
may enable some women to take on nontraditional roles by constructing their
actions in the public sphere as an extension of their domestic responsibilities.118
The traditional Muslim accounts of the turmoil in the latter stages of the
caliphate of ʿUthmān (r. 24–36/664–656) as well as during the reign of ʿAlī (36–
41/656–661) famously portray some of the Mothers of the Believers apparently
attempting to do the latter. ʿUthmān attempts to placate his critics by under-
taking to obey the decisions taken by the wives of Muḥammad as well as other
leading figures in Medina,119 and ʿĀʾisha employs “maternal” rhetoric in order
to rally men to her side against ʿAlī.120 The number of men who answered her
call and fought on her side at the Battle of the Camel (36/656)121 would seem to
indicate that a significant number of her contemporaries agreed that the title,
“Mother of the Believers” did endow her with a degree of political authority.122
It should also be noted that some discourses in classical Muslim texts on the
legitimacy of ʿĀʾisha’s political involvement, and particularly of her presence
on the battlefield appear to have been shaped to varying degrees by anachro-
nistic assumptions about the way that space was gendered in Muḥammad’s
community. Moreover, in their readings of the quranic verses mentioning his
wives, contemporary historians at times seem to be influenced by the views
expressed by some modern conservative Muslim scholars and ideologues
opposed to women’s playing active or leading political or otherwise “public”
123 For a critique of interpretations of medieval texts that tend to reduce presentations of
ʿĀʾisha’s role in that battle to a blanket condemnation of women’s political activities, see:
Meisami, Writing medieval women 68–70.
124 Campo, The other sides 50–3; Peters, Muhammad 194–7.
125 For more on this, see Chapter Three.
126 Al-Māturīdī claims that the Bāṭiniyya (i.e. Ismāʿīlis) deny that the verse refers to
Muḥammad’s wives, arguing that if they were in fact the mothers of the believers, then
their children—as sisters and brothers of the believers—would not have been able to
marry anyone in the community (Taʾwīlāt viii, 354).
58 CHAPTER 1
127 E.g. Muqātil iii, 36; Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh b. Muslim b. Qutayba al-Dīnawārī, Taʾwīl
mushkil al-Qurʾān 70; al-Zajjāj iii, 373; al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xxi, 131.
128 “. . . wa-huwa annahunna muḥarramāt ʿalā l-taʾbīd wa-mā kunna maḥārim fī l-khalwa wa-l-
musāfara” (al-Wāḥidī, al-Wasīṭ iii, 459).
129 A few commentators mention the view that the Mothers of the Believers are the mothers
of both women and men, but do not cite the Umm Salama tradition; e.g.: al-Māwardī iv,
375; Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh Ibn al-ʿArabī, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān 1509. While Jalāl
al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī cites the Umm Salama tradition, he traces it back to Ibn Saʿd, but signifi-
cantly, not to any of the tafsīr works which are his basic sources (Durr vi, 567). It would
seem that this tradition was not often quoted in exegetes’ discussions of Q 33:6.
130 Yaḥyā ii, 699–700.
131 Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh b. ʿĪsā Ibn Abī Zamanīn al-Murrī, Tafsīr Ibn Abī
Zamanīn wa-huwa mukhtaṣar Tafsīr Yaḥyā b. Sallām ii, 158.
132 E.g. al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf v, 80; al-Wāḥidī, al-Wasīṭ iii, 459; Nāṣir al-Dīn Abū Saʿīd ʿAbdallāh
Abū ʿUmar b. Muḥammad al-Shīrāzī al-Bayḍāwī, Tafsīr al-Bayḍāwī al-musammā Anwār
al-tanzīl wa-l-asrār al-taʾwīl iv, 364.
133 E.g. Ibn al-ʿArabī iii, 1508–9; Abū l-Faraj Jamāl al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAlī b. Muḥammad
al-Jawzī, Zād al-masīr fī ʿilm al-tafsīr vi, 353.
constructions of gender in pre-modern quran commentaries 59
with political authority; all it does is to prohibit the wives of Muḥammad from
remarrying after his death.134
But the main focus of much of the commentary on Q 33:6, even in the for-
mative period, was to delineate the preeminent position of the prophet in rela-
tion to his community.135 A variant reading of the verse adds the words, “and
he [Muḥammad] is their father” (wa-huwa abun la-hum).136 The popularity of
this explanatory addition to the verse was apparently such that al-Zajjāj even
feels the need to caution his audience/readers that it is not to be recited as part
of the quranic text.137 Such interpretations also have the effect of overshadow-
ing the reference to Muḥammad’s wives as mothers.
Nonetheless, such exegetical efforts never entirely succeeded in rendering
the quranic reference to Muḥammad’s wives as the “mothers” of the believers
completely innocuous. One factor in this was the continued salience of two
of the wives of the prophet (particularly ʿĀʾisha, and to a much lesser extent,
Umm Salama) in Sunni-Shiʿi polemic, which left its mark on the medieval
genre of Quran commentary.138 Such ongoing sectarian sniping helped to
ensure that ʿĀʾisha’s leading role in the events culminating in the Battle of the
Camel remained an ever-relevant concern that few medieval Quran commen-
tators would neglect to discuss. But it is important to bear in mind that for
proto-Sunni and Sunni exegetes in particular, the larger question at stake was
the spectre of a woman wielding authority during the exemplary era of the
Companions—the time that Sunnis would come to idealize as the era when
political and religious authority were one, not only in theory, but in lived real-
ity. Thus, exegetes’ efforts to limit the scope of the motherhood imputed to the
wives of the prophet in Q 33:6 was also related to the often controversial ques-
tion of what (if any) level of religio-interpretive authority could be legitimately
imputed to a woman.
Despite its most unusual direct address of the women themselves, this short
verse has received very little attention from modern critical scholarship.140
This is likely in part because Q 33:34 immediately follows a well-known and
lengthy admonition of the prophet’s wives—also directly addressed to them—
which sternly warns of divine punishment if they commit any act of indecency,
prescribes limits on their interaction with unrelated males, and emphatically
exhorts them to be obedient (Q 33:30–3). In addition, classical exegetes sel-
dom appear to attach much importance to either the Quran’s direct address
of Muḥammad’s wives, or to the specific commands given to them in Q 33:34.141
Thus, neither the context in which Q 33:34 appears in the quranic text nor its
readily accessible history of interpretation seems at first glance to suggest that
it contains much of interest to historians.
However, it is noteworthy that elsewhere in the Quran, Muḥammad’s pro-
phetic mission is summed up as teaching his people God’s signs (āyāt) and wis-
dom (ḥikma).142 Evidently, what his wives are being commanded to remember
in Q 33:34 is the totality of his teachings—both his recited revelations and
other teachings as well.143
In tafsīr works from the formative and medieval periods, the “signs of God”
mentioned in Q 33:34 are usually glossed as “the Quran,”144 while “wisdom” is
typically defined either as referring to the commands and prohibitions given
by God in the Quran145 or as a reference to the sunna;146 a number of Quran
commentaries give both explanations.147 But these interpretations are anachro-
nistic. During Muḥammad’s life, revelation was an ongoing process rather than a
book, while the concept of the prophetic sunna as it later came to be elaborated
by legal scholars did not yet exist. Nonetheless, it is noteworthy that the interpre-
tation equating the “ḥikma” which the wives of Muḥammad are to call to mind
with the sunna implies that these women are commanded here to be thoroughly
conversant with the two sources that came to be regarded as indispensable to
fiqh by the Sunni legal schools. Yet significantly, prior to the fourth/tenth century,
Quran commentators do not appear to have wished to expound at length upon
the implications and scope of this in their discussions of Q 33:34.
Al-Jaṣṣāṣ, who does provide more than a cursory gloss for this directive,
interprets it as an emphatic command to the wives of Muḥammad to be obe-
dient, refraining from any action that would cause harm or annoyance to the
prophet.148 Elsewhere, his commentary quotes some traditions attributed to a
few of Muḥammad’s wives in the course of his discussion of a number of verses.
Nonetheless, in his interpretation of Q 33:34, he does not even hint that this
verse charges these women with conveying their knowledge of Muḥammad’s
revelations to the community.
In a similar vein, al-Wāḥidī asserts that through these women’s remem-
brance of the teachings of the Quran and the prophetic sunna, they will be
reminded of the boundaries set by Islamic law:
This [verse] commands them to memorize the Quran and the traditions
and call both to mind, in order to understand the legal limits and the
(prophetic) message. This was particularly for them to focus on these
because the law is built on these two [sources]: the Quran and the sunna.149
144 E.g. Muqātil iii, 45; ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr iii, 39; al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xxii, 12; al-Māturīdī viii,
384; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf v, 111.
145 Muqātil iii, 45; al-Samarqandī iii, 50.
146 ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr iii, 39; Ibn Abū Ḥātim is also quoted as citing this view (al-Suyūṭī,
Durr vi, 607). Interestingly, al-Māturīdī additionally defines it as “philosophy” ( falāsifa) in
the sense of uniting knowledge with action (Taʾwīlāt viii, 384).
147 E.g. al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xxii, 12; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf v, 111.
148 Al-Jaṣṣāṣ iii, 359.
149 “hādhā ḥaththa la-hunna ʿalā ḥifẓ al-Qurʾān wa-l-akhbār wa-mudhākiratihinna bi-himā
li-l-iḥāṭa bi-ḥudūd al-sharīʿa wa-l-khiṭāb wa-in ikhtaṣṣa bi-hinna dākhil minhu li-anna
mabnā al-sharīʿa ʿalā hādhayn al-Qurʾān wa-l-sunna” (al-Wāḥidī, al-Wasīṭ iii, 470).
62 CHAPTER 1
This line of interpretation holds that the wives of the prophet are instructed
in Q 33:34 to learn and remember the Quran and sunna so that they will know
how to conduct themselves in accordance with the strictures laid down by
Islamic law—which also has the effect of reminding the reader/audience of
the times when they arguably did not act thus.150 But although al-Wāḥidī here
explicitly imputes to these women the knowledge of the two main sources of
the Sharīʿa, he does not imply that they were charged with transmitting this to
the community. Nonetheless, he is clearly not averse to quoting ḥadīths attrib-
uted to several of Muḥammad’s wives (to ʿĀʾisha in particular) in the course
of his exegesis of a range of other verses in his commentary al-Wasīṭ, in which
this quotation appears. Evidently, including traditions ascribed to a wife of the
prophet in a tafsīr work was one thing; explicitly imputing interpretive author-
ity to such a woman was quite another.
However, Ibn al-ʿArabī does understand Q 33:34 as a command to
Muḥammad’s wives to teach their knowledge to others. In his Aḥkām al-Qurʾān,
he states:
God instructed the wives of his Messenger with [this] because they were
thoroughly familiar with the quranic revelations that God had sent down
in their homes, and the actions and speech of the Prophet when in their
company, intending that [this knowledge] would reach the people, and
they would know it, and follow it. And this indicates that it is permissible
to accept a singleton tradition151 in [matters of] religion from men and
women.152
150 Al-Wāḥidī likely has in mind the Battle of the Camel, as well as a couple of incidents dur-
ing Muḥammad’s lifetime when his wives were rebuked for their conduct (Q 33:28–9 and
66:1–5).
151 A singleton tradition (khabar al-wāḥid) is one that has only one or a few transmitters at
every stage of the isnād.
152 “amara Allāhu azwāj rasūlahu bi-an yukhbirna bi-mā anzala Allāh min al-Qurʾān fī
buyūtihinna wa-mā yarayna min afʿāl al-nabī wa-aqwālihi fīhinna, ḥattā yablughu dhālika
ilā l-nās, fa-yaʿmalū bi-mā fīhi wa yaqtadū bihi. Wa-hādha yudillu ʿalā jawāz qabūl khabar
al-wāḥid min al-rijāl wa-l-nisāʾ fī dīn” (Ibn al-ʿArabī iii, 1538).
constructions of gender in pre-modern quran commentaries 63
Concluding Remarks
153 Given that it is unknown to what extent the surviving pre-modern Quran commentar-
ies might or might not be representative of the genre, this observation is unavoidably
provisional. But it is telling that although both al-Ṭabarī and a “mukhtaṣar al-Ṭabarī” are
among Ibn al-ʿArabī’s sources, he is clearly not quoting or summarizing al-Ṭabarī here.
Ibn al-ʿArabī’s formulation of these women’s role in this way had some impact on later
exegesis; see: al-Qurṭubī xiii, 184.
154 For an overview of this debate, see: Robson, Traditions from individuals 327–40. This issue
is discussed in more detail in Chapter Three.
155 Saleh, Formation 14.
156 For a detailed discussion of hierarchization traditions, see Chapter Three.
64 CHAPTER 1
“Prophet, say to your wives, ‘If your desire is for the present life and its finery,
then come, I will make provision for you and release you with kindness, but
if you desire God, his Messenger, and the Final Abode, then remember that
God has prepared great rewards for those of you who do good’ (Q 33:28–9).”
Commentators on the Quran have sought to explicate the circumstances lead-
ing up to this famous ultimatum directed at Muḥammad’s wives as well as these
women’s response to it.1 What would appear to be the earliest Quran commen-
tary that has come down to us, the Tafsīr Muqātil b. Sulaymān,2 recounts their
reaction in this way:
When the Prophet gave them [i.e. his wives] the choice [to remain with
him or not], ʿĀʾisha bt. Abī Bakr al-Ṣiddīq responded, ‘Rather, we choose
God and the Final Abode. We are not concerned with this world. This
present life is the abode of impermanence ( fanāʾ), but the Final Abode
is everlasting, and more beloved to us than the impermanent.’ Each one
of his wives agreed with this response of ʿĀʾisha’s. Then, once the women
had chosen God and his Messenger, God, the Mighty, the Glorious, sent
down [this verse], You [Prophet] are not permitted to take any further
wives, nor to exchange the wives you have for others . . . (Q 33:52).3
In this brief story, ʿĀʾisha’s response to the revelation of “the Verse of the
Choice” (as it is traditionally known) adroitly brings together key words from
it with a paraphrase of two well-known quranic verses: “Everyone on earth
1 For a historical overview of exegesis of these verses, see: Stowasser, Women in the Quran 95–7.
2 The age of this work is debated, and it has clearly been redacted by later transmitters; see:
Versteegh, Grammar and exegesis 206–42; Andrew Rippin, Studying early tafsīr texts 319–20.
Moreover, the Tafsīr Muqātil that has come down to us is only one recension (the Baghdad
recension) of the several that were in circulation in al-Thaʿlabī’s time; see: Gilliot, Beginnings 17;
Goldfeld, Qur’anic commentary 39–40. For more on Muqātil and his exegesis; see: van Ess,
Theologie und Gesellschaft 516–32; Sinai, Fortschreibung und Auslegung. For a late medieval
biographical entry for Muqātil b. Sulaymān (d. 150/767), see: al-Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt 520–1.
3 Muqātil iii, 44.
perishes ( fān); all that remains (yabqā) is the Face of your Lord” (Q 55:26–7).
Not only does she apparently know Muḥammad’s revelations well, but in a most
exemplary fashion she makes a major life decision in accordance with them.
Significantly, these words attributed to ʿĀʾisha receive divine approval in this
anecdote. All the other wives of Muḥammad agree with her, and once they
express this agreement, the rightness of their choice is divinely validated by
the revelation of a quranic verse that further augments their elite status. Not
only are they to remain wives of the prophet, but they—unlike other married
women in their community—need no longer fear that they will be divorced or
have to accept additional co-wives. This idealized, hagiographic retelling of the
incident contrasts with other versions of the tale that do not single out ʿĀʾisha
as a praiseworthy figure.4
But although this anecdote idealizes ʿĀʾisha, it does not impute any exe-
getical role to her whatsoever. Rather, she (along with the other wives of the
Prophet) is presented in it as an object of the (male) exegetical gaze. While
the Tafsīr Muqātil portrays her as eloquently expressing her knowledge and
understanding of Muḥammad’s revelations, her relation to these revelations is
depicted as both reactive and ultimately passive.
In this story, ʿĀʾisha only speaks at the time that this incident took place.
There is no suggestion that she subsequently told anyone else about it, much
less that she had ever expressed an opinion about the meaning or scope of the
Verse of the Choice for the community as a whole. Nor does she appear to have
any inkling that her words will be quoted in connection with these verses in
future. In sum, this is a story with an admonitory purpose that is also apparently
intended to satisfy the curiosity of any who might wonder how Muḥammad’s
wives reacted to the new revelation, and in it, ʿĀʾisha is made to unwittingly play
an edifying role for the audience/reader of the Tafsīr Muqātil. While the Verse
of the Choice itself depicts the wives of the prophet as intimately involved in
“the Quran-as-process,”5 with their words and actions receiving a revelatory
response, the Tafsīr Muqātil does not present any of these women explaining
the verses for the benefit of later audiences/readers.
But by about a century and a half later, a significant shift is evident in Sunni
exegetical discourses associated with the Verse of the Choice: ʿĀʾisha no lon-
ger appears as an entirely unwitting participant. In the Quran commentary of
al-Ṭabarī, of the several ḥadīths quoted that retell the incident, no fewer than
three are related on the authority of ʿĀʾisha herself. In the following ḥadīth, she
ostensibly recounts her reaction to the new revelation in her own words:
Here, ʿĀʾisha tells the story to ʿAmra, who is apparently the female Successor,
ʿAmra bt. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Asʿad (d. 103/721), celebrated for her transmission
of ḥadīths from ʿĀʾisha.8 ʿĀʾisha is presented here as a firsthand source of valued
information that few people can claim to have direct knowledge of. While, as
in the case of the Tafsīr Muqātil, this retelling also idealizes her, it presents her
in a manner that is notably less detached or austere.
Not only does ʿĀʾisha ostensibly recount this tale in the first person, but
its structure attracts and keeps the attention of the audience/reader by cre-
ating suspense: what should ʿĀʾisha avoid being hasty about? What will her
choice be? How will the other wives respond? Such suspense, as well as the
depiction of emotion on the part of both ʿĀʾisha and Muḥammad as the story
unfolds, brings it to life for the audience/reader, and creates a sense of emo-
tional investment in its outcome, although it would have taken place over two
centuries before al-Ṭabarī authored his tafsīr.
Moreover, in another version of the tradition which al-Ṭabarī also quotes,
ʿĀʾisha adds that the prophet’s presenting his wives with the choice to remain
with him was not counted as a divorce.9 The question of whether a man’s giv-
ing his wife the option to stay or leave (yajʿalu amrahā fī yadihā, lit. “putting
her affair in her hand”) qualifies as a pronouncement of male-initiated divorce
6 I.e. apparently from the upper room where Muḥammad had sequestered himself for a
month, following a disagreement with his wives; see: Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 206–7.
7 Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xx, 170.
8 For more on ʿAmra, see below.
9 Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xx, 170.
from unwitting source to quran commentator 69
(ṭalāq) was a matter of debate by jurists in the formative period.10 This lat-
ter tradition goes beyond representing ʿĀʾisha as the source of an edifying and
emotionally affective tale to portraying her as speaking in an exegetical mode:
she applies this short quranic passage about a specific incident that directly
affected a small number of individuals in Muḥammad’s time to a later legal
problem that would remain relevant to later generations of believers. Thus, in
this latter tradition, the shift in the depiction of ʿĀʾisha’s relationship to these
quranic verses from an exegetically unwitting to a seemingly conscious and
purposive one is complete.11
Similar developments in the portrayals of certain male figures have been
critically examined by historians; the evolution of the image of the Companion
ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbbās (d. 67/686–7), the nephew of Muḥammad who later came
to be memorialized as “the father of tafsīr” is a well-known example.12 However,
little detailed critical attention has been given to this process as it pertains to
female figures as sources of exegetical materials. One unfortunate result is that
the gendered nature of constructions of interpretive authority in the formative
period has not been a focus of historical-critical study until now.
This chapter examines the early stages of the development, whereby certain
ancient female figures (occasionally even from before the dawn of Islam) come
to be portrayed as possible sources of materials deemed relevant to quranic
interpretation by later male exegetes. First, it introduces what I term the
“transhistorical exegetical communities” that the third/ninth century Quran
commentaries of al-Ṭabarī and others construct. Then, we will examine the
patterns of citation of exegetical materials ascribed to women in what would
appear to be their chronological precursors: eight works of quranic exege-
sis that are conventionally dated to the second/eighth and early third/ninth
centuries. Issues of particular focus are: how frequently such citations appear
in the various texts, the literary genre of these citations, which women these
exegetical materials are attributed to, and what quranic verses or exegetical
topics these citations are used to explicate. In addition, the presence of these
particular citations in several Quran commentaries, particularly the encyclo-
pedic tafsīr works of al-Ṭabarī, al-Māturīdī and al-Thaʿlabī13 will also be noted,
10 See: Muwaṭṭaʾ 505–9 (K. al-Ṭalāq). For jurists’ discussions of this issue during the forma-
tive period, see: Ali, Marriage and slavery 143–6.
11 For the complex issues of historical anachronism that this shift raises, see Chapter Three.
12 See for example: Gilliot, Portrait ‘mythique’ 127–83.
13 Reference will also be made as appropriate to their presence in the tradition-based tafsīr
of Ibn Abī Ḥātim (insofar as this can be determined), as well as in the madrasa-style
Quran commentary of al-Samarqandī.
70 chapter 2
in order to gauge the extent to which they entered Sunni exegetical discourses
in the third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries.
In their tafsīr works, classical Sunni Quran commentators typically bring two
communities into being:
whose careers are conventionally held to date back to the second/eighth and
early third/ninth centuries, they present such depictions of women as sources
of exegetical materials as an already-established textual “fact” that they did
not invent.
At the same time, al-Ṭabarī, Ibn al-Mundhir, al-Māturīdī (and later,
al-Thaʿlabī) apparently saw themselves as engaging in something more than
perfunctorily reproducing an already existing textual convention. To continue
with the example of the exegetical discourse associated with the Verse of the
Choice, while these four Quran commentators elected to quote a version of
the ḥadīth that is attributed to ʿĀʾisha in the course of their interpretations of
it,19 a number of works penned by their contemporaries do not. Significantly,
the Twelver Shiʿi commentary Tafsīr al-Qummī instead recounts an edifying
anecdote in which it is Umm Salama (i.e. rather than ʿĀʾisha) who sets the
example for Muḥammad’s other wives by being the first of them to declare her
willingness to stay with him.20 Al-Zajjāj’s linguistically-focused commentary
simply rephrases the verses, neither naming nor singling out any particular
wife,21 while al-Naḥḥās, another author whose chief concern is the Quran’s lin-
guistic aspects, devotes his comments on this verse entirely to its grammatical
features.22 It is important to bear in mind that the ways that al-Ṭabarī and oth-
ers who include ḥadīths attributed to ʿĀʾisha when discussing the Verse of the
Choice elect to structure their commentaries are no less indicative of their own
theological allegiances and chosen hermeneutical approaches.23
19 Al-Māturīdī viii, 375; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf v, 104. According to al-Suyūṭī, Ibn al-Mundhir
also related a ḥadīth on ʿĀʾisha’s authority about the Verse of the Choice (Durr vi, 596).
20 Al-Qummī ii, 167.
21 Al-Zajjāj iii, 377–8.
22 Al-Naḥḥās iii, 213.
23 For an examination of al-Ṭabarī’s theological approach as reflected in his Quran commen-
tary, see: Shah, Al-Ṭabarī.
from unwitting source to quran commentator 73
of poetry credited to several Arabian pre- or early Islamic female poets, and
examples of speech ascribed to (usually unnamed) women.
The eight works examined below fall into several categories, based on their
structure and interpretive methods: four are āthār-based exegetical works,
while three chiefly employ linguistic approaches. The remaining work is a
Quran commentary in the classical sense, and as such it employs several dif-
ferent interpretive strategies. The significant differences in hermeneutical
approach that are evident within as well as among these three categories
reflect the often vigorous debates in the formative period as to how quranic
exegesis “should” be done.
As with any works that are conventionally dated to the second/eighth and
early third/ninth centuries, their age, authorship, and “original” form often
continue to be matters of scholarly disagreement. While these debates will
be noted as we proceed, none of what follows stands or falls on the age or
authorship of any one work. Most of the texts discussed below have evidently
undergone editorial reshaping to varying degrees. As such, they may provide
important clues to some aspects of the evolution of hermeneutical discourses
during the formative period, particularly to the ways that key categories that
make these discourses possible came to be gendered.
Exegetical materials ascribed to women were clearly not universally regarded
as an indispensable tool of quranic exegesis in the second/eighth century, nor
in subsequent centuries. In view of this, it is significant that no less than eight
of the comparatively few exegetical works that appear to originate from this
historical period either contain or later came to contain such materials. How
representative they might be in this respect is difficult to know, given the num-
ber of tafsīr works that reportedly were authored in the second/eighth century
but do not appear to have survived, as well as the fact that most of the eight
works surveyed below seem to reflect exegetical discourses current in Iraq, and
particularly, in Baṣra, to varying extents. But what is evident is that these texts
cite materials of this type both against a backdrop of heated debates about
hermeneutics and authority, and also at times as a way of participating in such
debates. As we will see, while there are many obvious differences among these
eight texts, certain common themes emerge, both in the quranic verses and/or
exegetical topics that tend to be associated with exegetical materials attributed
to women, as well as the ways that these women are depicted as sources of
such information. In particular, exegetical unwittingness is a recurrent theme
associated with women; while this partly stems from the various interpretive
approaches used in these works, it also highlights the gendered nature of these
approaches.
74 chapter 2
24 Goldfeld, Qurʾanic commentary 42, 48, 54, 56–57. Al-Thaʿlabī also lists several recensions
of the tafsīr of Mujāhid, none of which is the one discussed in this chapter (Qurʾanic com-
mentary 27–8), as well as the Tafsīr Warqāʾ, via Ādam b. Abī Iyās (Qurʾanic commentary
44), which seems to be yet another recension of it.
25 For the use of isnāds of individual traditions in al-Thaʿlabī’s commentary, see: Saleh,
Formation 74.
26 For examples, see below.
from unwitting source to quran commentator 75
of quotations culled from later tafsīr works, that moreover lack any organizing
principle.27 This impression is heightened by the fact that the editorial voices
of the authors/redactors are only overt on very rare occasions, when a com-
ment by the author/redactor is included in a tradition cited by him. However,
Fred Leemhuis asserts that closer examination of the tafsīr works credited to
Mujāhid, Sufyān al-Thawrī, and ʿAbd al-Razzāq reveals that they possess an
underlying authorial structure.28 While the literary dimensions of this debate
need not detain us here, it should be noted that an important reason why these
works often appear to lack internal structure is that while many of the tradi-
tions they contain relate directly to exegetical questions raised by particular
quranic verses, a significant number do not. Traditions of the latter type do not
seem to have been “originally” circulated in order to address matters of Quran
interpretation—and as such, they raise important questions about hermeneu-
tical developments in the formative period.
This work contains one tradition ascribed to Umm Salama and two to ʿĀʾisha
bt. Abī Bakr, who is also given the last word in a hierarchization tradition.31
In addition, the tradition that is cited as commentary on Q 33:33 is probably
meant to be understood as a statement of ʿĀʾisha’s. While most of the traditions
that make up the Tafsīr Sufyān al-Thawrī are periphrastic, only one of the tradi-
tions ascribed to women in this work belongs to this category:
While some works do ascribe this tradition to ʿĀʾisha, in several relatively early
sources the isnād of this tradition stops at Hishām’s father ʿUrwa (d. 93/711–12
or 94/712–13).34 This appears to be an example of isnād extension, but it is
nonetheless ascribed to ʿĀʾisha in some classical Quran commentaries.35
The tradition related on the authority of Umm Salama states that the last
verse to be revealed to Muḥammad was Q 3:195—I will not allow the work of
a worker among you, whether male or female, to perish. . . .36 Traditions that
recount the circumstances under which a particular verse or passage was
revealed sometimes have a legal purpose. This tradition appears to have been
31 A hierarchization tradition is a polemical tradition which presents at least two view-
points on a controversial question, with an early Muslim female figure speaking on behalf
of one perspective, while at least one other early (typically male) figure represents the
other perspective(s), arguing against her reported view or otherwise dismissing it. For
more on this type of tradition, see Chapter Three.
32 I.e. presumably ʿUrwa, which would make ʿĀʾisha’s name a later addition to the isnād,
unless the qāla is a scribal or printer’s error.
33 Al-Thawrī 175.
34 E.g. Muwaṭṭaʾ, 214 (K. al-Ṣalāt); ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr ii, 321. ʿUrwa b. al-Zubayr is a
Successor, a well-known jurist and historian who was the son of ʿĀʾisha’s half-sister Asmāʾ.
He is credited with the transmission of a large number of traditions on the authority
of ʿĀʾisha; see: Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb vii, 159–62. While many isnāds of traditions which are
traced back through ʿUrwa to ʿĀʾisha contain ʿUrwa’s son, Hishām (d. 146/763), it should
be noted that the latter was accused of transmitting material from his father which he had
not heard from him (Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb xi, 50). For a study of ʿUrwa’s traditions, see: Görke
and Schoeler, Die ältesten Berichte.
35 E.g. al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xv, 203–4. However, al-Māturīdī credits this opinion to unnamed
authorities (Taʾwīlāt vii, 130).
36 Al-Thawrī 83.
from unwitting source to quran commentator 77
expresses skepticism as to whether this tafsīr work can be traced back to the early second/
eighth century, but concedes that the manuscript itself most likely dates to the late third/
ninth century; see: Studying early tafsīr texts 323.
46 Ibn Wahb, Al-Ǧāmiʿ: Tafsīr al-Qurʾān (1995), fol. 18b, lines 17–19; fol. 15a, lines 10–13.
47 Murányi was not able to trace either of these latter women, nor was I. The first tradition
does not appear in either al-Ṭabarī or al-Thaʿlabī. While one suspects that the mother
of al-Sakan—and perhaps also al-Sakan himself, who is likewise apparently unknown
(majḥūl); see: al-Ǧāmiʿ (1995), 76, 95—is the invention of someone trying to rectify the
isnād, al-Ṭabarī does have the second tradition, with the same isnād (al-Ǧāmiʿ xv, 37).
Al-Thaʿlabī has it without an isnād (al-Kashf iv, 161).
48 Ibn Wahb, al-Ǧāmiʿ (1995), fol. 17a, 25–17b, 2. Here, ʿĀʾisha says that “ghayy” is a river in hell;
other views include: a spring or valley in hell, evil, or loss; see al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xvi 111–12.
49 Ibn Wahb, al-Ǧāmiʿ (1993), fol. 25a, lines 12–13. Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xxvi, 20–21; al-Thaʿlabī, al-
Kashf vi, 249.
50 Ibn Wahb, al-Ǧāmiʿ (1993), fol. 10b, 9–12. Al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf v, 373.
51 Ibn Wahb, al-Ǧāmiʿ (1995), fol. 12a, 23–12b, 1. Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ iii, 219–21; al-Thaʿlabī, al-
Kashf ii, 9. Ibn Abī Ḥātim cited it, according to al-Suyūṭī (Durr ii, 148), but while the 1987
edition of Ibn Abī Ḥātim’s tafsīr has ʿĀʾisha as the authority, the 1999 edition does not.
from unwitting source to quran commentator 79
52 Ibn Wahb, al-Ǧāmiʿ (1995), fol. 12a, 11–13. Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xxx, 127–9; al-Māturīdī x, 472;
al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf vi, 409.
53 The majority of printed Qurans today follow the reading of Ḥafṣ, except in West Africa
and the Maghrib, where the reading of Warsh (d. 197/813) is generally used. Ḥafṣ and
Warsh are two of the so-called “seven readings”; for these, see: Gilliot, Creation of a fixed
text 49–52. For the availability of these readings in print, see: Brockett, The value 31–2.
54 Ibn Wahb, al-Ǧāmiʿ (1995), fol. 3b, 22–4a, 4. According to al-Suyūṭī, Ibn Abī Ḥātim cited it
(Durr iv, 595). Other versions of this tradition will be discussed in Chapter Three.
55 Ibn Wahb, al-Ǧāmiʿ (1995), fol. 12a, 18–23. This tradition will be further discussed in
Chapter Three.
56 Ibn Wahb, al-Ǧāmiʿ (1995), fol. 9b, 24–10a, 1. Al-Ṭabarī has this tradition, with the same
isnād (Jāmiʿ v, 376). Al-Māturīdī has a similar tradition attributed to ʿĀʾisha (Taʾwīlāt iii,
377).
80 chapter 2
57 Al-Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt 209; al-Dhahabī, Siyar ix, 563ff; Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb x, 219–21.
58 “His Shiʿi inclinations were held against him, though he did not go to extremes; he loved
ʿAlī and hated those who had killed him” (al-Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt 209).
59 Harald Motzki suggests that the charge that ʿAbd al-Razzāq had Shiʿi inclinations was an
attempt to discredit him; see: al-Ṣanʿānī, EI IX:7a.
60 Two editions of this recension have been published: Tafsīr al-Qurʾān li-l-Imām ʿAbd
al-Razzāq ibn Hammām al-Ṣanʿānī 4 vols., and Tafsīr ʿAbd al-Razzāq taṣnīf al-Imām
al-Muḥaddith ʿAbd al-Razzāq ibn Hammām al-Ṣanʿānī 3 vols. Both used the same two
manuscripts: the Ankara Maktaba Ṣāʾib manuscript no. 4216, and the Cairo Dār al-Kutub
Tafsīr no. 242. All references in this study are to the latter edition, unless otherwise noted.
61 Fuʾad Sezgin dates the Ankara Maktaba Ṣāʾib manuscript no. 4216 to the sixth century
AH, and the Cairo Dār al-Kutub Tafsīr no. 242 to 724 AH (Geschichte i, 99). Also, Ibn
Taymiyya mentions the “tafsīr ʿAbd al-Razzāq” (seemingly as the title of a book) in his
Muqaddima fī uṣūl al-tafsīr, ed. Muḥibb al-Dīn al-Khaṭīb (Cairo: al-Matbaʿa al-Salafi-
yya, 1965), 79. However, I have not been able to find evidence for the existence of the
Tafsīr ʿAbd al-Razzāq as a discrete book prior to the sixth/twelfth century. While Sezgin
states that al-Ṭabarī’s Jāmiʿ “incorporates the entire commentary” (i.e. of ʿAbd al-Razzāq)
through traditions from al-Ḥasan b. Yaḥyā b. al-Jaʿd al-ʿAbdī al-Jurjānī (d. 263/876), the
text of the Jāmiʿ would seem to indicate no more than that al-Ḥasan is cited as the source
for traditions from ʿAbd al-Razzāq; there is no suggestion that these traditions come from
a written source, much less from a commentary in particular. (For al-Ḥasan’s career, see:
al-Dhahabī, Siyar xii, 356–7). And significantly, while al-Thaʿlabī quotes traditions on the
authority of ʿAbd al-Razzāq, he nowhere mentions any commentary by ʿAbd al-Razzāq in
his exhaustive list of the sources that he used.
from unwitting source to quran commentator 81
date, it formed part of ʿAbd al-Razzāq’s Muṣannaf. If this is in fact the case,
then the Tafsīr ʿAbd al-Razzāq is likely the oldest surviving example of a chap-
ter devoted to quranic exegesis in a ḥadīth compilation.62
In the form that it has come down to us, the Tafsīr ʿAbd al-Razzāq is com-
posed of traditions that chiefly interpret the quranic text through the use
of paraphrase, gloss, and completion; it does not contain much linguistic
material.63 Out of the total of 3,755 traditions contained in this work, 33
are ascribed to women (0.8 percent); in addition, there are three traditions
addressing controversial questions that present views credited to early Muslim
women. These figures are apparently the cumulative result of a process of
redaction. A significant number of the traditions in this tafsīr are not traced
back through Maʿmar, but through other early authorities. Of the traditions
ascribed to women, almost one-quarter do not contain Maʿmar’s name in their
isnāds, and therefore would seem to have been added by ʿAbd al-Razzāq or
someone else.64
A much greater variety of female transmitters appear in ʿAbd al-Razzāq
than in the works surveyed thus far, although most of the traditions credited
to women are ascribed to a few of the wives of the Prophet, with twenty-five
to ʿĀʾisha, three to Umm Salama, and one apocalyptic ḥadīth on the appear-
ance of Gog and Magog to Zaynab bt. Jaḥsh (d. 20/640),65 via Zaynab bt. Abī
Salama (d. 73/ 692).66 One tradition is attributed to a female Companion, Umm
Kulthūm bt. ʿUqba (d. 33/653), the half-sister of ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān (d. 36/656),
62 For the significance of such chapters in ḥadīth compilations to the history of tafsīr, see
Chapter Four.
63 Rippin, Studying early tafsīr texts 321.
64 The Tafsīr ʿAbd al-Razzāq contains a few traditions that are not traced back through him,
and which appear to have been added by Salama b. Shabīb; i.e. Tafsīr ʿAbd al-Razzāq i, 271.
While none of these traditions are attributed to women, such seeming evidence of further
redaction does raise the question of whether Salama might have also removed any tradi-
tions from this work.
65 Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 110–32; Ibn al-Athīr, Usd al-ghāba vii, 126–8; Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb
xii, 371.
66 Zaynab bt. Abī Salama, who was Umm Salama’s daughter, is known for her transmission
of a number of traditions from various wives of Muḥammad (Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 503–4;
Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb xii, 371–372). In one of the manuscripts of the Tafsīr ʿAbd al-Razzāq,
the names of these two women do not appear in the isnād. However, they do appear in
the isnād of this ḥadīth in the Kitāb al-Jāmiʿ of Maʿmar b. Rāshid; see; ʿAbd al-Razzāq b.
Hammām al-Ṣanʿānī, Al-Muṣannaf xi, 363 (K. al-Jāmiʿ); cf. ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr ii, 293.
Al-Ṭabarī has this tradition via Maʿmar, and its isnād only extends back to al-Zuhrī (Jāmiʿ
xv, 68). This appears to be an example of isnād extension.
82 chapter 2
who is chiefly remembered for her solo migration to Medina following the
Treaty of Ḥudaybiyya.67
Two of the traditions that are traced back to Umm Salama are transmitted
by women: the well-known traditionist Ṣafiyya bt. Shayba,68 and Ḥafṣa bt. ʿAbd
al-Raḥmān b. Abī Bakr, a niece of both Umm Salama and ʿĀʾisha.69 ʿAmra bt.
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān transmits a tradition from ʿĀʾisha. ʿAmra is primarily known
for her legal rulings, as well as for her transmission of traditions from ʿĀʾisha on
a wide variety of subjects;70 among the latter are a small number of exegetical
traditions, as well as a few variant readings.
In addition, several female Successors transmit from men: Umm Kulthūm
bt. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib71 from a male Companion, and the ascetic traditionist Ḥafṣa
bt. Sīrīn (d. 101/719)72 from the Baṣran Successor Abū l-ʿĀliya (d. 90/708–9 or
96/714).73 Asmāʾ bt. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Abī Bakr74 (along with her husband)
appear in the isnād of a legal controversy tradition concerning inheritance.75
67 For her, see: Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 266–9; Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb xii, 425.
68 ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr iii, 51. The 1989 edition gives her name as “Ṣafiyya bt. Nasība,” which
appears to be a mistake (Tafsīr al-Qurʾān li-l-Imām ʿAbd al-Razzāq ii, 123). There is a differ-
ence of opinion as to whether Ṣafiyya bt. Shayba is a Companion or a Successor (Ibn Saʿd,
Ṭabaqāt viii, 513; Ibn al-Athīr, Usd al-ghāba vii, 170–1; Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb xii, 381).
69 Ḥafṣa is a Successor. Umm Salama was her maternal aunt (Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 512; Ibn
Ḥajar, Tahdhīb xii, 361).
70 ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr ii, 432. For ʿAmra, see: Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 524–5; Ibn Ḥajar,
Tahdhīb xii, 389; Roded, Women in Islamic 48–9.
71 Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 505–8.
72 This tradition is repeated twice. In the isnād of the first version, which is transmitted via
Maʿmar, the manuscripts do not agree as to whether the tradition goes back to Ḥafṣa; the
isnād of the second version (apparently added by ʿAbd al-Razzāq) does clearly extend
back to her; see also: al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xx, 15. For Ḥafṣa bt. Sīrīn, see: Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii,
528; Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb xii, 360–1.
73 Abū l-ʿĀliya Rufayʿ b. Mihrān al-Riyāḥī is a traditionist and a Quran reciter who is also
credited with a tafsīr (Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt vii, 128–35). He is traditionally included in the list
of the ten Successors prominent in exegesis.
74 She is a half-sister of Ḥafṣa bt. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān; her mother was a concubine. Asmāʾ is said
to have grown up in her aunt ʿĀʾisha’s care, and to have related a few traditions from her
(Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 512; Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb xii, 349).
75 A controversy tradition is a polemical tradition that depicts an early Muslim figure argu-
ing on behalf of his or her opinion regarding a debated issue. While a controversy tradi-
tion indicates at least indirectly that there are different views on the issue in question, it
only presents one side of the argument (unlike a hierarchization tradition, which pres-
ents both, though not necessarily in a “fair” or even-handed way).
from unwitting source to quran commentator 83
97 ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr iii, 436–7. For tafsīr works which cite this tradition, see Chapter
One.
98 ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr iii, 51; Ibn Abī Ḥātim x, 3154, and see also Durr vi, 659.
99 ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr i, 340–1. Al-Ṭabarī has several versions (Jāmiʿ ii, 487–8). A version
was cited by Ibn Abī Ḥātim (Durr i, 628–9); for another, see: Ibn Abī Ḥātim ii, 404.
100 ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr ii, 153, 154.
101 ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr i, 438–9. Al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf ii, 242; al-Māturīdī cites it, but without
an isnād (Taʾwīlāt iii, 23). Al-Suyūṭī states that ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Ibn Jarīr [al-Ṭabarī], and
Ibn Abī Ḥātim have it from Ibn Abī Mulayka, who says that Asmāʾ bt. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān and
al-Qāsim b. Muḥammad informed him of it (Durr ii, 441). However, neither of the isnāds
that al-Ṭabarī gives for this tradition contain Asmāʾ’s name (Jāmiʿ iv, 321), although Ibn Abī
Ḥātim’s isnād does (iii, 875). This is one illustration of the hurdles facing any attempt to
use the Durr al-Manthūr in order to reconstruct lost works.
102 ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr iii, 359. Al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf vi, 302.
86 chapter 2
103 ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr iii, 86–7. Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xxii, 30; al-Samarqandī iii, 105; al-Thaʿlabī,
al-Kashf v, 205; Ibn Abī Ḥātim cited it (al-Suyūṭī, Durr vii, 71).
104 ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr ii, 470. Al-Samarqandī ii, 486; al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xix, 135.
105 Kaʿb was a convert of Jewish origin, famed for his knowledge of Judaeo-Islamic traditions
(Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb viii, 382–3).
106 ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr iii, 251–2. Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xxvii, 61; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf vi, 10–11. For
more on this tradition, see Chapter Three.
107 Donner, Narratives 43; Saleh, Formation 180; cf. Madelung, Succession 8ff.
108 Walid Saleh terms this type of exegesis “political interpretation.” I refer to it here as “theo-
political” in order to highlight the theological-sectarian dimensions of most traditions
of this type that are attributed to women. For this sort of interpretation, see: Goldziher,
Richtungen 263ff; Afsaruddin, Constructing narratives 315–51; as well as her Excellence and
precedence 229ff.
109 For a discussion of these events and the political significance that came to be attached to
them, see: Spellberg, Politics 61ff; 101ff; Madelung, Succession 50–1.
110 Saleh, Formation 178–9.
from unwitting source to quran commentator 87
well as the ḥadīth of Fāṭima bt. Qays. Significantly, in all three of these, a
woman’s interpretation of a quranic verse is dismissed by a male authority. In
general, the TafsīrʿAbd al-Razzāq presents a fairly variegated picture of women
as sources of exegetical traditions, and depicts ʿĀʾisha in particular as the pre-
eminent female authority on these. Nonetheless, through its citation of these
hierarchization traditions, this work also appears to convey a significant level
of ambivalence about attributing exegetical authority to ʿĀʾisha or to any other
early Muslim woman.117
117 For a more detailed discussion of these three traditions, see Chapter Three.
118 Al-Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt 504–6; al-Dhahabī, Siyar iv, 449ff.
119 Herbert Berg refers to it as the tafsīr of Ibn Shādhān (d. after 424/1032), because he is the
first transmitter named on the title pages whose name is not also found in the isnāds; see
his Weaknesses 333; for Harald Motzki’s rejoinder, see: Question 231–2. Fred Leemhuis
asserts that the Cairo Dār al-Kutub manuscript Tafsīr 1075 probably does contain Ādam b.
Abī Iyās’ redaction of a collection of exegetical traditions that go back to Mujāhid; see his
MS. 1075 Tafsīr 169–80.
120 Warqāʾ b. ʿUmar b. Kulayb was a well regarded ḥadīth transmitter whose geographical
origins are unclear. He was among those reported to have transmitted the Tafsīr Mujāhid
(al-Dhahabī, Siyar vii, 419–22).
121 Ādam was a traditionist from Khorāsān, who traveled to Baghdad and then to ʿAsqalān,
where he finally settled. He learned traditions in Iraq, Egypt, Mecca and Medina, as well
as in Syria (al-Dhahabī, Siyar x, 335–8).
122 Leemhuis, Discussion and debate 325.
from unwitting source to quran commentator 89
123 Tafsīr al-Imām Mujāhid b. Jabr, ed. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Salām Abū l-Nīl (Cairo: Dār al-Fikr
al-Islāmī al-Ḥadītha, 1989). This is a new edition of al-Sūratī’s work of the same name,
which was published in 1976. As with the Tafsīr Sufyān al-Thawrī, both of these editions
are based on only one manuscript, which is in this case MS. 1075. Moreover, this version
differs to some extent from the traditions ascribed to Mujāhid in al-Ṭabarī’s tafsīr (Gilliot,
Beginnings 13–14).
124 Also referred to as Nusayba al-Anṣāriyya, she is credited with several traditions about
issues connected with funerals and the women’s bayʿa; see Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 498; Ibn
al-Athīr, Usd al-ghāba vii, 356–357; Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb xii, 404.
125 Mujāhid 491. Al-Samarqandī ii, 437.
126 Mujāhid 486.
127 Mujāhid 756. Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xv, 361.
128 Mujāhid 714.
90 chapter 2
135 Al-Ṭabarī not only made use of al-Farrāʾ’s Maʿānī in his commentary, but also critiqued
some of his theological stances. For examples, see: Shah, Al-Ṭabarī 84–90.
136 His sectarian or theological leanings are unclear. The claim that he was an ʿIbāḍī is made
by some medieval biographers; see: al-Dhahabī, Siyar x, 446–7; al-Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt 518.
Abū ʿUbayda was also apparently accused of having Muʿtazilī sympathies, a charge that
has been dismissed in several recent studies; see: Shah, Al-Ṭabarī 95; 127, n. 74.
137 Al-Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt 518–19.
138 For an analysis of his exegetical method, see: Almagor, The early meaning 307–26; Abu-
Deeb, Studies in the majāz 310–53.
139 Almagor, Early meaning 278.
140 For the use of poetry as an exegetical tool, see: Goldziher, Richtungen 69–71.
141 ʿUmar Riḍā Kaḥḥāla, Aʿlām al-nisāʾ fī ʿālamay al-ʿArab wa-l-Islām i, 348ff.
142 Abū ʿUbayda i, 65, 142–3. For more on this, see below.
92 chapter 2
known as Tumāḍir bt. ʿAmr b. al-Sharīd (d. 24/644)143 is used to elucidate the
rather baffling instruction to Abraham in Q 2:260 to “Take four birds and train
them to come back to you . . . .”144 A line of poetry attributed to “Khansāʾ, or her
daughter ʿAmra,” is also cited in order to define the word “fākihūn” in Q 36:55.145
As is typically the case with shawāhid, there is little or no relation between
the meanings of these poetic citations and the quranic verses that they are
made to comment upon. The dissonance that sometimes results can seem
rather humorous, or even ironic. In his discussion of Q 23:12—“We created the
human being from an essence of clay” (sulālatin min ṭīn)—Abū ʿUbayda inter-
prets the meaning of “sulāla” as “offspring,” on the strength of a few bitingly
satirical lines that Hind bt. al-Nuʿmān b. Bashīr al-Anṣāriyya is reported to have
recited to her jealous husband, when he accused her of having an unseemly
interest in a group of leprous men:
As the story goes, these lines not only resulted in the termination of the mar-
riage (which she appears to have wanted), but also later deflected the unwel-
come attentions of al-Ḥajjāj, who had come to consummate his marriage to
her, but was so humiliated that he divorced her.147
Interestingly, ʿĀʾisha is presented as an authority only once in Abū ʿUbayda’s
Majāz. A line from a letter that she reportedly wrote to another wife of the
prophet, Ḥafṣa bt. ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb (d. 45/665), which reads: “certainly, the
son of Abū Ṭālib sent his step-son (rabīb)—an evil one” is cited as evidence
for the meaning of the word rabāʾīb (“step-daughters”) mentioned in the list
of women that a man may not marry in Q 4:23. Abū ʿUbayda explains that the
step-son referred to by ʿĀʾisha is Muḥammad b. Abū Bakr, whose mother was
the well-known Companion Asmāʾ bt. ʿUmays. Asmāʾ had married ʿAlī b. Abī
143 For al-Khansāʾ, see: Ibn al-Athīr, Usd al-ghāba vii, 89–91.
144 Abū ʿUbayda i, 80–1. Al-Ṭabarī and al-Thaʿlabī cite it (Jāmiʿ iii, 69; al-Kashf i, 441).
145 Abū ʿUbayda ii, 163. This word occurs in Q 36:55—“The people of Paradise this day are
happily employed ( fī shughulin fākihūn).”
146 Abū ʿUbayda ii, 55. Al-Ṭabarī and al-Thaʿlabī cite it without attribution (Jāmiʿ xviii, 11; al-
Kashf iv, 320).
147 Kaḥḥāla, Aʿlām v, 256–7.
from unwitting source to quran commentator 93
Ṭālib148 after the death of her second husband, Abū Bakr.149 As we have seen,
ʿĀʾisha and a few other wives of the prophet sometimes appear in āthār-based
exegetical works as transmitters of traditions on various subjects, including
legal verses regulating marriage and familial relationships. By contrast, Abū
ʿUbayda here depicts ʿĀʾisha and Ḥafṣa as two elite Arab women who are appar-
ently corresponding about a familial-political matter. It should be noted that
neither is there any illusion here that ʿĀʾisha’s reported words were “originally”
intended to shed light on the meaning of a quranic verse, nor that she envis-
aged that they would come to be employed exegetically. Rather, she—like the
male and female poets whose lines Abū ʿUbayda quotes—is presented here as
an unwitting source of exegetical material.
169 Al-Farrāʾ i, 106; ii, 183. The latter version, which has slight differences, is an Abū-l ʿAbbās
tradition.
170 Al-Farrāʾ ii, 238; see also al-Ṭabarī, al-Jāmiʿ xviii, 40; al-Māturīdī vii, 476. Al-Thaʿlabī attri-
butes a different variant to her (al-Kashf iv, 329).
171 Al-Farrāʾ ii, 212. Despite its dubious ties to ʿĀʾisha, this reading is credited to her by al-Ṭabarī
(Jāmiʿ xvii, 112) and al-Thaʿlabī, though without isnāds (al-Kashf iv, 275). Al-Māturīdī attri-
butes a different variant to her (Taʾwīlāt vii, 377).
172 Al-Farrāʾ iii, 131. However, al-Māturīdī and al-Thaʿlabī attribute a variant reading of this
verse to her (which she in turn credits to Muḥammad); see: Taʾwīlāt ix, 509; al-Kashf vi, 100.
173 These statistics are from: Dévényi, Al-Farrāʾ and al-Kisāʾī 160–1.
174 Al-Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt 134–5; al-Dhahabī, Siyar x, 206–8.
175 As he is reported to have related from Hishām b. ʿUrwa among others (al-Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt
134), and Hishām was well known for relating traditions which are attributed to ʿĀʾisha,
this omission would seem to be deliberate.
176 Abū l-Ḥasan Saʿīd b. Masʿada al-Akhfash al-Awsaṭ, Kitāb Maʿāni l-Qurʾān i, 103.
from unwitting source to quran commentator 97
the Companion ʿĀtika bt. Zayd that appears to be from the elegy that she is said
to have composed when mourning the death of her third husband, al-Zubayr b.
al-ʿAwwām (d. 36/656)177 is used in order to illustrate the grammatical accept-
ability of a variant reading of Q 23:114, “. . . you stayed but a little.”178 Also, the
same few verses credited to al-Khirniq that are quoted by Abū ʿUbayda and
al-Farrāʾ are cited (though without attribution) in order to demonstrate that
the anomalous nouns in the accusative case in Q 2:177 and Q 4:162 conform to
Arabic usage.179
177 ʿĀtika bt. Zayd b. ‘Amr was a Qurayshi woman who apparently converted fairly early; she
pledged allegiance to Muḥammad, and migrated to Medina. She was married to ʿAbdallāh
b. Abī Bakr, who died in the siege of al-Ṭāʾif, then to her cousin, ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb, and
then to al-Zubayr (Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 306–9; Ibn al-Athīr, Usd al-ghāba vii, 181–3).
178 Al-Akhfash ii, 455.
179 Al-Akhfash i, 167.
180 Al-Dhahabī, Siyar ix, 396.
181 “. . . laysa li-aḥad min al-mutaqaddimīn mithlahu” (al-Dhahabī, Siyar ix, 397).
182 Ibn Abī Zamanīn was a Maliki jurist, traditionist and poet, whose written output ranged
from a commentary on Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ to books on aspects of asceticism. Al-Dāwūdī
credits him with authoring a “tafsīr al-Qurʾān” in addition to a “mukhtaṣar tafsīr Ibn
Sallām li l-Qurʾān” (Tabaqāt al-mufassirīn 410–11).
183 This difference meant that Hūd could not merely summarize the Tafsīr Yaḥyā b. Sallām
and have his commentary conform to his ʿIbāḍī beliefs; some rewriting was in order; see:
Gilliot, Le commentaire de Hūd 182.
98 chapter 2
But despite the historical significance of the Tafsīr Yaḥyā b. Sallām, it has
thus far received little attention in the secondary literature.184 One reason for
this appears to be that much of this work does not seem to have survived. The
printed version only contains the commentary from Sūrat al-Naḥl (S. 16, “The
Bee”) to Sūrat al-Ṣāffāt (S. 37, “Ranged in Rows”). Moreover, until its publication
in 2004, it was reportedly difficult to access.185
The Tafsīr Yaḥyā b. Sallām contains periphrastic exegesis—most of which is
not ascribed to any named authority—as well as short narratives, legal opin-
ions credited to various early authorities, variant readings, and traditions.
While there are some ḥadīths that are traced back to Muḥammad, the major-
ity of the interpretations given are attributed to various early figures, often
from well-known Successors such as Qatāda, al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, Mujāhid, and
al-Suddī, as well as the controversial Kūfan exegete Muḥammad b. al-Sāʾib
al-Kalbī (d. 146/763).186 This work contains a number of examples of exegetical
materials that are ascribed to women.
The female figure most often cited is ʿĀʾisha bt. Abī Bakr, and she is largely
depicted as a transmitter of ḥadīths, as well as a legal authority in her own right.
In seven ḥadīths, she is depicted as quoting Muḥammad’s words or describing
his customary practice on a variety of issues, including his explanation of the
quranic reference to an “easy reckoning” on the Day of Judgment,187 the words
of a supplication he used to recite when praying the dawn prayer,188 and his
course of action whenever he was presented with a choice between two licit
possibilities.189 One tradition relates the way that Ibn ʿAbbās and ʿĀʾisha recited
Q 23:60.190 In ten other traditions, however, the opinions presented rest on
ʿĀʾisha’s authority alone. These latter traditions discuss a wide range of issues,
184 Two recent articles that briefly discuss this commentary are: Gilliot, Le Commentaire
Coranique de Hūd 181–2; Saleh, Marginalia 293–4.
185 Saleh, Marginalia 294.
186 Al-Dhahabī says as little as possible about al-Kalbī, declaring that his ḥadīths are to be
rejected due to his Shiʿi views (Siyar vi, 248). Nonetheless, his exegetical views were evi-
dently influential. Several versions of his commentary (supposedly transmitted from Ibn
ʿAbbās) are listed by al-Thaʿlabī among his sources (Goldfeld, Qurʾanic commentary 22–6).
187 Yaḥyā i, 190. However, this hadith is quoted as part of the exegesis of Q 18:48. Hūd quotes
it under this verse (Tafsīr Kitāb Allāh al-ʿazīz ii, 466); Ibn Abī Zamanīn does not.
188 Yaḥyā i, 170, sub. Q 17:111. One manuscript of the Tafsīr Kitāb Allāh al-ʿazīz includes this
ḥadīth (Hūd ii, 449); Ibn Abī Zamanīn does not quote it.
189 Yaḥyā i, 391, sub. Q 22:78. See also: Hūd iii, 128. Ibn Abī Zamanīn does not quote this
ḥadīth.
190 Yaḥyā i, 406. Similarly, see also: Hūd iii, 142. Ibn Abī Zamanīn does not include this
reading.
from unwitting source to quran commentator 99
including the covering of the Kaʿba,191 and the meaning of the theologically
freighted expression, “seal of the prophets” in Q 33:40.192 A couple of these tra-
ditions are transmitted by female Successors—ʿĀʾisha’s client Umm ʿAlqama,193
and a Baṣran woman called Umm Shabīb.194
Another wife of Muḥammad, Umm Salama, is credited with an apocalyp-
tic tradition, as well as a legal tradition on the status of slaves who are in the
process of buying their freedom.195 Two female Companions also transmit
one ḥadīth each: Asmāʾ bt. Abī Bakr (d. 73/692)196 recounts that Muḥammad
advised her to continue to maintain a relationship with her pagan mother,197
and Umm Ḥumayd al-Sāʿidiyya relates that the prophet stated in emphatic
terms that the best place by far for women to pray is in the innermost parts of
their own homes rather than in his mosque.198
An admonitory saying encouraging charitable giving which is cited in the
interpretation of Q 23:72 is attributed to “Umm al-Dardāʾ.”199 Several late medi-
eval authors of biographical compendia claim there were two women named
Umm al-Dardāʾ: one, whom they term Umm al-Dardāʾ the Elder, is said to
have been a Companion named Khayra (or possibly Karīma) bt. Abī Ḥadrad
al-Aslamī, while the other, Umm al-Dardāʾ the Younger, otherwise known as
Hujayma (or Juhayma) bt. Ḥuyayy al-Waṣṣābiyya (d. 81/700),200 was a Successor.
Both were reportedly married for some time to the Companion ʿUwaymir b.
Zayd b. Qays, or Abū l-Dardāʾ (d. 32/652), who is memorialized as one of sev-
eral men who collected the Quran during the lifetime of Muḥammad, as well
191 Yaḥyā i, 363. See also: Hūd iii, 109. Ibn Abī Zamanīn does not quote this tradition.
192 Yaḥyā ii, 723. Neither Hūd nor Ibn Abī Zamanīn quote this tradition.
193 Yaḥyā i, 363. “She related from ʿĀʾisha, and her son ʿAlqama b. Abī ʿAlqama related sound
hadiths from her” (Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 533–4).
194 Yaḥyā i, 440. For Umm Shabīb, see: Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 530.
195 Yaḥyā i, 341; ii, 735. Neither of these traditions is quoted by Hūd or Ibn Abī Zamanīn.
196 She is the elder half-sister of ʿĀʾisha bt. Abī Bakr; see: Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 289–6.
197 Yaḥyā ii, 701, sub. Q 33:6. Neither Hūd nor Ibn Abī Zamanīn quote this ḥadīth.
198 Yaḥyā i, 451–2, sub. Q 24:37. Neither Hūd nor Ibn Abī Zamanīn quote this ḥadīth. Umm
Ḥumayd is an obscure figure, apparently remembered for little more than transmitting
this ḥadīth, as well as having been the wife of a Companion, Abū Ḥumayd al-Sāʿidī; see:
Ibn al-Athīr, Usd al-ghāba vii, 311.
199 Yaḥyā i, 411. See also: Hūd iii, 145–146. Ibn Abī Zamanīn does not quote this tradition.
200 There is a fair amount of uncertainty about her name, and the name of her father (Ḥuyyay
or Ḥayy), as well as her nisba: al-Waṣṣābiyya or al-Awṣābiyya. Waṣṣāb is in the interior of
Ḥimyar (al-Mizzī, Tahdhīb xxxv, 352).
100 chapter 2
201 For his career, see: al-Dhahabī, Siyar ii, 335–53; Shams al-Dīn Abī ʿAbdallāh al-Dhahabī,
Maʿrifat al-qurrāʾ al-kibār ʿalā al-ṭabaqāt wa-l-iʿṣār 38–9.
202 Al-Dhahabī, Siyar iv, 277–8; al-Mizzī, Tahdhīb xxxv, 352–4; Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb xii, 414.
Al-Dhahabī and al-Mizzī died in the mid-eighth/late fourteenth century, while Ibn Ḥajar
died in 852/1449.
203 Its isnād contains ʿUthmān b. Ḥayyān al-Dimashqī, who is among those who is listed as
having transmitted from Umm al-Dardāʾ the Younger; see: al-Dhahabī, Siyar iv, 277; Ibn
Ḥajar, Tahdhīb xii, 414. While the editor of Hūd’s Tafsīr Kitāb Allāh al-ʿazīz identifies her as
the Companion Umm al-Dardāʾ the Elder, he gives no reason for having done so (Hūd iii,
145, n. 1).
204 See for example Ibn al-Athīr, Usd al-ghāba vii, 100, 316–17. For an attempt to explain how
two separate women have the same kunya, see: Abū al-Faraj ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. al-Jawzī,
Ṣifat al-safwa iv, 244.
205 Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, al-Istīʿāb 488–9. For further discussion of the historical problems sur-
rounding her/their identity, see: Geissinger, ‘Umm al-Dardāʾ sat in tashahhud like a man’
307–11.
from unwitting source to quran commentator 101
206 “Internal logic” here means the coherence and literary effect of the depiction; it is far
more than simply a question of a technically “complete” isnād.
207 Given that many of these traditions in the Tafsīr ʿAbd al-Razzāq are transmitted by the
Baṣran Maʿmar b. Rāshid.
208 Yaḥyā i, 367, 373, 376, 377. I have not been able to find these traditions in any ḥadīth com-
pilation. Two of these traditions are quoted in the Tafsīr Kitāb Allāh al-ʿazīz (Hūd iii, 111,
117, sub. Q 22:28 and 22:36). Ibn Abī Zamanīn does not include any of them.
209 The Companion Saʿd b. Abī Waqqāṣ is also known as Saʿd b. Mālik. He is remembered as
one of the first Meccan converts, and as one of the ten to whom Muḥammad promised
Paradise (Ibn al-Athīr, Usd al-ghāba ii, 452–457). For ʿĀʾisha bt. Saʿd b. Abī Waqqāṣ, see: Ibn
Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 510–11.
210 Abū Ḥātim Muḥammad b. Ḥibbān, Kitāb al-Thiqāt ii, 429; see also: Abū ʿAbdallāh Shams
al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Dhahabī, Kitāb Tadhkirat al-ḥuffāẓ i, 107.
211 For a study of this ḥadīth, see: Speight, The will of Saʿd b. a. Waqqāṣ 259–77.
212 Aḥmad b. ʿAlī Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Al-Iṣāba fī tamyīz al-Ṣaḥāba viii, 235.
102 chapter 2
As so much of the Tafsīr Yaḥyā b. Sallām does not appear to have survived,
determining the significance of these exegetical materials within the overall
work is challenging. These materials are distributed very unevenly through-
out the text. Of the twenty-one sūras contained in the printed version, only
nine (i.e. 42.86% of the total) quote any exegetical materials attributed to a
woman at all. Therefore, it is difficult to know how much material of this type
might have been present “originally” in the commentary, and what weight it
had within the overall work.213 However, even if one adopts what could be
termed the most optimistic approach, by examining the patterns of citation
in the two of these nine sūras that contain the largest number of citations of a
female figure—S. 22 (Sūrat al-Ḥajj, “The Pilgrimage”) and S. 33 (Sūrat al-Aḥzāb,
“The Joint Forces”)—the results do not suggest that other portions of this work
likely contained much in the way of exegetical materials of this type.
The commentary on Sūrat al-Ḥajj, a sūra comprising 78 verses altogether,
contains a fair amount of periphrasis that is not credited to any particular indi-
vidual. However, a total of 182 items (i.e. periphrastic interpretations, traditions,
etc.) are attributed to named authorities. In some of these cases isnāds are sup-
plied as well. Only 24 of these items (i.e. 13.19%) are traced back to Muḥammad
himself, while 36 (i.e. 19.78%) are ascribed to various Companions. Nearly all of
the rest of the named authorities are Successors: Qatāda (31 items, or 17.03%),
Mujāhid and al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (30 items respectively, or 16.48% each), as well
as al-Suddī (7 items, or 3.85%). In addition, al-Kalbī is credited with 10 items
(5.49%). Oral exegeses are often attributed to these latter five authorities (e.g.
“qāla al-Ḥasan . . .”), but in a number of cases, reference is made to their “tafsīr”
(e.g. “wa fī tafsīr Qatāda . . .”). While “tafsīr” in this context could mean orally
delivered quranic interpretation,214 the connotation here seems to be exegesis
that was being transmitted in written form.
It is clear from these figures that in the exegesis of this sūra, it is the interpre-
tations credited to several (male) Successors that predominate, not only due to
their sheer numbers, but also because it is they who are explicitly presented
as sources of tafsīr. By contrast, interpretations attributed to Muḥammad and
his Companions play a comparatively minor role. Moreover, it is several male
Companions who are most often cited: one-third (i.e. 33.3%) of the interpre-
tations for which the earliest authority is a Companion are ascribed to Ibn
ʿAbbās, while a quarter (25%) are credited to Ibn ʿUmar. A mere two items are
213 While the commentaries of Hūd and Ibn Abī Zamanīn occasionally give some suggestion
about this in the case of specific traditions, they are epitomes, so their authors unsurpris-
ingly pruned a good deal of material.
214 Gilliot, Beginnings 2.
from unwitting source to quran commentator 103
traced back to ʿĀʾisha bt. Abī Bakr, and she also transmits one prophetic ḥadīth,
while ʿĀʾisha bt. Saʿd transmits four āthār about her father’s ritual practice at
Ḥajj. Thus, of the 182 items attributed to named authorities in the commentary
on this sūra, a female figure is credited with involvement in the transmission
of only 3.85% of these.
A similar picture obtains in the exegesis of Sūrat al-Aḥzāb. The total num-
ber of items ascribed to named authorities is 176. Only 30 items (i.e. 17.05%)
are traced back to Muḥammad himself, and a meager three of these are trans-
mitted by female Companions—ʿĀʾisha bt. Abī Bakr, her sister Asmāʾ, and
Umm Salama respectively. Another 31 items (i.e. 17.61%) are traced back to a
Companion as the penultimate named authority. Just three of the items in this
latter category are credited to a female figure—who is in all cases ʿĀʾisha bt. Abī
Bakr. Therefore, out of a total of 176 items, only 3.98% are presented as origi-
nating with or having been transmitted by a woman. It is evident that even in
these surviving portions of the Tafsīr Yaḥyā b. Sallām in which exegetical mate-
rials attributed to female authorities or transmitters are most numerous, such
materials only form a small percentage of the total.
Concluding Remarks
women are cited regarding two doctrinal issues that some second/eighth cen-
tury Muslims apparently sought to find quranic support for: the theological
debate as to whether humans can see God, as well as the belief in the return
of Jesus at the end of the world. In third/ninth and fourth/tenth century exe-
getical works, linkages of this type become increasingly regularized, typically
through the citation of particular ḥadīths transmitted by specific women.
A few women Companions, most notably ʿĀʾisha bt. Abī Bakr, and to a much
lesser extent, Umm Salama, are presented in many of these texts as particu-
larly prominent female sources of exegetical materials that belong to a vari-
ety of genres. In several of these works, the image of ʿĀʾisha as a preeminent
source of exegetical materials seems to have been notably enhanced over time.
Nonetheless, while most of the male authorities quoted in these works are two
or more generations removed from Muḥammad, the obverse is true of the few
female figures cited. The few female dually signifying figures or Successors
who do appear are not presented as prolific sources of exegetical materials,
nor is there ever any suggestion that the interpretations credited to them had
been written down prior to their inclusion in the works surveyed above. From
that vantage point, female involvement in quranic exegesis in general is thus
depicted as shrinking rather than growing through time, with the few female
Successors cited portrayed as significantly less renowned for their interpreta-
tive expertise than (a select number of) female Companions. Significantly, the
women who are granted entry into the various transhistorical communities
of exegetes that these works construct are not the authors’ contemporaries;
rather, they lived in an ever more distant, idealized past.
But beyond these commonalities that have been shaped (and in one case,
apparently produced in toto) by later redactional activity, these eight works are
decidedly more different than similar in the ways that they position female
figures within these transhistorical exegetical communities. The degree of
such difference is particularly interesting in view of the fact that most of these
works apparently either have their origins in southern Iraq, or were redacted
by someone who had stayed there for a time. The town of Baṣra seems to have
played an especially noteworthy role in this regard. Yaḥyā b. Sallām was from
Baṣra, Abū ʿUbayda reportedly spent most of his life there, and both Sufyān
al-Thawrī and al-Akhfash eventually moved to Baṣra. Traditions related on
the authority of Maʿmar, a Baṣran traditionist, are a central component of the
Tafsīr ʿAbd al-Razzāq as it has come down to us. Ibn Wahb reportedly learned
from Sufyān al-Thawrī as well as from Yaḥyā. When taken together, these works
associated with Baṣra suggest a lack of consensus there as to the place of exe-
getical materials ascribed to female figures in the interpretation of the Quran.
106 chapter 2
exegetes. As a well known ḥadīth has it, those who had not been present when
Muḥammad said something and had only heard it later as conveyed to them
by others might nonetheless understand it better than those who had heard it
with their own ears.216
But these hermeneutical presumptions, divergent as they are in many ways,
variously construct interpretive authority in strikingly gendered terms. For it
is male exegetes who construct transhistorical communities of exegetes, and
thus are empowered to decide which of the words attributed to certain female
figures of the past merit inclusion or exclusion—and who moreover interpret
the significance of such words. The power to define what constitutes exegesis
and how it is to be “correctly” done is nearly always (re)affirmed in these eight
works as masculine. That this (re)affirmation is central to the construction
of these hermeneutical approaches is underlined in works as different as the
Tafsīr ʿAbd al-Razzāq and the Maʿānī l-Qurʾān of al-Farrāʾ through the medium
of controversy traditions and hierarchization traditions. These complex and
fascinating traditions, which function in these texts as vehicles for the nego-
tiation of hermeneutical issues, will be closely examined in the next chapter.
Finally, while most of the works surveyed in this chapter would seem to
reflect the nascent state of quranic exegesis in southern Iraq, particularly in
Baṣra, these developments in one part of the empire subsequently had an
impact on other geographical regions to varying extents. Yaḥyā b. Sallām’s
teaching of his commentary in Tunis influenced local ʿIbāḍī Quran interpreta-
tion, as well as the Sunni exegete Ibn Abī Zamanīn in al-Andalus a century later,
both of whom at times elected to reproduce some of the exegetical materials
attributed to women found in Yaḥyā’s tafsīr. Also, as this chapter has shown,
many of the exegetical materials ascribed to female figures in works such as
the Jāmiʿ Ibn Wahb, the Tafsīr ʿAbd al-Razzāq and al-Farrāʾ’s Maʿānī l-Qurʾān
were not only in circulation in the east of the empire by the third/ninth cen-
tury, but they also were regarded as part and parcel of the exegetical discourse,
as they were being included in a number of Quran commentaries of the time.
Al-Ṭabarī, al-Māturīdī, and al-Thaʿlabī, and also Ibn al-Mundhir authored ency-
clopaedic tafsīr works that were intended to be comprehensive, so it might be
expected that they would strive to include all materials available to them that
might conceivably have a bearing on exegesis. Yet al-Samarqandī, the author
of a madrasa-style commentary that by definition was written with a more
specialized purpose also quotes some of these exegetical materials. And inter-
estingly, even Ibn Abī Ḥātim’s expressed desire to avoid what he regarded as
unnecessary repetition in his Quran commentary217 did not lead him to avoid
including some of them.
While statistically speaking the proportions of exegetical materials attrib-
uted to women in the eight sources surveyed in this chapter rarely constitute
a significant percentage of any of these texts, they nonetheless were appar-
ently regarded by some influential exegetes in the third/ninth and fourth/
tenth centuries as worth passing on. As we will see, this interpretative deci-
sion was apparently connected to the rise of ḥadīth movement in the same
region at that time. This movement among other things had the effect of rais-
ing the ḥadīths attributed to a small number of early Muslim women to an
even greater prominence as part of the body of oral and written texts that for
its partisans constituted the core of authoritative “religious knowledge” (ʿilm).
But before turning to this development, some of the patterns that emerge
in the citations of exegetical materials ascribed to female figures in the eight
works surveyed above merit a closer examination. In particular, the persistent
association between exegetical unwittingness and women arguably has sev-
eral important implications for the gendering of hermeneutical approaches
to tafsīr as well as of interpretive authority, and it is to these issues that we
now turn.
Al-Farrāʾ goes on to point out that this same linguistic construction occurs else-
where in the Quran, such as in Q 4:162, “and those who perform the prayers and
pay the prescribed alms (wa-l-muqīmīna l-ṣalāta wa-l-muʾtūna l-zakāta).” True,
ʿUrwa b. al-Zubayr related that he had asked ʿĀʾisha about this latter verse, as
well as about two others, Q 5:69, “The believers and the Jews and the Sabians
(inna lladhīna āmanū wa-lladhīna hādū wa-l-ṣābiʾūn)” and Q 20:63, “these two
sorcerers (in hādhāni la-sāḥirānī),” and that she had responded, “Nephew,
this is a mistake made by the scribe (khaṭaʾ min al-kātib).” But, (al-Farrāʾ con-
tinues) grammarians have explained that this feature of quranic expression,
1 The verse reads: “Goodness does not consist in turning your face towards East or West. The
truly good are those who believe in God and the Last Day, in the angels, the scripture, and the
prophets; who give away some of their wealth, however much they cherish it, to their rela-
tives, to orphans, the needy, travellers and beggars, and to liberate those in bondage; those
who keep up prayer and pay the prescribed alms; who keep pledges whenever they make
them, and the steadfast in misfortune, adversity, and times of danger. These are the ones who
are true, and it is they who are aware of God.”
2 “lā yabʿadan qawmī lladhīna humu / sammu l-ʿudāti wāfat al-juzru / al-nāzilīna bi-kulli
muʿtarikin / wa-l-ṭayyibūna maʿāqid al-uzri.” This translation is from: Stetkevych, The mute
immortals 168.
3 Al-Farrāʾ i, 104–7.
4 For an overview of this passage in al-Farrāʾ’s Maʿānī as well as of how several later exegetes
deal with this grammatical issue, see: Burton, Linguistic errors 181–96.
112 CHAPTER 3
The first verses of poetry that al-Farrāʾ cites in support of his grammatical anal-
ysis of Q 2:177 are the opening lines of the elegy composed by al-Khirniq for her
husband, son and two brothers who had died in battle. A poet from pre-Islamic
times, she extols her kinsmen because they are warriors who fight for the tribe,
generously provide food, and furthermore do not leave any tribesman’s death
unavenged.5 This unabashedly pagan conception of a virtuous life worthy
of poetic immortalization contrasts with the description of the righteous in
Q 2:177, who are characterized by their faith and performance of acts of worship.
But despite the straightforward paganism of these lines, they merit citation
in this context because they have already become a grammarians’ proof-text.
Sībawayh quoted them in his chapter on the accusative of praise,6 and exegetes
interpreting the Quran through the use of grammatical analysis followed suit.7
The controversy tradition attributed to ʿĀʾisha deals explicitly with the ques-
tion of grammatical anomalies in the Quran. For some time after the promulga-
tion of the ʿUthmānic recension, there does not seem to have been a consensus
as to whether reciters must always adhere to its consonantal skeleton (rasm).8
This issue appears to have been debated in part through the medium of tra-
ditions. A well-known example of a tradition of this type asserts that when
ʿUthmān was informed that there were grammatical errors in his recension,
he responded that the Arabs will “correct these with their tongues” (i.e. as they
recite the text).9 Similarly, this tradition attributed to ʿĀʾisha implies that in the
case of three quranic verses at least, departing from the rasm of the ʿUthmānic
recension is not only possible but advisable.10
Nonetheless, it appears that with ongoing efforts during the formative period
to standardize the variant recitations of the Quran having resulted in the wide-
spread rejection of the validity of recitations that departed from the rasm,11
5 For a detailed discussion of this elegy, see: Stetkevych, Mute immortals 168–74.
6 Al-Zajjāj ii, 77–78; al-Naḥḥās i, 91 (sub. Q 2:177).
7 Abū ʿUbayda i, 65, 142–3; al-Akhfash i, 167.
8 Gilliot, Creation of a fixed text 48–9.
9 “wa rawaytum ʿan ʿUthmān annahu naẓara fī l-muṣḥaf fa-qāla arā fīhi laḥnan wa-sataqayy-
imuhu l-ʿArab bi-alsinatihā”; see: Ibn Qutayba, Taʾwīl 25; (similarly) Abū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim
b. Sallām, Kitāb faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān 287 (Bāb taʾlīf al-Qurʾān).
10 This tradition also appears in: Abū ʿUbayd 287 (Bāb taʾlīf al-Qurʾān); Ibn Qutayba, Taʾwīl
24; Jeffery, Materials for the history 34; al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ vi, 32. For a few other examples of
traditions found in early tafsīr texts asserting that particular verses contain scribal errors,
see: Versteegh, Arabic grammar 80.
11 For a summary of this process, see: Gilliot, Creation of a fixed text 49–52.
Negotiating Interpretive Authority in Early Exegesis 113
the quranic text’s linguistic anomalies could no longer be dealt with in such a
way. Moreover, exegetes increasingly express opposition on explicitly doctrinal
grounds to assertions that such anomalies are due to a scribe’s mistake (khaṭaʾ)
or are grammatical errors (laḥn).12 Writing several generations after al-Farrāʾ,
al-Zajjāj spells out the ways that such assertions contravene key aspects of the
emerging Sunni “consensus”: in his view, they are neither congruent with the
recognition of the unique position enjoyed by Muḥammad’s Companions as
the generation favoured with unmatched proximity to Islam’s foundational
events, nor with confidence in the Companions’ trustworthy transmission of
the Quran from the prophet, nor with the belief that the Quran itself is com-
plete and perfect.13 Not coincidentally, these particular beliefs define Sunni
“orthodoxy” in contradistinction to Shiʿi movements of the time.14 In view of
this, it is not surprising that traditions such as this one ascribed to ʿĀʾisha came
to be seen in Sunni circles as highly problematic.
As we have seen, al-Farrāʾ bases his assertion that the use of the accusative
case in the phrase in Q 2:177, “and the steadfast (wa-l-ṣābirīna)” is in accor-
dance with correct Arabic usage on a grammatical argument. In his discussion
of this verse, he places a hermeneutical approach to quranic exegesis that is
based on grammar in the role of upholding the banner of “orthodox” belief—
in contrast to an approach based on the citation of traditions, which spectacu-
larly fails to do so.
It is noteworthy that this jibe of al-Farrāʾ’s is couched in gendered terms.
Significantly, the representative of the hermeneutical approach that he rejects
as inadequate is none other than ʿĀʾisha, the most prolific female source of
ḥadīths in proto-Sunni texts. Even the verses of a pagan female poet—once
they had been selected and vetted first by a (male) grammarian as well as a
(male) exegete—thus prove better able to explicate Q 2:177 than the tradi-
tion credited to ʿĀʾisha. That ʿĀʾisha in this tradition clearly intends to com-
ment on this quranic verse while al-Khirniq just as clearly does not only serves
to emphasize the “masculinity” of linguistically-based exegesis vis à vis the
12 That a shift in theological sensibilities took place is also reflected in rather forced reinter-
pretations of the word “laḥn” (as used in traditions about the Quran), e.g. Ibn Abī Dāwūd’s
statement, “wa-l-alḥān al-lughāt” (Kitāb al-Maṣāḥif, 32). Ibn Ḥajar claims that a reference
to “laḥn Ubayy” in the Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī means his recitation—i.e. that Ubayy transmitted
some recitations, unaware that they had been abrogated; see: Fatḥ x, 429–430 (K. Faḍāʾil
al-Qurʾān).
13 Al-Zajjāj ii, 77 (sub. Q 4:162).
14 For early Shiʿi claims that the quranic text is incomplete, see: Modarressi, Early debates
5–39; Shah, Introduction 42.
114 CHAPTER 3
While she is not addressing the subject of marriage, her words are appropri-
ated here—though by whom is uncertain—for use as a linguistic proof-text in
an exegetical debate on that topic.21
Quotations of pre-Islamic poetry such as the opening lines of the elegy
attributed to al-Khirniq in tafsīr works express the power of (male) exegetes
to appropriate voices from the pre-Islamic past at their discretion, in the ser-
vice of a very different socio-religious worldview. Moreover, the use of verses
credited to transitional female poets such as al-Khansāʾ as shawāhid serve as
vehicles for more than linguistic information, as traditional Muslim accounts
of her life indicate.
18 Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Mālik Ibn Hishām b. Ayyūb al-Ḥimyarī al-Maʿāfirī, Al-Sīra al-
nabawiyya li-Ibn Hishām 724; Halevi, Wailing for the dead 3–39.
19 E.g. al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xxviii, 86–7.
20 “qultu la-kum khāfū bi-alfi fārisin / muqannaʿīna fī-l-ḥadīdi l-yābisi” (Ibn al-Mundhir
ii, 555–6). For a late medieval citation of this couplet in the exegesis of Q 4:3, see al-
Qurṭubī v, 12.
21 This couplet—along with this interpretation—are related on the authority of Abū
ʿUbayda, along with the statement from a transmitter that “I did not hear that from Abū
ʿUbayda” (Ibn al-Mundhir, ibid.). Interestingly, the interpretation and the couplet, as well
as the transmitter’s interjection also appear in the Majāz as it has come down to us (Abū
ʿUbayda i, 116). Abū Ḥayyān al-Gharnāṭī cites this opinion as Abū ʿUbayda’s, along with a
similar though anonymous line of poetry, but rejects his interpretation of the phrase as
incorrect (Tafsīr al-baḥr al-muḥīṭ iii, 227).
Negotiating Interpretive Authority in Early Exegesis 117
Before the rise of Islam, al-Khansāʾ is said to have been famous among the
Arabs for the elegies she had composed for her brothers, who had been killed
in inter-tribal skirmishes.22 Biographers recount that she accepted Islam along
with her tribe, and is therefore counted among the Companions. Muḥammad
himself is said to have appreciated her poetry. During the caliphate of ʿUmar,
al-Khansāʾ is present at the Battle of al-Qādisiyya, exhorting her four sons to
fight against the Sassanid army with the (quranic) words, “. . . endure, outdo
all others in endurance (Q 3:200).” After they are slain, she memorializes their
deaths in verse.23
While the general outline of this tale—a woman who urges her men-
folk on in battle and then immortalizes them through her poetry—reflects
pagan Arabian cultural ideals, its details convey Islamic mores. Even a poet of
al-Khansāʾ’s caliber can find no words more suitable at the decisive moment
when she sends her sons to fight to their deaths than a verse from the Quran.
Thus, the citation of her poetry in exegetical works serves as a powerful illus-
tration of the Islamic supercession of pagan sensibilities, exemplifying the
transition from a scriptureless paganism to a scripture-bearing community
that moreover is now an imperial power.24
Another type of exegetical material in which its putative source is presented
as entirely unwitting is quotations of purported speech. These are ascribed to
women as well as men, who may be named or anonymous. Sometimes, these
quotations recount expressions said to be typically used in particular situa-
tions. There is absolutely no suggestion that the person whose words are being
quoted intends to interpret the Quran, nor that he/she might be aware that
their words could be quoted by others in future for this (or any other) purpose.
For example, in support of the recitation by ʿAlqama b. Qays25 of Q 33:40—
“but he is the messenger of God and the seal of the prophets (khātam
al-nabiyyīn)”—a verse which came to be invested with considerable
22 For a translation of one of al-Khansāʾ’s poems that mourns her brother Ṣakhr, see:
Nicholson, A literary history 127.
23 Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, al-Istīʿāb iv, 387–9; Ibn al-Athīr, Usd al-ghāba vii, 89–91.
24 It should be noted that with al-Thaʿlabī’s Quran commentary, poetry also becomes a
medium for admonition and edification in tafsīr works; see: Saleh, Formation 174–5.
However, this development is beyond the scope of this study.
25 ʿAlqama was a well-known jurist and Quran reciter who was a student of Ibn Masʿūd;
see: Shams al-Dīn Abī al-Khayr Muḥammad b. al-Jazarī, Ghāyat al-nihaya fī ṭabaqāt
al-qurrāʾ i, 516.
118 CHAPTER 3
The function of this example of stereotyped female speech, which also appears
in the discussion of Q 83:26,29 is to support the assertion that the expression
“khātam al-nabiyyīn” unambiguously refers to Muḥammad as the last of the
prophets, after whom no more shall come.30 The incongruity between the
reportedly customary words used by Arab women when buying perfume and
the theological-exegetical use to which they are being put here by male schol-
ars is apparent. This is a particularly vivid illustration of the central role that
framing plays in making quotations of this type useable as exegetical commen-
tary, regardless of such words’ “original” context.
26 For early and medieval differences of opinion on the meaning of this verse, see:
Friedmann, Prophecy continuous 53ff.
27 I.e. that this is how ʿAlqama recited Q 83:26—“its seal is musk” (khitāmuhu misk).
28 Al-Farrāʾ ii, 344. The isnād begins with Abū l-ʿAbbās.
29 Q 83:26—“its seal is musk . . . ” (Al-Farrāʾ iii, 248). There are slight differences in the word-
ing and isnāds of these two versions; in one manuscript, the names of Abū l-ʿAbbās—
Muḥammad do not appear in the isnād (n. 7).
30 The issues at stake include: how any person claiming prophethood after Muḥammad is to
be viewed, as well as the theological problem posed by apocalyptic traditions stating that
Jesus will return to earth, when this would mean that chronologically, he both precedes
and follows Muḥammad (al-Suyūṭī, Durr vi, 618). For an example of a similar quotation
(as related by ʿAlqama from Ibn Masʿūd) and quoted in order to interpret Q 83:26, see: Ibn
Wahb, al-Ǧāmiʿ (1995) fol. 21a, 9–12.
Negotiating Interpretive Authority in Early Exegesis 119
31 While the pre-Islamic meaning of “sunna” was “tribal custom,” in the formative period it
came to mean the rightly-guided practice of Muḥammad that should be emulated by the
believers; see: Goldziher, Muslim studies ii, 25–6.
32 For the role of the rāwī as a transmitter of pre-Islamic poetry, see: Nicholson, A literary his-
tory 131ff. For riwāya in early and medieval Islam, see: Rāwī (Renate Jacobi), EI viii: 466b;
Leder, Spoken word.
33 For a survey of some such sources and the information that can be culled from them, see:
Kraemer, Her share 93ff. For the paucity of references to women in the surviving works of
late antique ecclesiastical historians, see: Jensen, God’s self-confident 5ff.
34 It is unclear when and where Beruriah lived, if she was in fact a historical person. The ear-
liest tradition mentioning her is found in the Tosefta, a Palestinian source conventionally
120 CHAPTER 3
example, a late antique Christian text, the Apophthegmata patrum (“The say-
ings of the desert Fathers”) recounts a small number of anecdotes about sev-
eral of the female ascetics living in the deserts of Palestine and Egypt in the
third and fourth centuries CE, as well as a few logia attributed to them. As
ascetics, they were expected to memorize and recite scripture (particularly the
Psalms); in some cases, they also seem to have received instruction in certain
aspects of its meanings. Some reportedly received visits from pious laypeople
hoping to hear words of wisdom or inspiration.35
Therefore, the circulation of āthār and ḥadīths credited to early Muslim
women during the formative period in regions such as southern Iraq and
Egypt, and their incorporation into male-authored legal or pietistic-ascetic
texts was not entirely without historical antecedents. Nor was the quotation
in a male-authored religious text of a few sayings attributed to a woman about
the interpretation of a verse of scripture. Quranic exegesis developed in times
and places where older and more numerically strong religious communities
already had their long-established traditions of study and commentary on their
various scriptures,36 which were evidently based on gendered conceptions of
knowledge and interpretive authority.37 Recognizing the existence of such par-
allels in turn suggests new ways of analyzing some types of ḥadīths attributed
to women that are quoted in exegetical works, as will become apparent when
considering the textual functions of hierarchization traditions (below).
Available evidence strongly suggests that the state of legal discourses during
the second/eighth and early third/ninth centuries played a significant role—
or perhaps even provided a key initial impetus—in the process of incorpora-
tion of āthār and ḥadīths attributed to women in several of the eight exegetical
works surveyed in the previous chapter. Ibn Wahb and ʿAbd al-Razzāq were
primarily jurists, and over half of the 25 traditions credited to women in the
dated to 250 CE, but the bulk of traditions about her are first attested in the Babylonian
Talmud (500 CE). For a translation of the traditions mentioning Beruriah, as well a dis-
cussion of some of the historical problems connected with them, see: Goodblatt, The
Beruriah traditions 68–85. Judith Romney Wegner questions Beruriah’s historical exis-
tence; see her: The image and status 76. For readings of these traditions as literary texts,
see: Boyarin, Carnal Israel 182ff; Adler, The virgin 102–5.
35 Vogt, The Desert Mothers 203–5. For a portrayal of a female ascetic asking an archbishop
about the meaning of a biblical verse, see: Ward, The sayings 71–2.
36 For the development of Jewish and Christian interpretive approaches to scripture, see:
Benin, The search for truth 13–32.
37 See for example: Wegner, Chattel or person? 161–2; Doumato, Hearing other voices 177–99.
For a brief discussion of a 9th century CE Zoroastrian priestly code that bars women from
becoming priests, but allows them to attend religious schools except when menstruating,
see: Choksy, Evil, good and gender 91.
Negotiating Interpretive Authority in Early Exegesis 121
Tafsīr Yaḥyā b. Sallām deal directly with legal topics. During this selfsame
period, āthār credited to a select number of early Muslim women, as well
as ḥadīths reportedly transmitted by them, were being included by some
jurists in their muṣannaf works in relatively small yet statistically significant
proportions.
For example, in the Kitāb al-Jāmiʿ, which is a lengthy chapter in the
Muṣannaf ʿAbd al-Razzāq composed of traditions recounted on the author-
ity of his Baṣran teacher Maʿmar b. Rāshid that deal with a wide variety of
topics, four percent are traced back to female Companions and (much less
often) to female Successors.38 Seven percent of the traditions in Mālik b. Anas’
(d. 179/795) Muwaṭṭaʾ in the recension transmitted by Yaḥyā b. Yaḥyā al-Laythī
(d. 234/848) are credited to women;39 while it is unclear when this text finally
achieved the form that it now has,40 this figure is suggestive. Significantly, both
of these texts contain a number of the āthār and ḥadīths attributed to women
that are also found in the Tafsīr ʿAbd al-Razzāq, the Tafsīr Yaḥyā b. Sallām, and
Ibn Wahb’s Jāmiʿ. This suggests that such traditions were already part of some
jurists’ discourses in Baṣra and perhaps also the Ḥijāz before they appear to
have begun to be incorporated into the exegetical works under discussion here.
Yet, it is noteworthy that the percentages of traditions ascribed to women in
the Kitāb al-Jāmiʿ and Yaḥyā’s recension of Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ, though quite low,
are still statistically significant, while those in Ibn Wahb’s Jāmiʿ and the Tafsīr
ʿAbd al-Razzāq (as well as the Tafsīr Yaḥyā b. Sallām) are not, as was shown in
the previous chapter. A possible interpretation of this difference could be that
traditions attributed to women were somewhat more acceptable in juristic
than in exegetical discourses in the second/eighth century, but more research
is needed before firm conclusions can be drawn.
As we have seen, most of the traditions in these exegetical works are traced
back to female Companions, with few female Successors appearing as quoted
authorities or transmitters. In this way, these works present women’s authori-
tative knowledge about the interpretation of the Quran as an anomaly that
38 However, this figure does not include reports about women’s customary practices or legal
views attributed to them in traditions credited to men. For the age of the Muṣannaf ʿAbd
al-Razzāq, see: Motzki, The Muṣannaf. For reasons for regarding the K. al-Jāmiʿ as originat-
ing from Maʿmar, see: Motzki, The author and his work 180–1.
39 Roded, Women in Islamic 19.
40 The age and redactional histories of the various recensions of Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ continue
to be debated. Norman Calder argues for a late third century AH date for Yaḥyā’s recen-
sion; see his Studies 20ff; for a counter-argument, see: Motzki, The prophet and the cat
18–83. Jonathan Brockopp asserts that while the Muwaṭṭaʾ is an organic rather than a fixed
text, it is possible to extract an authentic core of Mālik’s teachings from early Mālikī texts;
see his Early Mālikī law 68–81.
122 CHAPTER 3
The Messenger of God recited this verse: It is He who has sent this scrip-
ture down to you. Some of its verses are definite in meaning—these are the
cornerstone of the scripture—and others are ambiguous. . . .(Q 3:7) Then,
the Messenger of God said, ‘If you see those who eagerly pursue the
and a night, unless a maḥram is with her’ ”; see: Mālik 854 (K. al-Jāmiʿ); “. . . Ibn ʿAbbās
reported that the Prophet said, ‘A woman is not to travel except with a maḥram, and no
man may visit her unless there is a maḥram with her’ ”; see: al-Bukhārī iii, 50 (Abwāb
al-Muḥṣar). A maḥram is a close male relative that a woman cannot marry, such as her
father, brother, or son. Ḥadīths on this theme are commonly found in sub-canonical and
canonical compilations.
44 Asma Sayeed notes that only fifteen women are recorded as having participated in ḥadīth
transmission during the second half of the second century hijrī (Shifting fortunes 108).
45 Q 3:7 reads in its entirety: “It is he who sent this scripture down to you. Some of its verses
are definite in meaning—these are the cornerstone of the scripture—and others are
ambiguous. The perverse at heart eagerly pursue the ambiguities in their attempt to
make trouble and to pin down a specific meaning of their own: only God knows the true
meaning. Those firmly grounded in knowledge say, ‘We believe in it: it is all from our
Lord’—only those with real perception will take heed.” A number of studies have exam-
ined classical exegetical discourses on Q 3:7; see for example: Kinberg. Muḥkamāt and
mutashābihāt 283–312; McAuliffe, Text and textuality 56–76.
124 CHAPTER 3
ambiguities of it, or those who argue about it, then they are the ones God
is referring to (in this verse), so do not keep company with them.’ 46
This ḥadīth asserts that there is a distinction between “acceptable” and “unac-
ceptable” hermeneutical approaches to the Quran. Yet, the features said to dis-
tinguish the purveyors of “unacceptable” interpretations mean little or nothing
when this ḥadīth is heard/read on its own. Much depends on how terms such
as “definite” (muḥkam) and “ambiguous” (mutashābih) are understood, as well
as what is deemed to be “arguing,” given that exegetical approaches usually
involve debate and disagreement almost by definition. Ibn Wahb’s Jāmiʿ pro-
vides few clues as to this ḥadīth’s intended target. The Tafsīr ʿAbd al-Razzāq,
however, quotes a briefer version—“If you see those who argue about it, then
they are the ones that God means, so be wary of them”47—immediately fol-
lowing a lengthy tradition in which Qatāda says that those condemned by
Q 3:7 are either the Sab’iyya, or more likely the Khārijīs.48 By framing the ḥadīth
credited to ʿĀʾisha in this way, it is made clear what types of interpretations of
the Quran are to be shunned.
Sunni exegetes from the formative period onwards list various groups
who might be “the perverse at heart” spoken of in Q 3:7—religious Others,
especially from the time of the prophet, such as certain Jewish or Christian
individuals or groups who opposed him, or the (Medinan) “Hypocrites,”49 as
well as Khārijīs and innovators, among other possibilities.50 Then, by quot-
ing this ḥadīth credited to ʿĀʾisha, an exegete could claim the hermeneuti-
cal high ground for his own interpretive methods (however distant from the
46 “idhā raʾaytum alladhīna yatabiʿūna mā tashābaha minhu aw alladhīna yujādilūna fīhi
fahum alladhīna qāla Allāhu fīhim, fa-lā tujālisūhum” (Ibn Wahb, al-Ǧāmiʿ (1995), fol. 12a,
23–12b, 1; al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ iii, 220). For a similar version, see: al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf ii, 9.
47 “ʿAbd al-Razzāq—Maʿmar—Ayyūb—Ibn Abī Mulayka—ʿĀʾisha, anna l-nabī qaraʾahā fa-qāla:
idhā raʾaytum alladhīna yujādilūna fīhi fa-hum alladhīna ʿannī Allāhu fa-ḥdharūhum”
(ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr i, 383).
48 ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr i, 381–2. The editor identifies the Sabʾiyya as the followers of
ʿAbdallāh b. Sabā, an early proponent of “extremist” (ghuluww) Shiʿi views (n. 6). For the
legend of Ibn Sabā and the “extremist” Shiʿi group that purportedly originated with him,
see: Momen, An introduction 46–7.
49 An advantage of locating such groups in the past was that this potentially reduced the
perceived usefulness of Q 3:7 in order to attack or dismiss contemporary exegetical
approaches.
50 E.g. al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ iii, 216–22; Ibn al-Mundhir i, 123; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf ii, 9.
Negotiating Interpretive Authority in Early Exegesis 125
51 For a good example of this dynamic, see: Ibn Abī Ḥātim, Tafsīr ii, 60–4.
52 For the many ḥadīth compilers who cite a version of it, see: al-Suyūṭī, Durr ii, 148.
53 Hūd i, 267. As might be expected, Hūd does not reproduce proto-Sunni claims that “the
perverse at heart” in Q 3:7 are the Khārijīs; he sides with the view that it refers to some of
Muḥammad’s Medinan Jewish opponents.
54 ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr iii, 86–7.
55 Yaḥyā ii, 818.
126 CHAPTER 3
56 Similarly, when classical Sunni exegetes employed linguistically-based approaches, they
did not give grammar or philology the final verdict when the result would be at variance
with “orthodox” beliefs, see: Saleh, Formation 130–40.
57 E.g. Q 37:35–36—“Whenever it was said to them, ‘There is no deity but God,’ they became
arrogant, and said, ‘Are we to forsake our gods for a mad poet?’ ”
58 E.g. al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xxiii, 30; al-Samarqandī iii, 105; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf v, 205. According
to al-Suyūṭī, Ibn al-Mundhir and Ibn Abī Ḥātim cite a version of it (Durr al-manthūr
vii, 71).
59 Al-Zajjāj iv, 36.
60 E.g. ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Muṣannaf xi, 237, 266–7 (K. al-Jāmiʿ).
61 Al-Thawrī 221–2. For the complete poem, see: Ibn Hishām 680.
Negotiating Interpretive Authority in Early Exegesis 127
Those who wanted to assert that poetry has a legitimate place in the life
of the community as well as in exegesis also could and sometimes did quote
traditions depicting ʿĀʾisha (as well as other prominent early figures, most
notably Ibn ʿAbbās) endorsing it.62 Moreover, it was claimed that none other
than ʿUrwa had said that he “did not see anyone more knowledgeable than
she [ʿĀʾisha] about the Book of God, or the sunna of the Messenger of God, or
poetry, or shares of inheritance.”63 Again, what is at issue here for exegetes is
not determining her “actual” view on the question so much as the legitimation
that invoking the abode of the wives of the prophet might provide for a par-
ticular interpretative stance.
A number of the eight exegetical works that are the focus on our discus-
sion here contain āthār or ḥadīths attributed to early Muslim women that deal
with several types of legal matters. More than one of these works contains such
traditions on the following: the nature of the “unintentional” oaths referred to
in Q 2:225,64 marriage and divorce, the women’s bayʿa, and free women’s veil-
ing. It seems that the issue of unintentional oaths was widely associated with
ʿĀʾisha by the second/eight century,65 likely at least in part because of its indi-
rect connection to the story of the accusation of adultery made against her.66
However, none of these eight exegetical works presents any female figure as an
important source of legal materials.
On one level, the traditions on marriage, divorce, bayʿa and veiling textu-
ally underscore the contrast between purported pagan dissoluteness and the
62 For example, al-Ṭabarī quotes a tradition that relates that when ʿĀʾisha praised Ḥassān’s
panegyric about Muḥammad, she was asked, “But isn’t this vain talk (laghw) [i.e. what
Q 23:3 directs believers to avoid]?” She is said to have responded, “No, vain talk is about
women (innamā l-laghw mā qīla ʿinda al-nisāʾ)”—presumably meaning slanderous
rumours about them. (Jāmiʿ xviii, 103–4). Numerous traditions attributed to Ibn ʿAbbas
use poetry as an exegetical tool, see: Boullata, Poetry citation 123–36. The point of interest
here is not the dating of such attributions, but their role in efforts to legitimate this type
of hermeneutical approach.
63 Ibn Abī Shayba viii, 503 (K. al-Adab); al-Dhahabī, Tadhkirat al-ḥuffāẓ i, 28. This is evidently
a stereotyped statement intended to express the breadth and depth of her knowledge. For
a similar statement about Ibn ʿAbbās, see: Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt ii, 513–14.
64 Al-Farrāʾ i, 144; ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr i, 342.
65 It appears in al-Farrāʾ’s Maʿānī (and does not seem to have been added by a later redactor),
as well as in the Tafsīr ʿAbd al-Razzāq, where it is related on the authority of Maʿmar. This
suggests that it was in circulation in Kūfa and Baṣra at this time, and in quite different
exegetical circles.
66 The statement that God will not take people to task for unintentional oaths also appears
in Q 5:89. This verse came to be connected to Abū Bakr’s expiation of an oath in the after-
math of the accusation of adultery against ʿĀʾisha; for more on this, see below.
128 CHAPTER 3
Muslim social order based on divinely given morality that had superseded
it—although in historical reality, it seems that free, upper-class women in pre-
Islamic Arabia were also veiled and secluded, in contradistinction to slaves.67
In this way, free female bodies become textual boundary markers of the saved
community, and none more so than the wives of the prophet. In addition, exe-
getes extend this textual function of (free) female bodies into their imperial
present, so that in their works, Muḥammad’s wives (particularly ʿĀʾisha) as well
as a few select female Companions come to be increasingly deployed as exem-
plars of “proper” gendered social order, in implied contrast to religious Others
within or without.
A couple of the wives of the prophet are also credited with ḥadīths on
various pietistic themes. ʿĀʾisha relates short ḥadīths about the conformity of
Muḥammad’s character with the Quran (Q 68:4),68 and one about the taking
of accounts on the Day of Judgment. This latter tradition seems to have been
fairly widely known in the second/eighth century, and these exegetical works
variously apply it to several different quranic verses.69 An apocalyptic tradi-
tion about the appearance of Gog and Magog, which is ascribed variously to
Umm Salama70 and Zaynab bt. Jaḥsh,71 appears to have been retrojected back
to them.72 These examples exemplify the initial stages of what was to become
a fairly common feature of third/ninth century tafsīr works—the quotation of
pietistic ḥadīths of various types ascribed to early Muslim women.
Several traditions attributed to ʿĀʾisha that briefly discuss particular aspects
of the story of the accusation of adultery made against her are included in the
āthār-based exegetical works under discussion here, as well as in the Tafsīr
Yaḥyā b. Sallām. Proto-Sunnis held that Q 24:11–26 refers to this incident.
However, as the Quran does not name either the slandered woman or her
accusers, the interpretation of these verses could readily serve as a vehicle for
theo-political debates or polemics, as occurs in this tradition from the Tafsīr
ʿAbd al-Razzāq:
. . . I [al-Zuhrī] was with al-Walīd b. ʿAbd al-Malik, and he said, “The one
who had the greater share [Q 24:11] (was) ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib.”
Here, the Umayyad caliph, al-Walīd b. ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān (r. 86–97/705–
715) asserts that ʿAlī is the person condemned in Q 24:11 for taking the lead
in spreading slanderous rumours about ʿĀʾisha. This is a transparent attempt
to utilize the quranic text for theo-political purposes, by ridiculing ʿAlī (and
by extension, his partisans), while also indirectly justifying the controver-
sial attacks on ʿAlī’s caliphate by Muʿāwiya b. Abī Sufyān, the founder of the
Umayyad dynasty. However, the well-known traditionist Ibn Shihāb al-Zuhrī
(d. 124/742)74 energetically counters this claim, recounting that no less than
four early authorities had related from ʿĀʾisha that the offender was in fact
ʿAbdallāh b. Ubayy, the leader of the Medinan “Hypocrites.”
The structure of this tradition presents ʿĀʾisha primarily as a pawn in a men’s
debate. Here, she functions as a source of information that al-Zuhrī draws upon
at his discretion. Another tradition credited to her on this topic very briefly
recounts how the slanderers were punished.75 In a similar vein, the only tradi-
tion attributed to ʿĀʾisha on this issue in the Tafsīr Yaḥyā b. Sallām discusses
Abū Bakr’s atonement for an oath that he had initially made to cease all finan-
cial support to Misṭaḥ, a poor relative of his who was one of the slanderers.76
One tradition attributed to ʿĀʾisha in the Tafsīr Sufyān al-Thawrī presents her
in a passive, self-effacing light—“There came a time when I did not anticipate
that a quranic revelation would descend about me.” By contrast, the tradition
following it recounts that on one occasion when Masrūq visited ʿĀʾisha, he
encountered the poet Ḥassān b. Thābit. The latter was reciting his well-known
verses in praise of her:
When Masrūq asks her, “How can you invite this [person] to visit you when he
is of those who ‘took the greatest part in it’ (tawallā kibrahu)?” she replies, “But
don’t you see that he has been afflicted with ‘a painful punishment’ (ʿadhābun
ʿaẓīm)?”77
This is a particularly adroit (and rather ironic) anecdote. Ḥassān’s lines
evoke Q 24:23—“Those who accuse honourable but unwary (al-muḥṣanāt
al-ghāfilāt) believing women are rejected by God, in this life and the next.
A painful punishment awaits them.” Masrūq objects to Ḥassān’s presence by
identifying him as one of those who had played a leading role in circulating
the rumours about her, in his quotation of a phrase from Q 24:11—“It was a
group from among you that concocted the lie . . . He who took the greatest part
in it (tawallā kibrahu) will have a painful punishment (ʿadhābun ʿaẓīm).” But
ʿĀʾisha, by stating that Ḥassān has been afflicted with “a painful punishment,”
not only caps Masrūq’s quotation, but also evokes the same quranic verse that
Ḥassān’s poetry does—Q 24:23, which also ends with this phrase. By so doing,
she asserts her mastery not only of a potentially compromising social situa-
tion, but of the meanings of quranic verses in question.
These traditions on “the affair of the slander” illustrate the ambiguities
surrounding the level of intentionality imputed to female sources of ḥadīths
and āthār in these exegetical works. While several of these traditions directly
refer to particular quranic verses, their “original” focus appears to have been
to counter the use of these verses in non-exegetical contexts, rather than
to interpret the Quran per se. Also, it is evident that most of the authors/
redactors of these exegetical works are neither particularly interested in pre-
senting ʿĀʾisha’s retellings or reflections on this incident, nor do they wish to
make it central to her persona as a source of exegetical materials. However, this
situation changes in third/ninth century, as we will see.
77 Al-Thawrī 221–2; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf iv, 358–9. The “terrible punishment” is said to refer
to his becoming blind (ibid.)
Negotiating Interpretive Authority in Early Exegesis 131
78 In the Muwaṭṭaʾ, 83 traditions from or about Muḥammad are attributed to her; she also
recounts a tradition about Abū Bakr and another about ʿUmar. In addition, she appears in
51 anecdotes (Roded, Women in Islamic biographical collections 28).
79 In the Musnad of al-Ṭayālisī, ʿĀʾisha is credited with a total of 218 ḥadīths. In this work, other
wives of the prophet are credited with the following numbers of ḥadīths: Umm Salama
with 21, Maymūna with 6, Ḥafṣa and Umm Ḥabība with 2 each, and Sawda, Juwayriyya,
and Zaynab bt. Jaḥsh with only 1 each. In al-Ḥumaydī’s Musnad, ʿĀʾisha is credited with
128 ḥadīths, Umm Salama with 16, Maymūna with 8, Ḥafṣa and Umm Ḥabība with 2 each,
and Juwayriyya and Zaynab bt. Jaḥsh with only one each.
132 CHAPTER 3
reflect one of the earliest forms of quranic exegesis.87 Second, quranic readings
attributed to women unambiguously present them as intending to delineate
how a particular verse (or part of a verse) should be recited—and thus, making
interpretive decisions on its meaning. Therefore, of all the types of exegeti-
cal materials that the eight sources under discussion here credit to women,
quranic readings as a genre are not only the most likely to have some historical
basis, but also are among those that seem to impute a high level of intentional-
ity to them.
As was discussed in Chapter One, the wives of Muḥammad are singled out
among other members of his community in Q 33:34, with its instruction to
them to preserve his revelations and teachings. Nonetheless, what the histori-
cal relationship between this verse and the quranic readings under discussion
here might be is unknown. The Quran itself does not provide any indication
as to how these women responded to this directive. Moreover, while Q 33:34
apparently places this responsibility on the wives of the prophet as a group,
these quranic readings are nearly all attributed to only one of their number.
The reasons for these historical disjunctures are unclear at present.
However, the question of how these quranic readings relate to the literary-
historical context of the second/eighth and early third/ninth centuries is
somewhat less uncertain. A small number of variant readings are attributed
to several of Muḥammad’s wives—Ḥafṣa, ʿĀʾisha and Umm Salama.88 These
three women are also depicted as having commissioned their own codices.89
Several well-known traditions recount that Ḥafṣa played a role in safeguard-
ing the written quranic materials used in the preparation of the ʿUthmānic
recension.90 Moreover, a number of more obscure traditions which depict
87 This does not of course imply that any individual reading can necessarily be traced back
historically to the authority (or authorities) with whom it is said to have originated. For
the argument that reports about Companion codices are unhistorical, and that variant
readings are a later exegetical development, see: Wansbrough, Qurʾānic studies esp. 43–52.
For a critique of this view of variant readings, see: Versteegh, Arabic grammar 81–4.
88 Jeffery drew attention to some of these (Materials 214, 232–3, 235). A small number of
such readings—26 credited to ʿĀʾisha, 8 to Ḥafṣa, and 5 to Umm Salama—are scattered
throughout Makram and ʿUmar’s Muʿjam al-qirāʾāt (8 vols).
89 Mālik 140–1 (K. al-Ṣalāt); ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Muṣannaf i, 578–9 (K. al-Ṣalāt); Abū ʿUbayd
292–3 (Bāb al-riwāya min al-ḥurūf ); Jeffery, Materials 212–13, 231, 235.
90 E.g. Bukhārī vi, 477–9 (K. Faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān). These traditions on the collection of the
Quran have been studied extensively by modern critical scholars. For a useful summary
of their various conclusions, as well as an argument for believing that these two traditions
were already in circulation towards the end of the first/seventh century, see: Motzki, The
collection 1–34.
134 CHAPTER 3
91 Aliza Shnizer calls attention to a couple of such traditions regarding ʿĀʾisha, see: Shnizer,
Sacrality and collection 168. I am presently preparing a study on traditions of this type.
92 These relics were also reportedly used at times for healing and exorcism; see: ʿAbd
al-Razzāq, Muṣannaf xi, 309 (K. al-Jāmiʿ); Ibn Ḥanbal vi, 329; Muslim 929 (K. al-Libās);
al-Bukhārī vii, 518 (K. al-Libās). For the political valence of such relics, see: Madelung,
Succession 100–1.
93 This reading is discussed below.
94 ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr i, 310.
95 Yaḥyā i, 406; al-Farrāʾ ii, 238; see also: ʿAbdallāh b. Wahb, Al-Ǧāmiʿ die Koranwissenschaften
fols. 10a, line 16-10b, line 2.
Negotiating Interpretive Authority in Early Exegesis 135
101 Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 364–6. Interestingly, Ibn Khayyāṭ also has a brief biographical
notice for an “Umm ʿĀmir bt. Yazīd” (Kitāb al-Ṭabaqāt ii, 885). While the editor suggests
that “Umm ʿĀmir” may be Asmāʾ bt. Yazīd, Ibn Khayyāṭ apparently regards them as two
different women.
102 Abū ʿUbayd 311, 318 (Bāb al-riwāya min al-ḥurūf ).
103 Sulaymān b. Dāwūd b. al-Jārūd, Musnad Abī Dāwūd al-Ṭayālisī iii, 171, 200.
104 Ibn Ḥanbal vi, 326, 481.
105 Sayeed, Shifting fortunes 85–6. See al-Dhahabī, Siyar iv, 372–8 for widely varying assess-
ments of his reliability as a transmitter.
106 ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr i, 486–7.
107 Sayeed, Shifting fortunes 86.
108 Shahr was Asmāʾ’s client, so it would not be surprising for him to transmit from her.
However, he is also said to have transmitted ḥadīths from a number of other Companions,
including two of Muḥammad’s wives, ʿĀʾisha and Umm Salama (al-Dhahabī, Siyar iv, 372).
Negotiating Interpretive Authority in Early Exegesis 137
text. In any case, as this uncertainty illustrates, neither al-Farrāʾ nor his redac-
tors were particularly interested in valorizing the relatively few quranic read-
ings credited to female figures that appear to have then been in circulation.
Much the same seems to have been true of Yaḥyā b. Sallām, Ibn Wahb, and
ʿAbd al-Razzāq.109
In these exegetical works, quranic readings credited to female figures are
decidedly marginal. Not only are there very few such readings quoted, but
those that do appear are firmly located in the now-superseded oral past
of the first generation of Muslims. No quranic readings attributed to any
female Successors or later generations are given. The controversy tradition in
al-Farrāʾ’s Maʿānī which has ʿĀʾisha assert that several quranic verses contain
scribal errors is the only point in these eight exegetical works that her author-
ity extends beyond the realm of the oral, recited Quran to its written form.
And perhaps not coincidentally, the view that she expresses in this tradition
is rejected, as we have seen. This forms a telling contrast to al-Farrāʾ’s frequent
references to the codices of Ibn Masʿūd and his students as sources of variant
readings.
These quranic readings credited to women in the second/eighth century
exegetical works under discussion here present an inherently archaic model
of female textual-exegetical authority that is bound to the past, and highly
unlikely to be repeated. This is especially interesting given the existence of
some scattered evidence that at least one female Successor discussed in the
previous chapter was reportedly known for her proficiency in Quran recita-
tion.110 Nonetheless, a number of historical factors appear to have played a
role in creating a context in which regardless of the possible existence of
a few women beyond the Companion generation with such expertise, con-
structions of Quran recitation as a “masculine” field of endeavour could appear
to be increasingly commonsensical.
One factor was that during the formative period, Quran recitation was on
its way to becoming a discipline in its own right. Later, well-known classical
authorities would present it as a discipline passed down from (male) teacher
to (male) student for the most part, thus rendering female reciters anomalous
by default.111
109 It should be noted that the latter two apparently knew a few more variant readings cred-
ited to women than they seem to have elected to incorporate in their exegetical works;
see: ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Muṣannaf i, 578–9 (K. al-Ṣalāt); Ibn Wahb, fols. 10a, 16–20 to fol. 10b,
1–2.
110 For more on this, see below.
111 See: Ibn Mujāhid, Kitāb al-sabʿa fī l-qirāʾāt; Ibn al-Jazarī, Ghāyat al-nihāya.
138 CHAPTER 3
Another important factor was that in the second/eighth and early third/
ninth centuries, the (gendered) questions of who may touch or carry the
muṣḥaf or even recite the Quran from memory were being debated. These
debates were an aspect of efforts in the formative period to delineate inter-
and intra-communal boundaries. Certain ritual acts, spaces, and items were
elevated to the status of particularly charged symbols of a distinctive, “ortho-
dox” Muslim identity over/against religious Others both within and without.
An important way that this took place was through emphasizing the sanctity
of such ritual acts, spaces and items through legal debates aimed at minutely
regulating how much access to these females might be permitted to have. By
limiting or tabooing women’s vocal participation, active involvement or even
presence at rituals such as congregational prayers and funerals, or at sites such
as mosques,112 the sacred (as opposed to profane) status of these rites and
places was underlined, and the boundaries of the morally superior (and hence,
the rightly guided) community affirmed. This dynamic is evident in the legal
discussions regarding purity regulations and the Quran.
On the one hand, faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān works from the formative period depict
the quranic text—in oral or written form, and in small portions as well as in
its entirety—in ways that are increasingly icon-like. Not only are believers
in general regardless of their social station encouraged to recite it regularly
as a supererogatory pious act,113 but it is said to have protective and healing
powers.114 Particular sūras are to be recited over the sick, and quranic verses
can be written and worn as amulets.
Traditions attributed to or depicting a few female figures play a role in this
process. A tradition recounting that Ibn Masʿūd instructed his daughters to
recite a sūra every night, adding that he had heard Muḥammad say that who-
ever recited Sūrat al-Wāqiʿa (S. 56, “That Which is Coming”) every night will
not be afflicted by poverty115 conveys the notion that this can and should be
practiced by everyone, regardless of his or her position on the social scale.
Ḥadīths transmitted by ʿĀʾisha link the practice of reciting the last two sūras
of the Quran in order to cure illness with the prophet himself.116 In traditions
112 For examples of such debates, see: Halevi, Muḥammad’s grave esp. Chapter Four; Sadeghi,
The traveling tradition 203–43.
113 I.e. recitation in and of itself, not as a component of ṣalāt.
114 This practice is said to be based on Q 17:82—“We send down the Quran as healing and
mercy to those who believe”; see: Abū ʿUbayd 384 ( Jamāʾ aḥādīth al-Qurʾān wa-ithbātihi).
115 Abū ʿUbayd 257 ( Jamāʾ aḥādīth al-Qurʾān wa-ithbātihi).
116 E.g. Abū ʿUbayd 383 (Jamāʾ aḥādīth al-Qurʾān wa-ithbātihi). For such traditions’ entry into
the tafsīr genre, see Chapter Four.
Negotiating Interpretive Authority in Early Exegesis 139
such as these, the ubiquity of the Muslims’ scripture in the lives of the believ-
ers testifies to its unmatched sacred power, that cannot be equaled by any of
the scriptures or sacred objects that Other religious communities possess.117
Nonetheless, promoting such popular access to the Quran carried with it
the risk that this might undermine rather than enhance its status as a sacred
text. It would not do for the Quran to be regarded just one religious text or
talisman among many. Thus, sources from the formative period indicate that
barring non-Muslims from contact with the muṣḥaf,118 as well as carefully
regulating the access that Muslims had to it (and even to objects containing
quranic verses such as amulets) were issues of legal concern.119
The dominant view of the jurists came to be that a person had to be in a
state of ritual purity in order to touch or read the Quran. Most physical pro-
cesses that bring about states of major or minor impurity120 typically affect
both males and females, and a person in such a state can achieve a ritually
pure status in minutes by performing a ritual cleansing. The exceptions are
menstruation, as well as post-natal bleeding, which place the woman experi-
encing them in an ongoing state of major impurity—and she has little control
over either its timing or duration.121 Thus, purity-based restrictions on access
to the Quran fall disproportionately on women, both in actuality and at the
level of association.
While it is likely impossible to gauge the extent to which such rules have
been strictly adhered to historically,122 their gendered symbolism is evident. As
117 Interestingly, several traditions present the recitation of scripture over the sick as a Jewish
practice: e.g.: Abū ʿUbayd 384 (Jamāʾ aḥādīth al-Qurʾān wa-ithbātihi). Whether or not this
was actually the case historically, such traditions strongly suggest that the Muslim use of
the Quran for this purpose emerged in a context of intercommunal “competition.”
118 Abū ʿUbayd 400–1 (Bāb al-Muṣḥaf yamassuhu l-mushrik aw al-muslim alladhī laysa
bi-ṭāhir).
119 See for example: ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Muṣannaf i, 341–6 (K. al-Ḥayḍ); Abū ʿUbayd 192–7 (Bāb
al-Qāriʾ yaqraʾ al-Qurʾān ʿalā ghayr wuḍūʾ), 385 (Jamāʾ aḥādīth al-Qurʾān wa-ithbātihi).
120 E.g. having sexual intercourse, urination, defecation, falling asleep or becoming
unconscious.
121 For an overview of ritual purity in Islamic law, see: Reinhart, Impurity/no danger 1–24.
The efforts of jurists to differentiate between menstruation and “bleeding due to illness”
(istiḥāḍa) provided some limited scope for a woman familiar with the details of the legal
discourse to “manage” the duration of her impure states. Folk practices have also played a
role in such efforts at times. Today, medical means are increasingly deployed to this end,
especially by women going on Ḥajj.
122 For example, the fourteenth century CE scholar Ibn al-Ḥājj complained that women in
Cairo often do not follow the laws governing menstruation “correctly”; see: Lutfi, Manners
and customs 108–9. However, it is difficult to know how accurate his claims might have
140 CHAPTER 3
Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ states, the legal opinion that only a person in a state of purity
should carry the muṣḥaf exists “out of reverence for the Quran, and to show
respect to it.”123 The sanctity of the quranic text is constructed here by distanc-
ing it from the bodies of those lacking the requisite state of purity—which in
legal theory as well as in lived reality are female bodies in particular. Debates
about the precise details of these regulations as well as people’s lived experi-
ences of such quotidian gendered ritual (re)affirmations of the Quran’s sacred-
ness during the formative period are a noteworthy part of the contexts within
which exegetes developed and debated various hermeneutical approaches to
the quranic text.124
Such legal-ritual concerns ultimately become part of the exegetical dis-
course itself, once they came to be linked by some to Q 56:77–9—“that this
is truly a noble Quran, in a protected record that only the purified can touch.”
An apparently old and fairly widespread view held that these verses refer to
the Quran’s heavenly prototype, which is only touched by the angels.125 But
some read them as prohibiting the touching of a muṣḥaf by anyone not in a
state of ritual purity.126 The Tafsīr ʿAbd al-Razzāq presents both views: the first
tradition cited asserts that Q 56:79 evidently refers to the heavenly Quran,
because on earth it might happen that a copy of the Quran would be touched
by “Magians, the impure, and the filthy hypocrite.” However, the second tra-
dition relates that Muḥammad wrote a document that stated, “None touches
the Quran except the pure (ṭāhir).127 Through such debates, exegetes not only
(re)inscribed the boundaries of the saved community over/against religious
Others, but (re)affirmed understandings of ritual purity that construct regular,
fairly direct access to the quranic text as masculine, over/against women’s pro-
verbially irregular ability to approach it.
been, and his polemical tone should be taken into consideration when attempting to
make historical inferences about people’s actual behaviour.
123 Mālik 198 (K. al-Ṣalāt). In Mālik’s own opinion, it is disliked (makrūh) rather than prohib-
ited (ḥarām) for someone who is not in a state of purity to carry the Quran.
124 See for example: Ibn Wahb, Koranwissenschaften fol. 6b, 15–18.
125 E.g. Muqātil iii, 318; al-Farrāʾ iii, 129–30; al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xxvii, 237.
126 Even classical exegetes who do not agree with this more literal interpretation sometimes
take the opportunity to affirm the “orthodox” purity requirements for anyone touching
the Quran in their discussions of Q 56:79; e.g. al-Samarqandī iii, 319.
127 Tafsīr ʿAbd al-Razzāq iii, 282–3. Interestingly, this second tradition also made its way into
the sīra; see: Ibn Hishām 863.
Negotiating Interpretive Authority in Early Exegesis 141
other religio-interpretive controversy, and at least one other early figure (who
is usually male) attempting to rebut it, or passing negative judgment on it. The
tradition in the Tafsīr Sufyān al-Thawrī in which Masrūq quotes a quranic verse
in order to argue against ʿĀʾisha allowing Ḥassān to visit her, and ʿĀʾisha parries
this by capping his quotation is an example of a hierarchization tradition. As
the seeming opposite of the majority of traditions discussed thus far—which,
as we have seen, appear to present the incorporation of āthār and ḥadīths to
several early Muslim women into second/eighth and early third/ninth century
exegetical works as hermeneutically marginal and fairly unremarkable—hier-
archization traditions call our attention to the gendered and highly contested
significance of this process of inclusion. Therefore, a critical analysis of these
provides important insight into how exegetical authority is gendered in these
works that cite traditions.
In one controversy tradition in the Jāmiʿ of Ibn Wahb, ʿĀʾisha is asked by
her nephew ʿUrwa about the meaning of Q 12:110—“Til when the messengers
despaired, and suspected that they were denied” (ḥattā idhā stayʾasa l-rusul
wa-ẓannū annahum qad kudhibū). The “correct” tense and form of the latter
verb is at issue in this tradition:
132 While Murányi transcribes this as kudhdhibū in the 1995 edition, the 2003 edition has
kudhibū, and the photographs of the manuscript in the 1995 edition appear to bear out
the latter reading.
133 The 1995 edition transcribes this word as kudhibū, but both the manuscript and the 2003
edition have kadhibū.
Negotiating Interpretive Authority in Early Exegesis 143
[God’s] help was delayed, until the messengers gave up hope for those of
their peoples who denied them, and suspected that their followers had
dismissed them as liars. Then, God’s help came.’ ”134
The theological issue underlying this debate is the scope of prophetic ʿiṣma.
ʿUrwa’s suggestions of different readings and ʿĀʾisha’s responses apparently lay
out the theological ramifications of what appear to be various rival recitations,135
but in fact primarily serve to rhetorically place the possibility of understanding
the canonical text to mean that the prophets had ever doubted God’s promise
beyond the theological pale.136 This tradition concludes with ʿĀʾisha’s trium-
phant reconciliation of what eventually became “orthodox” Sunni doctrine
with a widely recognized reading.137
Also in the Jāmiʿ of Ibn Wahb, she is credited with emphatically express-
ing her views on three questions, at least two of which apparently relate to
Muḥammad’s theological status:
Whoever claims that Muḥammad saw his Lord has certainly told an out-
rageous lie against God. God said to Muḥammad, ‘It is not granted to any
mortal that God should speak to him except through revelation. . . .’
(Q 42:51)
And whoever claims that Muḥammad concealed anything of the rev-
elation has certainly told an outrageous lie against God. God says,
‘Messenger, proclaim everything that has been sent down to you from
your Lord . . . .’ (Q 5:67)
And whoever claims that he knows what will happen tomorrow has
certainly told an outrageous lie against God. God says, ‘Say: No one in the
heavens or on earth knows the unseen except God and they do not know
when they will be raised from the dead’ (Q 27:65).138
In this tradition, ʿĀʾisha forcefully counters three claims with those of her
own. Her assertion that Muḥammad never saw God (i.e. either on the famous
Night Journey, or during a revelatory experience)139 seems to be intended to
address the much debated issue as to whether humans will ever be able to
do so.140 The statement that there was no part of Muḥammad’s revelation that
he had not made public appears to be a dismissal of Shiʿi (or possibly, proto-
Sufi) claims that a chosen few among his followers were privy to teachings that
no one else had received.141 Finally, the third and final assertion, that no one
can foretell the future, may have been aimed at those crediting such a power to
Muḥammad, or at groups claiming that their leaders had this ability.
ʿĀʾisha follows each theological statement with a quranic proof-text. The
repetition of the phrases, “whoever claims (man zaʿama)” and “has certainly
told an outrageous lie against God ( fa-qad aʿẓam ʿalā ’llāh al-firya)” has the
effect of welding together three otherwise rather disparate statements. The
repetition emphasizes the allegedly outrageous nature of the claims that this
tradition is designed to refute, and also makes it easy to memorize, rendering it
an effective tool for preaching or debate. Such rhetorically polished traditions
seek to place human eloquence in the service of quranic interpretation.
Hierarchization traditions are based on a literary topos that has a long his-
tory, and is far from being unique to the Ḥadīth literature.142 Stories or anec-
dotes presenting a woman besting a man (or of a woman attempting to do so,
and being put in her “proper” place) also appear in texts from other late antique
Umm Maktūm, as he was blind and would not be able to see her if she were
in a state of undress. Years later, Marwān sent a messenger to Fāṭima asking
her about this incident, presumably when he was governor of Medina. But
after he had heard the entire tale, he responded, “We do not hear this account
from anyone except a woman. So, we will adhere to the [practice of] restrain-
ing [any divorced women from departing] that we find the people following.”150
The tradition goes on to further relate that Fāṭima indignantly responded to
Marwān, “Between you and me is the Quran!” and then proceeded to argue on
the basis of Q 65:1 that the directive that divorced women should remain in
their (ex)-husbands’ homes for the duration of the ʿidda only applies to those
who have received a revocable divorce.151
While several versions of this tradition circulated widely, formative period
texts typically present it as problematic. This is perhaps to be expected, as it
does not accord with the reported views of most early legal authorities,152 and
also appears to contravene the most obvious sense of the quranic directives
to men to provide provision and lodging to their soon-to-be ex-wives during
the ʿidda. Moreover, it provides ostensible prophetic support for a woman in
a liminal state—newly divorced, but not yet able to remarry—to leave those
deemed most likely to have an interest in ascertaining if she is pregnant, i.e.
her ex-husband and his family.153 In these texts, careful attribution of paternity
is presented as both emblematic of Islam (in putative contrast to some pagan
Arabian customs) and as necessitating patriarchal supervision of women at all
times. Thus Fāṭima was reportedly accused by the well-known Successor, Saʿīd
150 “lam nasmaʿ hādhā l-ḥadīth illā min imraʾa sa-naʾkhudhu bi-l-ʿiṣma allatī wajadnā l-nās
ʿalayhā” (ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr iii, 317). For the translation of “ʿiṣma” here as “restraining,”
see: Hawting, The role of the Qurʾān 440, n. 36.
151 The verse reads: “Prophet, when any of you intend to divorce women, do so at a time
when their prescribed waiting period can properly start, and calculate the period care-
fully: be mindful of God, your Lord. Do not drive them out of their homes—nor should
they themselves leave—unless they commit a flagrant indecency. These are the limits
set by God—whoever oversteps God’s limits wrongs his own soul—for you cannot know
what new situation God may perhaps bring about.” Fāṭima reportedly interpreted the
“new situation” as a reference to reconciliation between husband and wife, which would
lead the husband to take her back—as he would not be permitted to do if he had already
given her an irrevocable divorce.
152 For more on this tradition and the wider legal debate that it comments on, see: Hawting,
The role of the Qurʾān 177–88; Sayeed, Gender and legal authority 123–39.
153 Hawting, The role of Qurʾān 440.
Negotiating Interpretive Authority in Early Exegesis 147
154 “kānat fatanat al-nās,” or according to another version, “fatanat al-nisāʾ ” (Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt
ii, 527). The concept of fitna (trial, chaos, temptation) and the notion that women in par-
ticular embody it has been examined and utilized as an interpretive lens in a number of
studies; see for example: Mernissi, Beyond the veil 4; Malti-Douglas, Woman’s body esp.
43–4. For an application of what could be termed the “fitna paradigm” to ʿĀʾisha bt. Abī
Bakr’s life story, see: Spellberg, Politics, esp. 138ff. For critical evaluations of this paradigm,
see: Najmabadi, Women with mustaches, 132–3; Meisami, Writing medieval women 67.
155 The verse reads: “If other relatives, orphans, or needy people are present at the distribu-
tion, give them something too, and speak kindly to them.”
156 For the debates about the legal implications of this verse, see: al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ iv, 318–25.
157 ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr i, 438–9.
148 CHAPTER 3
gives him the last word, implying that whatever legal-exegetical knowledge
that ʿĀʾisha might possess cannot equal that of Ibn ʿAbbās.
A tradition that discusses the theological question of whether the opening
verses of Sūrat al-Najm (“The Star,” S. 53) describe a vision of God or of Gabriel
dismisses ʿĀʾisha’s interpretive authority even more overtly:
158 “. . . mā ʿĀʾisha ʿindanā bi-aʿlam min Ibn ʿAbbās” (ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr iii, 252).
Negotiating Interpretive Authority in Early Exegesis 149
meeting of two male figures and their interchange sets the tone for what is to
follow. While ʿĀʾisha’s view on the question is quoted, it is not couched in the
rhetorically polished terms that we saw in Ibn Wahb. Moreover, in this tradi-
tion, Maʿmar does not simply reject ʿĀʾisha’s interpretation of these particular
verses, but makes a general statement that brands exegetical views credited to
her as less reliable than those attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās.
It would be misleading to read traditions of this type as though they are
transcripts of actual conversations that can moreover be assumed to reflect a
timeless communal consensus on the epistemological status of any woman’s
attempt to exercise interpretive authority. These three hierarchization tradi-
tions also appear in variant versions in other texts conventionally dated to the
formative period, including ḥadīth collections, where they are presented as
part of wider legal or theological debates. Their meanings shift through time
and literary context. For example, Marwān’s dismissal of Fāṭima’s ḥadīth as
a report that he had “only” heard from a woman appears to have “originally”
reflected an actual reluctance in some quarters to accept women’s traditions
as legal proofs. However, as Asma Sayeed points out, it would have been heard/
read by medieval audiences in light of the formative period debate about the
legal weight of singleton traditions in general,159 as well as of the approaches
of jurists to this ḥadīth in particular.160
Hierarchization traditions are literary constructions that never cease to
belong to the immense and polymorphous genre known as the Ḥadīth litera-
ture, even once they enter the quranic commentarial genre. Therefore, they
should be read thematically against the backdrop of the Ḥadīth literature.
When hierarchization traditions are read in this light, it becomes apparent that
in part, they are further elaborations on a theme found in some traditions in
early biographical compendia such as Ibn Saʿd’s Ṭabaqāt in which some early
Muslims give various and at times conflicting assessments of others’ knowl-
edge or accuracy in transmission. While most such traditions present male fig-
ures, some traditions of this type occasionally feature women (typically, ʿĀʾisha
or at times Umm Salama) as either the assessors or the assessed.161
prophet say (and Abū Hurayra’s cutting rejoinder that she must have been busy with her
kohl and mirror at the time), see: Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt ii, 507–8.
162 For a couple of examples from medieval texts of dismissive attitudes to the tradition
attributed to ʿĀʾisha (discussed above) on the question of whether humans will be able to
see God, see: Geissinger, The exegetical traditions 7.
Negotiating Interpretive Authority in Early Exegesis 151
been able to witness how Muḥammad conducted himself when he was with
his male Companions, but also implies that it can be presumed unlikely that
ʿĀʾisha would have taken the trouble to verify if his practice in her presence
also held true for other situations. In these two traditions, while the wives of
the prophet are presented as potential sources of religious knowledge, their
knowledge is also proverbially limited in its scope and depth, especially when
compared to that of their male contemporaries. These two traditions both
construct and (re)affirm the methodical and detail-oriented pursuit of knowl-
edge—and the religious authority associated with it—as emblematically
masculine.
Reading the three hierarchization traditions in the Tafsīr ʿAbd al-Razzāq
against this complex thematic and textual background, it becomes apparent
that traditions of this type are based on the gendering of advanced levels of
religious knowledge, of the authority to instruct others, and also, the authority
to interpret scripture, as emblematically masculine. A few early Muslim female
figures, particularly several of the wives of the prophet, have a degree of com-
munally recognized religious or even interpretive authority attributed to them
in traditions of this type. Yet, this status of theirs is textually constructed as
highly anomalous—and therefore, as potentially subject to challenge in ways
that the authority of their male counterparts is not. Above and beyond their
relevance to various legal and theological debates that they address, such tradi-
tions convey ideological assertions about the nature of interpretive authority
and who “rightfully” exercises it. In the case of the latter two hierarchization
traditions which set opinions attributed to ʿĀʾisha over against those of Ibn
ʿAbbās, the concern is not so much to diminish whatever degree of interpretive
authority that ʿĀʾisha might be held to possess, as it is to construct and elabo-
rate the image of Ibn ʿAbbās as the “father of tafsīr,” through presenting ʿĀʾisha
as a foil for these assertions of his unparalleled exegetical expertise.
As was shown in the previous chapter, most of the female figures that are
quoted as sources of exegetical materials in the eight exegetical works under
discussion here are a select number of female Companions. In addition to
ʿĀʾisha, who is a prominent source in many of these works, a few other wives
of Muḥammad, particularly Umm Salama, and a few female Companions
are quoted. Moreover, when redactors of several such works added materials
attributed to women, it was traditions or variant readings credited to ʿĀʾisha
that were most often incorporated. As we will see, this is a trend that continues
Negotiating Interpretive Authority in Early Exegesis 153
170 Yaḥyā i, 411. Q 23:72 reads: “Do you [Muḥammad] ask them for any payment? Your Lord’s
is the best payment; He is the best of providers.”
171 Ibn al-Jazarī, Ghāyat al-nihāya ii, 354.
154 CHAPTER 3
with Quran codices and some of the issues of the day relating to them: regional
orthographic peculiarities,172 and debates as to whether they should be vocal-
ized (iʿrāb).173
The claim has often been made that early ascetic (and later Sufi) movements,
as well as ḥadīth transmission have historically provided some Muslim women
opportunities for involvement in scholarly discourses as well as to exercise
some types of religious authority. It is difficult to know what historical realities
might lie behind any of these traditions ascribed to Umm al-Dardāʾ. However,
“her” textual image as it appears in the Tafsīr Yaḥyā b. Sallām—and which
is absent from the other seven exegetical works under discussion here174—
suggests some questions about the potential as well as the limitations of such
opportunities at the level of recorded memory during the formative period.
The authors and redactors of these eight works made choices in their vari-
ous and varying representations of interpretive authority, which resulted in the
memorialisation of certain of its reputed bearers. Umm al-Dardāʾ reportedly
possessed specialised knowledge of the quranic text and its recitation. “She”
is also portrayed in some ḥadīth compilations and works on aspects of the
quranic text and its recitation which are conventionally dated to the formative
period as an occasional source of pietistic traditions.175 But to the extent that
“she” is memorialized at all in these eight tafsīr texts, it would appear to have
been as a source of the latter type of information and not the former.
Another early female figure who is said to have had expert knowledge of
the recitation of the Quran but nonetheless is not presented as a source of
such information in the eight exegetical works examined here is Ḥafṣa bt. Sīrīn.
Al-Dhahabī counts her among the scholarly Successors of Baṣra,176 and she is
occasionally cited as a source of traditions on the recitation of the Quran as
an act of individual piety.177 Ibn al-Jawzī reports that her deep familiarity with
quranic recitation was such that whenever her scholarly brother Muḥammad
b. Sīrīn (d. 110/728–9) was asked a question about it that he could not answer,
172 Abū ʿUbayd 330–2 (Bāb wa-hādhihi l-ḥurūf allatī ikhtalafat fīhā maṣāḥif ahl al-Shām).
173 Ibn Abī Shayba x, 207 (K. Faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān).
174 At least, it is absent in the form that these seven works have come down to us.
175 E.g.: Ibn Wahb, Koranwissenschaften fol. 2a, 10–15; Abū ʿUbayd 236–7 (Abwāb Suwar
al-Qurʾān wa-āyātahu); Ibn Abī Shayba x, 212 (K. Faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān); al-Dārimī iv, 2170, 2174,
2177 (K. Faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān).
176 Al-Dhahabī, Tadhkirat al-ḥuffāẓ i, 102.
177 E.g. she appears in the isnād of a tradition regarding the minimum number of nights that
one should take to recite the Quran in its entirety; see: ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Muṣannaf iii, 354;
Ibn Abī Shayba iii, 576 (K. al-Ṣalāt).
Negotiating Interpretive Authority in Early Exegesis 155
he would tell the questioner to ask Ḥafṣa how she recites.178 Nonetheless, she
does not appear in any of the eight exegetical works discussed here as a source
or transmitter of quranic readings. In a tradition quoted in the Tafsīr ʿAbd
al-Razzāq, she asks Abū l-ʿĀliya about the meaning of a verse (Q 27:82) con-
cerning the end of the world.
While these female figures are made textually present in a couple of these
eight works through their transmissions of a pietistic saying, materials of this
type simply were not accorded the same interpretive weight as exegetical
materials deemed directly relevant to grammatical, legal or theological mat-
ters. It could therefore be argued that these portrayals ultimately have the
effect of downplaying whatever degree of exegetical authority they might have
been thought to possess.179
Concluding Remarks
When the exegetical materials attributed to female figures in the eight exegeti-
cal works surveyed in the previous chapter are closely examined in their his-
torical-textual contexts, as well as with reference to the gendered “labour” that
they perform in these texts, a number of patterns become evident. While there
is a range of intentionality that is apparently attributed to the putative female
sources of exegetical materials in these works, depictions of a woman clearly
intending to interpret a quranic verse are uncommon.
In quotations of lines ascribed to poets, as well as in stereotyped speech,
any interpretive intention on the part of the woman or man with whom they
are said to have originated is entirely absent. Rather, the interpretive inten-
tion clearly rests in the hands of the exegete who elects to quote materials of
this type. Such quotations underline the exegetes’ power to appropriate pagan
Arabian cultural forms and ideas as they saw fit, and to put them to use in the
service of a very different worldview. Through this type of literary superces-
sionism, the act of quranic interpretation mirrors the conquests and empire
building of Islam’s formative period, which is one way that tafsīr is represented
in these texts as an emblematically “masculine” undertaking. These quotations
also raise some important questions as to how “intentionality” might be under-
stood in traditions attributed to women that are cited in exegetical works.
to one woman of the Companion generation, and none refer to the quranic
text in written form, they present female expertise in the recitation of the
Quran as it pertains to exegesis as both exceptional and located firmly in the
past. Historically, this is an aspect of a much larger process, through which
the Quran came to be officially promulgated in an imperially sanctioned text,
which would soon be written in a scriptio plena and be ritually elevated in its
sanctity above all other texts—in part, through its proverbial distancing from
female bodies in particular.
While a small number of early Muslim women were included in the tran-
shistorical exegetical communities constructed by the exegetes who authored
and redacted the eight works discussed here, in nearly all cases their contribu-
tions are presented as occasional and not very consequential for major gram-
matical, legal, or theological issues related to the interpretation of the Quran.
The main exception is of course ʿĀʾisha bt. Abī Bakr, although there is also a
certain level of ambivalence about this. Yet, despite the evident overall lack
of interest in citing exegetical materials attributed to women, one appears to
catch glimpses of the beginnings of certain noteworthy features of classical
Sunni tafsīr works, such as the evocation of the abode of Muḥammad’s wives
as a space within which controversial issues involving inter- and intra-commu-
nal boundaries can be authoritatively negotiated.
In the third/ninth century, however, ḥadīths attributed to or transmitted
on the authority of early Muslim women are quoted in statistically significant
numbers for the first time in the tafsīr chapters of al-Bukhārī and several other
traditionists. As the next chapter demonstrates, this fascinating development
which occurs on the margins of the genre of tafsīr proper, both provides insight
into the hermeneutical debates of the third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries
and subsequently has an impact on classical quranic exegesis.
CHAPTER 4
Saʿd b. Hishām b. ʿĀmir al-Anṣārī, a man whose father had been killed fighting
on Muḥammad’s side in the Battle of Uḥud (3/625),1 had come to a momen-
tous decision: he would go to the frontier of the new Arab empire, and fight
against the Byzantines until his last breath. And so (it is recounted), Saʿd went
to Medina, intending to sell his property and purchase the equipment that he
would need for this venture.
However, when Saʿd reached Medina, he found that the townsfolk he
encountered did not approve of his decision. No less than six of their number
(they informed Saʿd) had wanted to do much the same thing when Muḥammad
was alive, but he had forbidden them to adopt such an ascetic approach to
life, saying, “Am I not an example for you?”2 Dissuaded from his original plan,
Saʿd—who had divorced his wife—revoked the divorce in front of witnesses.
Then, he went to see Ibn ʿAbbās, and asked him about how Muḥammad
used to perform the witr prayers. Ibn ʿAbbās responded by directing him to
go and ask ʿĀʾisha, “the most knowledgeable of people on earth about the witr
of the Messenger of God,” and then to come back and tell him what she had
said. Saʿd then requested Ḥakīm b. Aflaḥ to take him to see ʿĀʾisha. But Ḥakīm
was quite reluctant, saying that he was not close to her, because although he
had tried to restrain her from “speaking about those two factions,” she had
nonetheless “insisted on departing.” But Saʿd kept on asking, and Ḥakīm finally
agreed to come with him.
When they requested permission to enter, ʿĀʾisha recognized Ḥakīm imme-
diately. When he introduced Saʿd to her, she invoked God’s mercy on his father,
who had died at Uḥud.
Then, Saʿd posed his question:
I [Saʿd] said, “Mother of the Believers, tell me about the character (khu-
luq) of the Messenger of God.”
1 Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt vii, 243–4. However, al-Dhahabī identifies Saʿd’s grandfather as the one who
had died at Uḥud. Saʿd’s father reportedly settled in Baṣra; see his Tārīkh al-Islām wa-wafayāt
al-mashāhīr al-aʿlām, years 41–60 AH, 321.
2 Q 33:21—“The Messenger of God is an excellent model for those of you who put your hope in
God and the Last Day and remember Him often.”
I began to get up, deciding that I would not ask anyone about anything
else until the day I died. But then it seemed good to me [to ask more], so
I said, “Tell me about the night vigils of the Messenger of God.”
She responded, “Do you not recite, ‘You, enfolded in your cloak’ ”?3
I answered, “Yes indeed!”
She said, “God, the Mighty, the Glorious, made standing in prayer at
night an obligation in the first part of this sūra. The Prophet of God and
his Companions performed night vigils for a year. For twelve months,
God held back its concluding verse in the heavens. Then God sent down
the conclusion of this sūra—the lightening [of this obligation]. Standing
in prayer at night became a supererogatory act, after having been
obligatory.”
Saʿd then asked ʿĀʾisha about Muḥammad’s witr prayer specifically. She pro-
vided a detailed description of it, including his slight attenuation of this prac-
tice when he had become old, and how he would elect to pray extra prayers
during the day instead when circumstances made it difficult for him to per-
form witr at night. She concluded by stating that
[t]he Prophet of God would not recite the entire Quran in one night, nor
would he stand in prayer all night until dawn. He would not fast for an
entire month aside from Ramaḍān.
Saʿd then went back to Ibn ʿAbbās, and related to him everything that ʿĀʾisha
had told him. “She speaks the truth,” Ibn ʿAbbās responded. “If I was close to
her, or visiting her, then I would have come to her in order to hear it for myself!”
“If I had known that you do not visit her,” Saʿd retorted, “Then I would not
have related this report of hers to you.”4
This complex tradition (henceforth, “the would-be ascetic warrior tradi-
tion”) is recounted in two of the ṣiḥāḥ sitta, or the “Sound Six” ḥadīth collec-
tions compiled in the third/ninth century that are regarded as most reliable by
Sunnis today: the Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, and the Sunan Abī Dāwūd;5 summarized forms
of it also appear in the Sunan Ibn Māja and the Sunan al-Nasāʾī.6 This ḥadīth
also is found in the Musnad Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal.7 On one level, this tradition
serves as a proof-text for some issues regarding the status and performance
of the witr prayer, as well as of supererogatory prayers at night.8 But the larger
question that it addresses is asceticism and the challenges it posed to emer-
gent Muslim communal identities in the formative period.
Significantly, al-Nasāʾī (d. 303/915–16) also includes a short excerpt from this
tradition in the tafsīr chapter of his Sunan al-kubrā, as commentary on Sūra
73.9 In so doing, he follows a tendency among some Quran commentators of
his time to cite traditions attributed to ʿĀʾisha about Muḥammad’s prayers at
night as part of their exegeses of Sūrat al-Muzammil.10 Moreover, the ḥadīth
credited to her on this topic that al-Nasāʾī quotes is a summarized version of
one that he as a traditionist deems fairly reliable, as his inclusion of a non-
summarized version in his Sunan indicates.
As this example illustrates, ḥadīths attributed to early Muslim women con-
tinue to be incorporated into some exegetical discourses during the third/
ninth and fourth/tenth centuries to a limited yet notable extent. In this chap-
ter, we will examine this tendency primarily through the lens of the “chapters
on tafsīr” found in four well-known ḥadīth collections from this period, begin-
ning with the Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and ending with the Mustadrak of al-Ḥākim
al-Naysābūrī. These tafsīr chapters provide a particularly useful vantage point
from which to survey this phenomenon for several reasons:
First, the surviving Quran commentaries from this period that quote sizeable
numbers of traditions credited to women are typically either extremely large
(such as al-Ṭabarī’s Jāmiʿ) or have a specialized focus. In either case, the question
facing any researcher is how to extract a manageable yet representative sam-
ple of such traditions from these works. These four tafsīr chapters all contain
variable but statistically significant numbers of ḥadīths attributed to women,
6 Ibn Māja i, 376 (K. Iqāmat al-ṣalāt); Aḥmad b. Shuʿayb al-Nasāʾī, Sunan al-Nasāʾī bi-sharḥ
al-Ḥāfiẓ Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī wa-ḥāshiyat al-Imām al-Sindī iii, 199 (K. Qiyām al-layl
wa-taṭawwuʿ l-nahār).
7 Ibn Ḥanbal vi, 61.
8 Witr is a prayer which may be performed after the night (ʿishāʾ) prayer. The Ḥanafīs
argued that the witr prayer is obligatory (wājib), while the other three Sunni legal schools
disagree.
9 Aḥmad b. Shuʿayb al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr al-Nasāʾī ii, 470.
10 Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xxix, 133; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf vi, 301.
Ḥadīth and Hermeneutics 161
and as they are concentrated in one chapter rather than spread out over many
pages of text, they are considerably easier to examine. Second, as the would-
be ascetic warrior tradition illustrates, these tafsīr chapters are “in dialogue”
(so to speak) with quranic exegetical discourses of the third/ninth and fourth/
tenth centuries. The traditionists who compiled these chapters were both cri-
tiquing the traditions already in circulation among exegetes of the time, and
putting forward ḥadīths that they deemed more reliable—typically, because
they regarded them as having stronger isnāds, or their isnāds extend back to
the prophet, or they are better known to ḥadīth critics.11 Therefore, these tafsīr
chapters when taken together can provide a fairly comprehensive overview of
the main types of ḥadīths credited to women that were (or were not) being
incorporated into Quran commentaries at this time. And importantly, they
also constitute a sample of such ḥadīths that were deemed relevant to exege-
sis on the basis of criteria current in that historical period—meaning, that its
selection was neither affected directly or indirectly by later medieval nor by
contemporary theological, hermeneutical, apologetic or political concerns.
These tafsīr chapters are also worth examining in themselves. They gather a
statistically significant number of ḥadīths ascribed to women for the purpose
of Quran commentary—a development that appears to have few if any prec-
edents—and make them available for exegetical use. This milestone had some
impact on the medieval genre of tafsīr from the fifth/eleventh century onward.
Also, some tafsīr chapters have their own late medieval “afterlife” through com-
mentary, or even abridgment for the edification of laypersons. Therefore, these
chapters raise some interesting questions about the “popular” dimensions of
medieval tafsīr.
This chapter will first discuss the gendered dimensions of the use of ḥadīths
in third/ninth century quranic exegesis through examining several aspects of
the would-be ascetic warrior tradition. Then, the four tafsīr chapters and the
ḥadīths attributed to women that they contain will be briefly surveyed, with
an emphasis on their relationship to the wider state of quranic exegesis in the
third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries. The extent to which ḥadīths of this
type ascribed to women appear in Quran commentaries from this time will be
noted. Finally, the long-term historical impact of this intervention both on the
tafsīr genre as well as on some aspects of late medieval ḥadīth discourses will
be discussed.
11 For the development of pre-modern Sunni ḥadīth criticism, see: Dickinson, Development;
Lucas, Constructive critics.
162 CHAPTER 4
12 For al-Bukhārī, see: al-Dhahabī, Siyar xii, 391ff. For an overview of the tafsīr chapters in
three of the ṣiḥaḥ sitta, see: Speight, The function of ḥadīth 63–81. More recently, Walid
Saleh has drawn attention to these chapters in his article, Preliminary remarks 26–7, as
has Mustafa Shah (Introduction 49–50). As will become evident, my reading of these
chapters differs from these studies.
13 This section contains only 11 traditions in total; two of these are attributed to ʿĀʾisha, and
one to Ḥafṣa bt. ʿUmar; see: al-Shaybānī, The Muwatta of Imam Muhammad 424–8. Ṣabrī
b. ʿAbd al-Khāliq al-Shāfiʿī and Sayyid b. ʿAbbās al-Jalīmī call attention to its existence in
their introduction to al-Nasāʾī’s tafsīr chapter (Tafsīr al-Nasāʾī i, 106). One study on the
Muwaṭṭaʾ as transmitted by al-Shaybānī asserts that it is likely an accurate reflection of
one of the latter’s students’ lecture notes, see: Sadeghi, The authenticity 305–7.
14 As discussed in Chapter Two, it is possible that the Tafsīr ʿAbd al-Razzāq may have started
out as part of the Muṣannaf ʿAbd al-Razzāq, but this is unknown at present.
15 Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima 80; see also: al-Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt 54. However, if such a work
ascribed to him did in fact exist at some point, it does not appear to have survived.
Ḥadīth and Hermeneutics 163
Al-Bukhārī, along with Muslim b. al-Hajjāj, held that there were enough
ḥadīths in circulation which they regarded as authentic (ṣaḥīḥ) that they could
avoid including any ḥadīths not meeting this standard in their compilations.
As Jonathan Brown demonstrates, in the third/ninth century, this was an
unusual and often controversial view. Their claim that specialized scholars of
ḥadīth such as themselves were the rightful custodians of the prophetic sunna
who were to guide non-specialists, as well as their view that non-specialists
should not undertake the compilation of ḥadīths was often perceived as elit-
ist, as well as dismissive of other past and contemporary ḥadīth collectors.16
While their teacher Ibn Ḥanbal apparently did not regard it as necessary to
provide complete isnāds for ḥadīths relating to quranic exegesis,17 al-Bukhārī
attempted to extend his ḥadīth methodology to the selection of traditions by
Quran commentators. In so doing, his main concern does not appear to have
been the interpretation of the Quran per se. Rather, he seems to have sought
to apply the typical traditionalist concerns—preserving and upholding the
prophetic sunna, and energetically opposing innovation (bidʿa), particularly
Muʿtazilī views—to as many aspects of Muslim life and thought as possible.18
Quranic exegesis was but one of these aspects.
As has been shown in the previous two chapters, ʿĀʾisha bt. Abī Bakr seems
to have come to be associated with debates about hermeneutical approaches
to the Quran fairly early on, and she is often though not always associated with
interpretive methods based on the narration of āthār or ḥadīths. Moreover, she
is seemingly made to exemplify the failings of such interpretive approaches in
the tradition quoted in al-Farrāʾ’s Maʿānī in which she is reported to have stated
that the codex contains scribal errors.19 In the tafsīr chapter of al-Bukhārī, how-
ever, a much less ambivalent message is relayed, with ʿĀʾisha depicted quite
positively as a preeminent source of authentic ḥadīths relevant to quranic
exegesis. But while she is given a noteworthy role in this chapter, al-Bukhārī
(as well as other ḥadīth compilers following in his exegetical footsteps) was no
less eager than the practitioners of linguistically-based quranic interpretation
to represent his approach to tafsīr as “masculine” to the core.
The would-be ascetic warrior tradition provides an apt illustration of the
centrality of gendered bodies and voices in this construction of the prophetic
20 The quranic text itself presents Christian monasticism rather ambivalently; see for
example Q 57:27.
21 E.g. practices of the first few caliphs, as well as the practice of the people of Medina.
22 Hallaq, A history 16ff.
Ḥadīth and Hermeneutics 165
an ascetic warrior, freed from worldly ties (exemplified here by his wife) so
that he can seek martyrdom—a desire branded here as contrary to the sunna.
The first step he takes towards bringing his conduct in line with the sunna is
to unilaterally revoke his divorce of his wife. The second step Saʿd takes is to
go and learn the sunna from a wife of the prophet—a well known eyewitness
to Muḥammad’s practice who is moreover endorsed by none other than Ibn
ʿAbbās as a reliable source.
But while ʿĀʾisha’s extensive knowledge about the contentious issue of
Muḥammad’s night prayers is underlined in this ḥadīth, the religious authority
that she possesses as a reliable transmitter of the prophetic sunna is nonethe-
less placed in tension with her leading role in the Battle of the Camel. Ḥakīm
only reluctantly accompanies Saʿd on his visit to her, as she had ignored his
advice to avoid getting involved in the events leading up to that battle, while
Ibn ʿAbbās refuses to go to hear the ḥadīth about the prophet’s witr prayer from
her directly. The scope of her “legitimate” authority is ever open to question.
Nonetheless, due to ʿĀʾisha’s well-nigh unmatched access to detailed and direct
knowledge of Muḥammad’s practice, even Ibn ʿAbbās does not ignore or dis-
miss her as a transmitter.
In this ḥadīth, ʿĀʾisha, a female Companion, has a name, a voice and a per-
sonality, while Saʿd’s wife (who is evidently not a Companion) is not accorded
any of these things. At no point is the latter’s reaction to any of her husband’s
decisions even hinted at. Her only function in this ḥadīth is to mutely mark the
boundary between male conduct that complies with the sunna and that which
does not, and so it is upon her body that Saʿd’s resolve to adhere to the sunna
“correctly” is first enacted.23
As this ḥadīth illustrates, while a small number of early Muslim women
were given roles to play in the ḥadīth critics’ retrospective (re)constructions of
the prophetic sunna, and women’s bodies serve as important vehicles of this
process, the women being thus memorialized were not their historical con-
temporaries. Rather, these are memories of a select number of often highly
exceptional women who had passed away generations ago. Likewise, Quran
commentators from the Sunni “mainstream” in the third/ninth and fourth/
tenth centuries rarely if ever quote traditions in their tafsīr works on the
authority of any of their female contemporaries.
23 The divorce of a woman by her husband has immediate bodily consequences for her,
as she then enters the liminal stage of ʿidda. The ʿidda places restrictions on her mobil-
ity, and its duration is determined by bodily processes over which she has little if any
control—her menstrual cycles, or (if pregnant) her delivery. If he then revokes the
divorce, then her ʿidda automatically ends, and the marriage resumes, regardless of what
her wishes might be.
166 CHAPTER 4
In part, this is a reflection of that fact that in the third/ninth century, there
were very few living female ḥadīth transmitters. Asma Sayeed demonstrates
that women’s involvement in the transmission of ḥadīth was extremely limited
in both scope and scale from the mid-second to the late third centuries after
the hijra.24 However, it also appears to relate to notions of what exegesis is, and
who is to be deemed a reliable source of exegetical materials, as we will see.
Why does the attention paid to traditions attributed to early Muslim female
figures as potential “raw material” suitable for exegetical purposes increase in
the third/ninth century, when these women’s lives are even more distant in
time than they were in the second/eighth century? One reason that is mainly
pertinent to the ḥadīth compilers who authored tafsīr chapters is their concern
with bringing “authentic” ḥadīths—i.e. those with sound isnāds extending
back to the prophet—to the fore. One side effect of this focus on authenticity
as determined by isnāds was that ḥadīths attributed to female Companions
(particularly, to those credited with significant numbers of ḥadīths) came to
be highlighted. A factor that appears to have been more relevant to exegetes at
this time is that incorporating some traditions ascribed to female Companions
(or much less commonly, to female Successors) into their Quran commentar-
ies was one way that they could express their Sunni allegiances. By so doing,
they could symbolically distance themselves from not only Muʿtazilīs, but also
(by giving particular prominence to traditions credited to ʿĀʾisha) from Shiʿis
as well.25
The would-be ascetic warrior tradition raises some interesting questions
about the boundaries of quranic exegesis. It briefly explains a couple of quranic
verses—and as we have seen, the statement that Muḥammad’s conduct is
the Quran is apparently already being used exegetically in the second/eighth
century.26 This ḥadīth, or at least parts of it, could be said to lend itself to
exegetical use. Nonetheless, its Sitz im Leben is not primarily exegetical. When
Saʿd asks ʿĀʾisha about Muḥammad’s night prayers, she refers to verses from
Sūrat al-Muzammil in order to support her assertions as to how his customary
practice of night prayers evolved during his career. While she apparently pos-
sesses detailed knowledge of matters that are of key importance to the inter-
pretation of this sūra, such as the circumstances of the revelation of specific
verses, she is not here portrayed as engaging in exegesis of it herself. The extent
to which it entered exegetical discourses was subject to the determinations of
(male) Quran commentators. Yet, it never ceases to remain part of the ḥadīth
discourse.
33 Fuat Sezgin quoted in Speight, Function 74. None of the material attributed to women by
Abū ʿUbayda is included in al-Bukhārī’s tafsīr chapter, however.
34 For example, the opening periphrastic section of S. 36 cites comments credited to Mujāhid
on a number of verses until v. 75. Then, an interpretation of a word in v. 41 is attributed
to ʿIkrima. Following this, ʿIbn ʿAbbās comments on verses 19, 51, 52, 12, and 67 (vi, 308).
Many other illustrations of this lack of integration of the materials that he cites could be
given.
35 Guillaume, The Traditions of Islam 26. The irregularities found in the tarājim throughout
al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ occasioned much discussion and debate among medieval scholars; see:
Fadel, Ibn Ḥajar’s Hady al-sārī 161–97.
36 These sūras are: 23, 27, 29, 35, 51, 57, 58, 64, 67, 69, 70, 73, 76, 81, 82, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90, 94,
97, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, and 109. By contrast, only two sūras—31 and 62—
completely lack periphrastic interpretation.
37 There is some reason to question this. According to Ibn Ḥajar, a fourth/tenth century
scribe reportedly stated that when he was copying al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ he saw titles with
no ḥadīths following them, as well as ḥadīths that had not been placed under any title, so
“we put the two together” (Fadel, Ibn Ḥajar’s Hady al-sārī 173). It is not clear whether or to
what extent such scribal interventions might have affected his tafsīr chapter; however, it
seems that if anything, the result would have likely have been a reduction in the number
of tarājim lacking ḥadīths than was “originally” the case.
Ḥadīth and Hermeneutics 169
that could not be traced back to the first few generations of Muslims through
sound isnāds. Even more tellingly, a number of the ḥadīths that he relates in his
tafsīr chapter appear in one or more of the āthār-based exegetical works dis-
cussed above in Chapter Two, or in the Tafsīr Yaḥyā b. Sallām—and as we will
see, an even greater number are to be found in third/ninth and fourth/tenth
century Quran commentaries. Nor was al-Bukhārī’s tafsīr chapter intended to
introduce ḥadīths into the tafsīr discourses of his time; as we have seen, they
were present already in some types of exegesis. Rather, his primary concern
appears to have been the vetting of the traditions in fairly common use by
exegetes—which in his view should be undertaken only by those qualified to
do so, i.e. ḥadīth critics such as himself.
The approximately 501 traditions with isnāds that appear in al-Bukhārī’s
tafsīr chapter are ascribed to 76 persons, mostly Companions. Of these tradi-
tions, 61 (i.e. 12 percent) are traced back to a total of four women. Once rep-
etitions are eliminated, out of a total of 457 traditions, 43 are traced back to
women—in nearly all cases to ʿĀʾisha bt. Abī Bakr. She is presented as a pre-
eminent figure in this tafsīr chapter; three controversy traditions and one hier-
archization tradition underline her status as an authority. Two traditions are
ascribed to her mother, Umm Rūmān,38 one to Umm Salama (through Zaynab
bt. Abī Salama), and one to Umm ʿAṭiyya, via Ḥafṣa bt. Sīrīn. Ṣafiyya bt. Shayba
and Muʿādha al-ʿAdawiyya39 each transmit one tradition from ʿĀʾisha. In addi-
tion, the name of Umm Yaʿqūb40 is mentioned as an alternate narrator for a
tradition cited by al-Bukhārī in explanation of Q 59:7.
38 For Umm Rūmān, see: Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 319–20; Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb xii, 415–16.
39 Muʿādha bt. ʿAbdallāh al-ʿAdawiyya was a Successor from Baṣra who related from ʿĀʾisha
and several others (Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 527; Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb xii, 401). For more on her,
see below.
40 Umm Yaʿqūb is a very obscure figure about whom little is known; see: Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb
xii, 431.
41 For Muslim, see: al-Dhahabī, Siyar xii, 557ff.
42 Brown, Canonization 81.
170 CHAPTER 4
43 E.g. Birkeland, Old Muslim opposition 31; Wansbrough, Qurʾanic studies 180.
44 In support of this contention, they point to a statement from Shāh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Dihlawī
(d. 1239/1824), as well as evidence from al-Mizzī’s (d. 742/1341) Tuḥfat al-ashrāf; see their
introduction to the Tafsīr al-Nasāʾī (al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr i, 104–5).
45 See: Abū l-Faḍl ʿIyāḍ b. Mūsā b. ʿIyāḍ al-Maḥṣabī, Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim li-l-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ
al-musammā Ikmāl al-muʿlim bi-fawāʾid Muslim viii, 578–94. It should also be noted that
in his own commentary on the tafsīr chapter in the Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, al-Nawawī quotes
directly at times from al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ; see: Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim bi-sharḥ al-Imām Muḥyī al-Dīn
al-Nawawī al-musammā Al-Minhāj sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj xviii, 352, 355, 356.
Ḥadīth and Hermeneutics 171
51 Al-Tirmidhī 767 (Abwāb Tafsīr). As the discipline of ḥadīth criticism developed, many
traditionists came to privilege word-for-word transmission (riwāyat al-ḥadīth ʿalā l-lafẓ)
over “transmission according to meaning” (riwāyat al-ḥadīth ʿalā l-maʿnā). For a detailed
discussion of this, see: Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. ʿAlī b. Thābit al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Kitāb
al-Kifāya fī ʿilm al-riwāya 228ff.
52 These figures are from Speight, Formation 76.
53 Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 52; Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb xii, 429.
54 Also known as Nusayba bt. Kaʿb, she was seriously wounded in the Battle of Uhud, and
lost a hand fighting against Musaylima (Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 450–5; Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb
xii, 422).
55 Al-Tirmidhī 736, 752 (Abwāb Tafsīr).
56 Al-Tirmidhī 713 (Abwāb Tafsīr). As the Successor Makḥūl transmits it on her authority, by
the standards of later medieval biographical dictionaries, she would be Umm al-Dardāʾ
the Younger, i.e. a Successor (al-Mizzī, Tahdhīb xxxv, 352).
57 Al-Tirmidhī 670, 722, 673. For Umayya, see below.
58 For al-Nasāʾī, see: al-Dhahabī, Siyar xiv, 125–135.
Ḥadīth and Hermeneutics 173
bered today as the compiler of the Sunan al-ṣughrā (also called Al-Mujtabā, or
the Sunan al-Nasāʾī), which is one of the ṣiḥāḥ sitta. The Sunan al-ṣughrā does
not contain a chapter on tafsīr. However, al-Nasāʾī’s larger ḥadīth compilation,
the Sunan al-kubrā, does. This tafsīr chapter has been published recently as a
separate work.59 In it, at least one ḥadīth is provided as commentary for all but
nine sūras.60
The 735 traditions contained in this chapter are placed under the headings
of the relevant sūras, in accordance with the canonical order of the quranic
verses that they are intended to comment on. Aside from this, no overt attempt
is made by al-Nasāʾī to guide the reader’s interpretation of the traditions, nor
does he provide additional material such as assessments of their reliability.
Of these 735 traditions, 61 (i.e. 8.3 percent) are ascribed to women, or contain
one female transmitter (or very occasionally, more than one) in their isnāds. By
far the majority of the ḥadīths are attributed to ʿĀʾisha bt. Abī Bakr. Three are
credited to Umm Salama. An apocalyptic ḥadīth about the appearance of God
and Magog is related on the authority of another wife of Muḥammad, Zaynab
bt. Jaḥsh, with her co-wife Umm Ḥabība bt. Abī Sufyān (d. ca. 44/644),61 as well
as Zaynab bt. Abī Salama appearing in the isnād as transmitters.62 Another
slightly different version of this ḥadīth also includes Umm Ḥabība’s daugh-
ter, Ḥabība, in this rather convoluted isnād, which thus includes no less than
four female Companions.63 Zaynab bt. Abī Salama is also credited with having
related another ḥadīth on the authority of her mother, Umm Salama. Several
other female Companions have one ḥadīth each related on their authority:
Umm al-Faḍl,64 Umm Mubashshir,65 Umm Hishām bt. Ḥāritha b. al-Nuʿmān66
59 Al-Shāfiʿī and al-Jalīmī, Tafsīr al-Nasāʾī. For the manuscripts used, see their Introduction
(i, 112–18). For the evidence that this work originated as a chapter of al-Nasāʾī’s Sunan
al-kubrā, see pp. 94–6 of their Introduction. While the editors have appended a section
(dhayl) that contains several ḥadīths attributed to or transmitted by women, this adden-
dum will not be discussed here.
60 These nine sūras are: 71, 90, 94, 100, 101, 103, 105, 113 and 114.
61 Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 109–15; Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb xii, 369–70.
62 Al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr ii, 72 (sub. Q 21:96).
63 Al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr ii, 23–4 (sub. Q 17:95).
64 Umm al-Faḍl, or Lubāba the Elder, was reportedly among the first Meccans to follow
Muḥammad. She was married to his uncle, al-ʿAbbās, to whom she bore six sons, includ-
ing Ibn ʿAbbās (Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 320–3).
65 Umm Mubashshir was from Medina. She married the well-known Companion, Zayd b.
Ḥāritha (Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 500–1).
66 For Umm Hishām, see: Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 483–4.
174 CHAPTER 4
and al-Furayʿa bt. Mālik b. Sinān. The (one) ḥadīth from al-Furayʿa is transmit-
ted from her on the authority of her sister-in-law, Zaynab bt. Kaʿb b. ʿUjra.67
It is unclear whether any female Successors are to be found in the isnāds of
the ḥadīths in al-Nasāʾī’s tafsīr chapter. Ṣafiyya bt. Shayba transmits one tradi-
tion from ʿĀʾisha; as is noted in Chapter Two, medieval Muslim biographers do
not agree as to whether Ṣafiyya is to be counted among the Companions or
the Successors. A Kūfan woman, Jasra bt. Dajāja al-ʿĀmiriyya transmits a tra-
dition from the Companion Abū Dharr. While what little is known of her life
suggests that she was a Successor rather than a Companion,68 there is a differ-
ence of opinion on this question.69 Finally, the ḥadīth related by Umm Hishām
bt. Ḥāritha was transmitted by “ʿAmra”—though one manuscript has “ʿAmr” as
the transmitter instead. If “ʿAmra” is the correct reading,70 she is presumably
Umm Hishām’s sister, the well-known Successor ʿAmra bt. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān.71
67 Both women are Medinese. Al-Furayʿa was a sister of a well-known Companion, Abū Saʿīd
al-Khudrī, who was married to Zaynab (Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 407–10).
68 Not only was she from Kūfa, but she only relates from Companions. Jasra is said to have
performed the ʿumra (the “Lesser Pilgrimage”) repeatedly, which seems to have enabled
her to hear ḥadīths from Abū Dharr when she was passing through the village of al-Rabdha;
see: al-Mizzī, Tahdhīb xxxv, 143; Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 532.
69 Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb xii, 357. Ibn al-Athīr includes Jasra among the Companions (Usd
al-ghāba vii, 49–50).
70 Al-Shāfʿī and al-Jalīmī assert that “ʿAmra” is the correct reading (al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr ii, 326,
n. 1).
71 Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb xii, 430.
72 For his career, see: al-Dhahabī, Siyar xvii, 162–77.
Ḥadīth and Hermeneutics 175
ḥadīth each). A dually signifying figure, Umm al-Dardāʾ, appears in one isnād.80
A few female Successors are to be found; ʿAmra bt. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān transmits
a ḥadīth from ʿĀʾisha, and Umm Salama bt. al-ʿAlāʾ b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Yaʿqūb
recounts a ḥadīth to Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Makhzūmī on the authority
of her father, who reported it from her grandfather, who heard it from Abū
Hurayra. However, neither al-Mizzī nor Ibn Ḥajar have a biographical entry
for her,81 and in any case, al-Ḥākim grades both the isnād and the matn of this
ḥadīth as gharīb, while in his comments on the Mustadrak, al-Dhahabī rejects
the isnād due to al-Makhzūmī’s presence in it.82 If this Umm Salama was in fact
a historical person, she seems to have been a very obscure figure not known for
transmitting ḥadīths.
Significantly, al-Ḥākim manages to find at least one ḥadīth (and usually
more) to quote as commentary on every single sūra in the Quran. In this regard,
his chapter on tafsīr in the Mustadrak differs from the tafsīr chapters authored
by al-Bukhārī, al-Tirmidhī, and even al-Nasāʾī, none of which does so. While
this difference is in part due to their varying approaches to the use of ḥadīths
as exegetical materials, it also reflects the wider circulation of ḥadīths as
exegetical materials by his time. Nonetheless, the proportion of ḥadīths attrib-
uted to women in al-Ḥākim’s tafsīr chapter is less than half that of al-Bukhārī’s.
The expansion in the use of ḥadīths as exegetical materials did not necessar-
ily result in a corresponding increase in ḥadīths ascribed to or transmitted by
female figures.
80 This is the same periphrastic tradition cited in al-Tirmidhī; see n. 54, above.
81 Neither is there an entry for her in Ibn Saʿd’s Ṭabaqāt, or in any of the biographical dic-
tionaries devoted to the Companions that have been utilized in this study.
82 Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh al-Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī, Al-Mustadrak ʿalā
l-Ṣaḥīḥayn iv, 1397.
Ḥadīth and Hermeneutics 177
As with the exegetical works surveyed in Chapter Two, ʿĀʾisha is by far the
most oft-cited female figure. Nonetheless, there are significant differences
among their presentations of her. While ʿĀʾisha is a prominent source of ḥadīths
in the tafsīr chapter of al-Tirmidhī (and later, of al-Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī), a
number of ḥadīths credited to other women are also recounted. By contrast,
ʿĀʾisha is not only the preeminent female source of exegetical ḥadīths in
al-Bukhārī’s tafsīr chapter, but significantly, he repeatedly calls attention to
controversial incidents in her life story in ways that emphasize her religious
worthiness as well as her knowledge of matters that are germane to quranic
exegesis.
Although the story of the accusation of adultery against ʿĀʾisha is addressed
in almost all of the second/eighth century exegetical works surveyed in
Chapter Two, it is dealt with fairly succinctly. If any traditions attributed to
her on this topic are quoted at all, they are typically brief and not positioned
as central to the exegesis of the verses traditionally related to this incident. In
the Tafsīr Yaḥyā b. Sallām, for instance, most of the commentary on Q 24:11–26
is short and to the point, focusing mainly on identifying the particular persons
or events alluded to in these verses. While some of this commentary is not
attributed to any particular person, parts of it are related on the authority of
several well-known early figures such as Qatāda, Mujāhid, and al-Suddī. Only
one tersely worded tradition credited to ʿĀʾisha appears, and it simply states
that Abū Bakr expiated his oath (i.e. to no longer financially support Misṭaḥ).83
In al-Bukhārī’s tafsīr chapter, however, the difference in emphasis is appar-
ent. Not only do these quranic verses receive more detailed exposition, but
most of the traditions cited are credited to ʿĀʾisha. She recounts the story of
the accusation and her subsequent vindication at length, in explanation of
Q 24:12–13, and Q 24:19–20, 22.84 Interestingly, a small section of this tradition
is cited as comment on Q 12:18, along with a tradition credited to her mother
Umm Rūmān about ʿĀʾisha’s shocked response upon first hearing the rumours
being spread about her.85 ʿĀʾisha also identifies the one “who had the greater
share” (Q 24:11) in scandal-mongering as ʿAbdallāh b. Ubayy b. Salūl,86 gives her
variant reading of Q 24:15,87 and justifies allowing Ḥassān b. Thābit to visit her.88
In addition, in a hierarchization tradition, she challenges Marwān’s claim that
Q 46:17 was revealed about her brother ʿAbd al-Raḥmān.89
As is well known, the “original” meaning and implications of the Tale of the
Slander continue to be a subject of debate.90 Al-Bukhārī’s treatment of it in his
chapter on tafsīr is a particularly telling illustration of the fact that the story’s
purported meaning(s) are dependent on context. By repeatedly citing tradi-
tions attributed to ʿĀʾisha that retell or make reference to the story, al-Bukhārī
positions his hermeneutical approach as emphatically proto-Sunni by imply-
ing that it is due to events such as the accusation against ʿĀʾisha that she is an
invaluable source of information relevant to a number of quranic verses. It
should be borne in mind that in contradistinction to the proto-Sunnis, Shiʿi
exegetes during the formative period generally identified Māriya the Copt as
the slandered woman referred to in Q 24:11, and ʿĀʾisha as the one who had
falsely accused her.91
While the story of the accusation against ʿĀʾisha is not given the same
centrality in the tafsīr chapters of al-Tirmidhī and al-Nasāʾī, both follow
al-Bukhārī’s lead, though in different ways. Al-Tirmidhī cites a lengthy version
of the story on the authority of ʿĀʾisha, which he grades as ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ gharīb,92
and the existence of an alternate version, also credited to her, that he regards
as more authentic is also noted.93 He also includes a tradition transmitted by
87 Al-Bukhārī vi, 258 (K. al- Tafsīr); similarly, al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xviii,117–18; Ibn Abī Ḥātim viii,
2548; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf iv, 360.
88 Al-Bukhārī vi, 260–1 (K. al- Tafsīr), sub. Q 24:17–18. Similarly, al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xviii, 103–5;
Ibn Abī Ḥātim viii, 2545; al-Thaʿlabī, al, Kashf iv, 358–9.
89 Al-Bukhārī vi, 338–9 (K. al- Tafsīr). Al-Thaʿlabī has a variant of this (al-Kashf v, 457); Ibn
Abī Ḥātim cited a version of it (al-Suyūṭī, Durr vii, 444–5).
90 For example, Denise Spellberg argues that the story of the accusation of adultery is pri-
marily a story about male honour that reduces ʿĀʾisha to passivity, because her words in
her own defense carry no weight (Politics 62ff). However, Ashley Manjarrez Walker and
Michael Sells give a very different interpretation, asserting that the story presents ʿĀʾisha
as achieving “a role that has been difficult in all the major religious traditions: a woman
who can control and master language and signs in the religious sphere and at the same
time be a fully sexual being”; see their article: The wiles of women 55–77.
91 Spellberg, Politics 81; al-Qummī ii, 100. However, as Spellberg notes, Twelver Shiʿi exegetes
in the fifth/eleventh and sixth/twelfth centuries concurred with their Sunni counterparts
that ʿĀʾisha is the slandered woman referred to in Q 24:11, and that God had revealed her
innocence (Politics 82); see: al-Ṭūsī vii, 415; Abū ʿAlī al-Faḍl b. al-Ḥasan al-Ṭabrisī, Majmaʿ
al-bayān fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān vii, 204–6.
92 I.e. that he regards it as authentic though not well attested, as at some point in the isnāds
it is related by only one person.
93 Al-Tirmidhī 720–2 (Abwāb Tafsīr).
Ḥadīth and Hermeneutics 179
ʿAmra from ʿĀʾisha, recounting that Muḥammad commanded that those who
had slandered her be flogged after the quranic verses stating how such offences
are to be punished (Q 24:4–5) were revealed.94 For his part, al-Nasāʾī cites the
story of the accusation made against ʿĀʾisha on her authority as commentary
on Q 24:11,95 as well as a shortened version of this tradition under Q 12:18,96 as
al-Bukhārī does.
By contrast, al-Ḥākim does not cite any traditions retelling the story of the
accusation in his discussion of Sūrat al-Nūr, whether on the authority of ʿĀʾisha
or anyone else. This departure from the precedent set by al-Bukhārī may mir-
ror the continued ambivalence about the story’s place in tafsīr texts, even in
some Sunni circles. While some Quran commentators of the third/ninth and
fourth/tenth centuries, such as al-Ṭabarī and al-Thaʿlabī, do recount the story
in detail on the authority of ʿĀʾisha, al-Māturīdī apparently sees this as an
unnecessary digression.97 The only voice that she is granted in his exegesis of
the verses relating to the accusation against her is the variant reading of Q
24:15, and a brief ḥadīth in which she states that when her innocence had been
divinely made known to Muḥammad, he recited the newly revealed quranic
verses from the pulpit, and ordered the flogging of those who had spread the
rumour.98
While al-Bukhārī’s construction of ʿĀʾisha as the preeminent female source
of ḥadīths relevant to quranic exegesis was unequalled by those traditionists
who followed in his footsteps in compiling tafsīr chapters, it should be noted
that none of them intended their audiences/readers to perceive her as merely
an ordinary woman. Their ḥadīth collections contain chapters on the “mer-
its of the Companions” ( faḍāʾil al-ṣaḥāba), and these single out ʿĀʾisha as one
of the particularly praiseworthy women of the Companion generation.99 This
construction of ʿĀʾisha as a prolific source of exegetical ḥadīths is by its very
nature beyond replication by any woman in a subsequent historical period.
It is noteworthy that these traditionists’ concern with complete isnāds did
not result in the inclusion of a significant proportion of ḥadīths transmitted by
94 Al-Tirmidhī 722 (Abwāb Tafsīr). Al-Tirmidhī grades it as ḥasan-gharīb. As we have seen,
ʿAbd al-Razzāq has a version of this tradition, though its wording differs significantly from
al-Tirmidhī’s; see: ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr ii, 432.
95 Al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr ii, 112–118.
96 Al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr i, 599–602.
97 As he states, “wa qiṣṣat ʿĀʾisha ṭawīla la-kunnā nadhkur mā kāna bi-nā ilā dhālika ḥāja”
(al-Māturīdī vii, 530).
98 Al-Māturīdī vii, 532–3.
99 Al-Bukhārī v, 75–8 (Faḍāʾil aṣḥāb al-nabī); al-Tirmidhī 875–7 (Abwāb al-Manāqib); Aḥmad
b. Shuʿayb al-Nasāʾī, Sunan al-kubrā ii, 1302 (K. al-Manāqib); al-Ḥākim vii, 2392–2405
(K. Maʿrifat al-ṣaḥāba).
180 CHAPTER 4
female Successors in their tafsīr chapters. While some of the female Successors
who appear in the isnāds of these ḥadīths have already been encountered in
the tafsīr works discussed in Chapters Two and Three, others have not. But
whichever the case, most can be categorized along several different lines:
women who are memorialised elsewhere as female ascetics, or as sources of
legal rulings, or women who are virtually unknown.
Two female figures who appear in a few of these isnāds—a dually signi-
fying figure, Umm al-Dardāʾ, as well as a female Successor, Ḥafṣa bt. Sīrīn—
are said to have had extensive knowledge of quranic recitation, as we have
seen. In his recounting of a ḥadīth from ʿĀʾisha on the authority of Muʿādha
al-ʿAdawiyya, which he cites as commentary on Q 33:51, al-Bukhārī presents
yet another female ascetic100 as a transmitter of one tradition that he deems
relevant to exegesis. However, Muʿādha does not seem to have been memori-
alized as someone who was particularly knowledgeable about the Quran or
aspects of its recitation or interpretation.101 While Bukhārī is willing to quote a
few female ascetics, in his view, they merit entry into the exegetical discourse
due to their reputations as reliable sources of ḥadīths,102 not as interpreters
of the quranic text in their own right. As such, they form a telling contrast to
Fāṭima al-Naysābūriyya (d. 223/838), a female Sufi closer in time to al-Bukhārī,
who is said to have expounded upon the meaning of the Quran to the mystic
Dhū l-Nūn al-Miṣrī (d. 246/861), who was her student.103
ʿAmra bt. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān is primarily presented elsewhere as a source of
legal rulings, as has already been noted.104 But most of the remaining female
Successors who appear in the isnāds of these ḥadīths seem to have been
remembered for little more than the transmission of one or two traditions;
100 For depictions of Muʿādha as an ascetic figure, see: Cornell, Early Sufi women 88–9; Ibn
al-Jawzī Ṣifat al-ṣafwa iv, 19–20. Cornell points to evidence that Muʿādha was the founder
of a circle of female ascetics in Baṣra a century before the famous female Baṣran ascetic,
Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya (Introduction, Early Sufi women 61–2).
101 While Ibn al-Jawzī’s biographical notice for her contains one brief mention of her reci-
tation of the Quran during her nightly devotions (Ṣifat al-ṣafwa iv, 19), this is a pietistic
depiction. It does not suggest that she was regarded as notably familiar with the techni-
cal details of quranic recitation. For an overview of representations of formative period
ascetics as ḥadīth transmitters, see: Melchert, Early renunciants 407–17.
102 For Muʾādha as a source of ḥadīths from ʿĀʾisha, see for example: al-Ṭayālisī iii, 149–51. All
of these ḥadīths address details of ritual practice.
103 Cornell, Early Sufi women 144–5.
104 However, Makram and ʿUmar draw attention to one variant reading (of Q 24:11) which is
attributed to ʿAmra (Muʿjam iv, 239).
Ḥadīth and Hermeneutics 181
there is no suggestion in the sources that they might have had any particular
interest in or knowledge about the interpretation of the Quran.
The ḥadīth that is related on the authority of Umayya from ʿĀʾisha by
al-Tirmidhī appears at first glance to be a possible exception: Umayya asks
ʿĀʾisha about Q 2:284—“. . . whether you reveal or conceal your thoughts, God
will call you to account for them . . .”—as well as Q 4:123—“. . . anyone who
does wrong will be requited for it. . . .” ʿĀʾisha responds that she had asked the
prophet about the meaning of these verses, and he had replied:
This is God’s reprimand of his slave, in that he is stricken with fever and
misfortune, right down to the item that he puts in his shirt-sleeve which
he loses and is alarmed about—until the slave is separated from his sins,
just as the red ore issues forth from the bellows.105
In this ḥadīth, a female figure seems to show independent interest in the mean-
ing of two quranic verses that raise some complex theological-exegetical ques-
tions. For, if these verses are taken to mean that human beings will be called to
account for every single thought on the Day of Judgment and punished accord-
ingly, then this would seem to make entry into paradise virtually impossible.
However, ʿĀʾisha’s response locates the accounting and requital which these
verses speak of in this world; through enduring mundane difficulties, such as
illness and loss, believers are purified of their sins.
“Umayya,” however, proves to be elusive. The isnād of this ḥadīth given
by al-Tirmidhī is: ʿAbd b. Ḥamīd—al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā and Rawḥ b. ʿUbāda—
Ḥammād b. Salama—ʿAlī b. Zayd—Umayya—ʿĀʾisha. Tirmidhī grades this
ḥadīth as ḥasan gharīb, and says he does not know of it except through
Ḥammād b. Salama (d. 167/783).106 As this ḥadīth appears in al-Ṭabarī’s tafsīr,
one isnād has ʿAlī b. Zayd relating it from Umayya,107 but according to anoth-
er, he relates it from “his mother” (ummihi).108 In addition, al-Ṭabarī relates
this ḥadīth from “Āmina” in his History.109
105 “hādhihi muʿātabat Allāh al-ʿabd fī-mā yuṣībuhu min al-ḥummā wa-l-nakba ḥattā al-biḍāʿa
yaḍaʿuhā fī yad qamīṣihi fa-yafqiduhā fa-yafzaʿu lahā ḥattā inna l-ʿabd la-yakhruju min
dhunūbihi kamā yakhruju l-tibr al-aḥmar min al-kīr”; al-Tirmidhī 673 (Abwāb Tafsīr).
106 Al-Tirmidhī 673 (Abwāb Tafsīr). For this ḥadīth, see also: al-Ṭayālisī iii, 160; Ibn Ḥanbal vi,
244.
107 Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ v, 362, sub. Q 4:123.
108 Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ iii, 183-4, sub. Q 2:284.
109 Landau-Tasseron, The history of al-Ṭabarī xxxix, 280.
182 CHAPTER 4
Whatever her (?) name might have been, this obscura seems to have been
unknown to medieval biographers, except as the transmitter of this one
ḥadīth.110 Al-Mizzī states that those who identify her as ʿAlī b. Zayd’s mother
are mistaken, but that some say she was his step-mother Umayna, other-
wise known as Umm Muḥammad.111 Moreover, ʿAlī b. Zayd b. Judʿān (d. ca.
131/748) was widely held to have been a notably weak transmitter, with a poor
memory.112 It is likely impossible to determine whether “Umayya” was “originally” a
historical person, a transmitter’s or copyist’s error, or an attempt at isnād exten-
sion or repair. Nonetheless, she gains a limited textual existence through her
mention in the isnād of this ḥadīth in a few Quran commentaries. For instance,
Ibn al-Mundhir has this ḥadīth on the authority of Umayya, as commentary on
Q 2:284, as does Ibn Abī Ḥātim.113 However, many other Quran commentators
opt to recount this ḥadīth without including the isnād, or specifying who it was
who asked ʿĀʾisha about this verse.114
110 It is possible that this transmitter was not female. Ibn Saʿd has a brief entry for an Umayya
b. ʿAbdallāh b. Khālid b. Usayd, a Meccan who is said to have recounted a few ḥadīths
(Ṭabaqāt v, 567).
111 Al-Mizzī, Tahdhīb xxxv, 132–133. Ibn Ḥajar identifies her as ʿAlī b. Zayd’s step-mother
(Tahdhīb xii, 353).
112 While al-Tirmidhī reportedly classified ʿAlī b. Zayd as ṣadūq (sincere)—i.e. that his
ḥadīths cannot be used as legal proofs unless they are corroborated—most traditionists
and tradition critics seem to have regarded even this as overly favourable. Al-Nasāʾī for
instance held that he is ḍaʿīf (weak); see: al-Dhahabī, Siyar v, 206–8; al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh
al-Islām, years 121–40 AH, 498–500.
113 Ibn al-Mundhir i, 95; Ibn Abī Ḥātim ii, 574.
114 E.g. al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf i, 483; similarly: al-Baghawī i, 207.
115 Al-Bukhārī vi, 53–4 (K. al-Tafsīr); al-Tirmidhī 673 (Abwāb Tafsīr).
Ḥadīth and Hermeneutics 183
al-ʿAlaq (S. 96, “The Clinging Form”).116 Al-Nasāʾī relates a ḥadīth ascribed to
ʿĀʾisha in which the prophet describes his experience of revelation, “some-
times like the ringing of a bell . . . and sometimes as an angel in the form of a
man, and he speaks to me, and I understand what he says.”117 Through a hierar-
chization tradition, ʿĀʾisha is also made to weigh in on the debate as to whether
Muḥammad’s vision described in Q 53:11,18 involved a vision of God.118 While
the version of this tradition cited by al-Tirmidhī is very similar to that quoted
in the Tafsīr ʿAbd al-Razzāq discussed earlier,119 it lacks Maʿmar’s concluding
assertion that Ibn ʿAbbās knows more about this issue than ʿĀʾisha. Thus, it
grants her the last word.120
Al-Bukhārī quotes no less than three traditions on the controversy sur-
rounding the interpretation of Q 12:110. One is similar in form and wording to
the controversy tradition on this verse that appears in Ibn Wahb’s Jāmiʿ; how-
ever, in the version recounted by al-Bukhārī, ʿĀʾisha champions the reading of
“kudhdhibū ” and objects to “kudhibū,” the recitation proposed by ʿUrwa (and
also the reading of Ḥafṣ).121 The same point about the verse’s recitation is made
in a much briefer tradition, in which ʿUrwa relates that ʿĀʾisha sought refuge
in God when he suggested that “perhaps they were misled.”122 In addition, a
hierarchization tradition about Q 12:110 related on the authority of Ibn Abī
Mulayka recounts that Ibn ʿAbbās justified his recitation of “kudhibū” by refer-
ring to Q 2:214.123 But when Ibn Abī Mulayka related this to ʿUrwa, the latter
reportedly responded by quoting ʿĀʾisha’s view of the question.124 In a similar
vein, al-Nasāʾī relates several traditions attributed to her denying that prophets
doubt, or that Q 12:110 is open to such a reading,125 and al-Ḥākim also cites one.126
116 Al-Bukhārī vi, 450–5 (K. al-Tafsīr). Versions of these traditions appear in al-Ṭabarī (Jāmiʿ
xxx, 276–7), and al-Thaʿlabī (al-Kashf vi, 496–7).
117 Al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr i, 412, sub. Q 4:163—“We have sent revelation to you as We did to Noah
and the prophets after him. . . .”
118 Al-Bukhārī vi, 359–60 (K. al-Tafsīr).
119 See Chapter Three.
120 Al-Tirmidhī 745 (Abwāb Tafsīr).
121 Al-Bukhārī vi, 179–80 (K. al-Tafsīr); similarly, Ibn Abī Ḥātim vii, 2211.
122 “laʿallahā kudhibū mukhaffafa”; al-Bukhārī vi, 180 (K. al-Tafsīr).
123 “. . . they were afflicted by misfortune and hardship, and they were so shaken that even
[their] Messenger and the believers with him cried, ‘When will God’s help arrive?’ Truly
God’s help is near” (Q 2:214).
124 Al-Bukhārī vi, 37–8 (K. al-Tafsīr). See also: al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xiii, 99.
125 Al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr i, 606–7.
126 Al-Ḥākim iv, 1251 (K. al-Tafsīr), sub. Q 12:110.
184 CHAPTER 4
132 Al-Ḥākim iv, 1328 (K. al-Tafsīr), sub. Q 29:29. Similarly, al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xx, 157; Ibn Abī
Ḥātim ix, 3054.
133 Al-Bukhārī vi, 177 (K. al-Tafsīr), sub. Q 12:18. This tradition is related on the authority of her
mother, Umm Rūmān.
134 Al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr ii, 220.
135 Al-Tirmidhī 760 (Abwāb Tafsīr); al-Ḥākim iv, 1459 (K. al-Tafsīr). Similarly: al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ
xxx, 56.
136 Al-Ḥākim iv, 1421 (K. al-Tafsīr), sub. Q 59:1–2.
137 Al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr ii, 163. Similarly: al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xxi, 138.
138 Al-Ḥākim iv, 1267 (K. al-Tafsīr), sub. Q 17:45.
186 CHAPTER 4
139 Al-Bukhārī vi, 109–10 (K. al-Tafsīr). Similarly, Ibn Abī Ḥātim iv, 1190.
140 Al-Bukhārī vi, 90–1 (K. al-Tafsīr); al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr i, 392. Similarly, Ibn Abī Ḥātim iii, 997.
For the various political uses to which this tradition has been put, see: Spellberg, Politics
38–9.
141 Al-Tirmidhī 686 (Abwāb Tafsīr); Ibn Abī Ḥātim iv, 1173–4. Al-Ṭabarī has this tradition, with
the same isnād, except for the most recent guarantor ( Jāmiʿ vi, 379). Al-Thaʿlabī has a ver-
sion (al-Kashf ii, 477), and al-Māturīdī has yet another (Taʾwīlāt iii, 558).
142 Al-Ḥākim iv, 1206 (K. al-Tafsīr).
143 Al-Qummī i, 199ff; Muḥammad b. Masʿūd b. Ayyāsh al-Sulamī al-Samarqandī al-maʿrūf
bi-l-ʿAyyāshī, Tafsīr al-ʿAyyāshī i, 360–3.
144 Al-Ḥākim iv, 1487 (K. al-Tafsīr), sub. Q 106. Similarly, al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf vi, 554.
Ḥadīth and Hermeneutics 187
clan had been quick to accept his message. Umm Hānīʾ recounts that the
permission given to Muḥammad in Q 33:50 to marry his female cousins who
had made the hijra did not make marriage to her permissible for him, as she
was among the ṭulaqāʾ, i.e. those Meccans who had converted only after the
conquest of their city. While al-Ḥākim deems its isnād ṣaḥīḥ,145 al-Tirmidhī
classifies this tradition as ḥasan.146 In explanation of Q 26:214—“Warn your
nearest kinsfolk”—both al-Tirmidhī and al-Nasāʾī quote a tradition attributed
to ʿĀʾisha, which relates that Muḥammad publicly proclaimed that he has no
power to protect his clan from divine wrath, not even his daughter Fāṭima.147
Al-Ḥākim includes a ḥadīth in praise of the Companions, as a comment on
Q 48:29—“. . . that he may enrage the disbelievers at the sight of them. . . .”
ʿĀʾisha identifies the believers spoken of in this verse as the Companions, and
laments that some curse them.148 He also includes a tradition praising Abū
Bakr and al-Zubayr b. al-ʿAwwām, also attributed to ʿĀʾisha.149 Only al-Ḥākim
sees fit to include a version of the widely circulated ḥadīth attributed to
Umm Salama identifying the “People of the House” (ahl al-bayt) mentioned
in Q 33:33—“God wishes to keep uncleanness away from you, People of the
House”—as ʿAlī, Fāṭima, Ḥasan and Ḥusayn. This ḥadīth recounts that Q 33:33
was revealed to the prophet in her dwelling, and that he summoned these four
persons, and then supplicated, “O God, these are the people of my house!”
But when she inquired if she too is not among the People of the House, he
responded that she is not, although she is among the people of goodness.150
As this latter ḥadīth indicates, the question of what religious status
Muḥammad’s wives held, and how this related to the theological position
(and hence, political claims) attributed by some to the ahl al-bayt was a con-
tentious theo-political issue. Moreover, certain quranic verses that discuss
Muḥammad’s wives also became the focus of sectarian or theological dis-
putes. The tafsīr chapters of al-Bukhārī, al-Tirmidhī, and al-Nasāʾī (though not
al-Ḥākim) cite a number of ḥadīths attributed to ʿĀʾisha in explanation of sev-
eral quranic verses pertaining directly to these women: the Verse of the Choice
(Q 33:28–29),151 the verse discussing his controversial marriage to Zaynab bt.
Jaḥsh (Q 33:37),152 verses listing the categories of women that Muḥammad is
permitted to marry (Q 33:50, 52),153 as well as one transmitted from ʿĀʾisha by
Muʿādha al-ʿAdawiyya regarding his allocation of time to his wives (Q 33:51),154
the directive that male visitors to the prophet address his wives from behind a
screen (Q 33:53),155 and a reference to a conflict between Muḥammad and two
of his wives (Q 66:1).156
It is interesting that in these three tafsīr chapters, as in Sunni Quran com-
mentaries of the time, it is ʿĀʾisha alone of all of the Mothers of the Believers
who is given a voice on these matters, even though one would presume that
many if not most of Muḥammad’s other wives would have been just as capable
of recounting the circumstances surrounding the revelation of these verses.
Some of these ḥadīths have the effect of enhancing ʿĀʾisha’s image as an author-
itative and insightful source, particularly those in which she connects the con-
troversy over the prophet’s marriage to Zaynab to the theological question of
whether he would have concealed any part of the revelation. The intended
151 Al-Bukhārī vi, 292–4 (K. al-Tafsīr); al-Tirmidhī 728 (Abwāb Tafsīr). Similarly: al-Ṭabarī,
Jāmiʿ xxi, 170; al-Māturīdī viii, 375; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf v, 104.
152 Al-Tirmidhī 728–9 (Abwāb Tafsīr). This tradition is also cited in: al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xxii, 17;
al-Māturīdī viii, 392; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf v, 115. Al-Nasāʾī quotes a different tradition on
ʿĀʾisha’s authority for this verse (Tafsīr ii, 175–7). Q 33:37 declares that Muḥammad is now
married to the ex-wife of Zayd b. Ḥāritha, who was his adopted son. This marriage caused
a great deal of controversy; see: Stowasser, Women in the Qurʾan 87–9.
153 Al-Tirmidhī 730 (Abwāb Tafsīr); al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr ii, 183. This tradition is cited in al-Ṭabarī,
Jāmiʿ xxii, 36; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf v, 125. Al-Māturīdī quotes this tradition as evidence
against a Muʿtazilī interpretation of Q 66:5 (Taʾwīlāt x, 85).
154 Al-Bukhārī vi, 295–6 (K. al-Tafsīr); al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr ii, 182. This tradition is cited in al-Ṭabarī,
Jāmiʿ xxii, 29; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf v, 123. Ibn Abī Ḥātim reportedly cited it (Suyūṭī, Durr vi,
634).
155 Al-Bukhārī vi, 300–1 (K. al-Tafsīr). This tradition is cited by al-Ṭabarī (Jāmiʿ xxii, 44–5) and
al-Thaʿlabī (al-Kashf v, 128). Al-Nasāʾī relates a different tradition (also on ʿĀʾisha’s author-
ity) for this verse (Tafsīr ii, 188–9); Ibn Abī Ḥātim is also said to have related it (al-Suyūṭī,
Durr vi, 640–1).
156 Al-Bukhārī vi, 404–5 (K. al-Tafsīr).
Ḥadīth and Hermeneutics 189
target appears to be Shiʿi claims that esoteric knowledge was transmitted from
Muḥammad to a chosen few among his relatives.
However, the tradition related by al-Bukhārī and al-Nasāʾī in which ʿĀʾisha
recounts that when Q 33:51 was revealed, she said, “O Messenger of God, I see
that your Lord hastens to fulfill your desire” appears to convey a more ambig-
uous message. While this tradition seems to have been well known in third/
ninth and fourth/tenth century exegetical circles (and widely cited in the
course of exegeses of this verse), ḥadīths with the theme of ʿĀʾisha’s “jealousy”
of her co-wives was used by some Shiʿi exegetes to condemn her as impious.157
This tradition also belongs to a subset of traditions circulated by proto-Sunnis
that present Muḥammad’s wives as “jealous” and engaged in petty rivalries as
part of a larger admonitory discourse on the supposedly flawed “nature” of
womankind in general.158
163 Al-Bukhārī vi, 35 (K. al-Tafsīr); al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr i, 246–7. Similarly: al-Māturīdī ii, 95; Ibn
Abī Ḥātim ii, 354.
164 Al-Bukhārī vi, 24–25 (K. al-Tafsīr).
165 The context suggests that “those before you” refers to Jews and Christians. Al-Ṭabarī
relates this interpretation (Jāmiʿ ii, 159). ʿĀshūrāʾ, now regarded by Sunnis as a voluntary
fast day observed on the 10th day of Muḥarram in the Muslim hijrī calendar, has its origins
in the Jewish fast on the Day of Atonement; see: Goitein, Studies in Islamic 94ff.
166 “Safa and Marwa are among the rites of God, so for those who make major or minor pil-
grimage to the House [i.e. the Kaʿba], it is no offence to circulate between the two.”
167 Al-Bukhārī vi, 19–20 (K. al-Tafsīr); al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr i, 199; al-Tirmidhī 667 (Abwāb Tafsīr).
Al-Bukhārī has another version of this tradition as well, cited as commentary under
Q 53:20; see: al-Bukhārī vi, 362–3 (K. al-Tafsīr). For al-Ḥākim’s version, see: al-Mustadrak
iii, 1151 (K. al-Tafsīr). For other versions, see: al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ ii, 63–4; Ibn Abī Ḥātim i, 266–7;
al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf i, 222–3. Al-Māturīdī notes that ʿĀʾisha is credited with this view
(Taʾwīlāt i, 606).
Ḥadīth and Hermeneutics 191
perform the saʿy. However, arguing on the basis of the linguistic structure of the
verse, as well as its occasion-of-revelation, ʿĀʾisha demonstrates that his view
is mistaken. In this way, she is presented as a ritual and exegetical authority.
A couple of traditions in the tafsīr chapters of al-Bukhārī and al-Nasāʾī
address economic issues. For Q 4:6, a verse that regulates a guardian’s man-
agement of an orphan’s inheritance, al-Bukhārī quotes a tradition credited to
ʿĀʾisha.168 No less than four versions of the same tradition attributed to ʿĀʾisha
are cited by al-Bukhārī in explanation of Q 2:275–6, 2:279–80 (al-Nasāʾī limits
himself to only two).169 These verses prohibit usury (ribā), and Q 2:275 empha-
sizes its forbidden nature, in contrast to trade. The tradition ascribed to ʿĀʾisha,
however, asserts that when these verses were revealed, Muḥammad recited
them publicly and announced a ban on trading in wine. By deploying tradi-
tions in this way, the legal material in the quranic text is extended to cover an
increasing number of legal problems.170 Another legal issue, what constitutes
the “unintentional oaths” referred to in Q 5:89, is addressed in a tradition cred-
ited to ʿĀʾisha by both al-Bukhārī and al-Nasāʾī.171
A number of traditions attributed to women in al-Bukhārī’s tafsīr chapter
address various overtly gendered legal-exegetical issues, some of which have
already been seen in exegetical works conventionally dated to the second/
eighth and early third/ninth centuries surveyed in Chapter Two. Some of
these traditions address various aspects of marriage and divorce. Al- Bukhārī,
along with al-Nasāʾī, includes an occasion-of-revelation tradition attributed to
ʿĀʾisha for Q 4:127 (a verse referring to the marriage of female orphans),172 as
well as for Q 4:128—“If a wife fears highhandedness or alienation from her
husband. . . .” According to this tradition credited to ʿĀʾisha, this latter verse
pertains to a situation in which a woman has been married to a man for a long
time, and in order to dissuade her husband from his intention to divorce her,
168 Al-Bukhārī vi, 81 (K. al-Tafsīr). Al-Ṭabarī has a version of this (Jāmiʿ iv, 315); see also: Ibn
Abī Ḥātim iii, 867; similarly, al-Māturīdī iii, 26–7. Al-Thaʿlabī refers to her ruling on this,
without citing any tradition (al-Kashf ii, 239).
169 Al-Bukhārī vi, 49–50 (K. al-Tafsīr); al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr i, 288–9.
170 While the Quran bans wine drinking (i.e. Q 5:90–1), it says nothing about buying or selling
it. However, this issue is taken up in detail in the ḥadīth literature; see: Kueny, The rhetoric
of sobriety 25ff.
171 Al-Bukhārī vi, 109 (K. al-Tafsīr); al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr i, 444. Similarly: al-Māturīdī iii, 580; Ibn
Abī Ḥātim iv, 1189. Al-Ṭabarī has a few related traditions credited to her on this issue (Jāmiʿ
ix, 19).
172 Al-Bukhārī vi, 79–80, 98–9 (K. al-Tafsīr ); al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr i, 407. Similarly: al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ v,
369; al-Māturīdī iii, 375; Ibn Abī Ḥātim iv, 1077.
192 CHAPTER 4
she offers to waive the rights due to her as a wife.173 Umm Salama is referred
to as the final authority in a conflict arbitration tradition174 about the dura-
tion of the ʿidda for a pregnant widow,175 while al-Nasāʾī relates a ḥadīth from
al-Furayʿa bt. Mālik about where a widow spends her ʿidda.176 Interestingly,
in al-Ḥākim’s tafsīr chapter the ḥadīths credited to women on marriage and
divorce address a different set of topics: fixed-term (mutʿa) marriage,177 and the
occasion-of-revelation of Q 58:1–4, which bans the pre-Islamic practice of
ẓihār.178 A legal dictum stating that “no divorce is possible before marriage and
no freeing a slave before purchase” is related by several Companions, including
ʿĀʾisha, who transmit it from Muḥammad.179
A tradition related by Ṣafiyya bt. Shayba in which ʿĀʾisha praises early Muslim
women for their prompt response to the revelation of Q 24:31—they tore their
wraps (izārs) and veiled themselves with them180—is cited by al-Bukhārī,
al-Nasāʾī and al-Ḥākim.181 Further augmenting ʿĀʾisha’s image as a source of
173 Al-Bukhārī vi, 99 (K. al-Tafsīr); al-Nasāʾī i, 408–9. Several versions are found in al-Ṭabarī,
Jāmiʿ v, 375–6; see also: al-Māturīdī iii, 377; Ibn Abī Ḥātim iv, 1079.
174 In this category of traditions, two or more men, typically male Companions or Successors,
differ about an issue (often a legal point), and cannot agree. Finally, the matter is referred
to a woman (most often, to ʿĀʾisha or Umm Salama, or sometimes both), and she/they
decisively resolve(s) it.
175 Al-Bukhārī vi, 402–3 (K. al-Tafsīr), sub. Q 65:4
176 Al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr i, 262–3, sub. Q 2:234
177 Al-Ḥākim iii, 1196; iv, 1308 (K. al-Tafsīr), sub. Q 4:24. Mutʿa (lit. “pleasure”) is a practice
of pre-Islamic origin in which a man marries a woman for a specified period of time for
the purpose of sexual pleasure, in exchange for a previously agreed-upon sum or item of
value. For an overview of Twelver Shiʿi ḥadīth as well as legal and exegetical discourses
on mutʿa, see: Gribetz, Strange bedfellows, esp. 48–60; 78–105; 130–46. It should be noted
that in practice, fixed-term marriage has taken a variety of forms and served a range of
purposes, not all of them sexual; see: Haeri, Law of desire, esp. 78ff.
178 Al-Ḥākim iv, 1418–9 (K. al-Tafsīr). Similarly: al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xxviii, 8–9.
179 Al-Ḥākim iv, 1340 (K. al-Tafsīr), sub. Q 33:49.
180 Al-Bukhārī recounts two versions of this tradition; the first (which is not transmitted
through Ṣafiyya) relates that the women tore their “shawls” (murūṭ). The wording of these
traditions is rather obscure; for a late medieval attempt to explain how tearing garments
would result in more complete coverage, see: Clarke, Ḥijāb 228.
181 Al-Bukhārī vi, 267 (K. al-Tafsīr); al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr ii, 121; al-Ḥākim iv, 1313 (K. al-Tafsīr).
Similarly: al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xviii, 143–4; al-Māturīdī vii, 549; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf iv, 367–8.
For other versions, see: Ibn Abī Ḥātim viii, 2575.
Ḥadīth and Hermeneutics 193
182 Al-Bukhārī vi, 301–2 (K. al-Tafsīr), sub. Q 33:54–5. In Q 4:23, a man is forbidden to marry
any woman who has breastfed him, or any daughter of hers. Ḥadīths such as this one
further elaborate upon the scope and implications of this prohibition.
183 Al-Bukhārī vi, 385–6 (K. al-Tafsīr); al-Tirmidhī 752 (Abwāb Tafsīr). Similarly: al-Thaʿlabī,
al-Kashf vi, 173
184 Al-Bukhārī vi, 386–7 (K. al-Tafsīr). Al-Ṭabarī has it (Jāmiʿ xxviii, 89)
185 Al-Tirmidhī 752 (Abwāb Tafsīr). Similarly: al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xxviii, 89; Ibn Abī Ḥātim cited it
(al-Suyūṭī, Durr viii, 141).
186 Al-Ḥākim iv, 1424 (K. al-Tafsīr)
187 Traditions about early Muslim women giving bayʿa often specify that they accepted addi-
tional strictures above and beyond those given in Q 60:12, such as not traveling without a
male escort, avoiding being alone with a man who is not a close relative, and especially,
not lamenting their dead; see: Stowasser, The status of women 34; Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii,
5–9; al-Suyūṭī, Durr viii, 139–44.
188 Al-Bukhārī’s version has ʿĀʾisha herself state this, while in al-Tirmidhī, it is an addition
made by the sub-narrator, Maʿmar b. Rāshid. It is noteworthy that handshakes between
male and female ascetics were also a matter of controversy for some late antique Christian
leaders, who directed them to wrap their hands in their cloaks first; see: Salisbury, Church
Fathers 16. In a similar vein, it is related that “[w]hen the prophet received the women’s
allegiance, a garment covered his hand” (Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 3).
189 Al-Bukhārī vi, 386–7 (K. al-Tafsīr); al-Tirmidhī 752 (Abwāb Tafsīr).
194 CHAPTER 4
said to Muḥammad, “I see that everything is for the men, and I don’t see the
women mentioned in anything.”190 Then, Q 33:35—“For men and women who
are devoted to God, for believing men and women . . .” was revealed. However,
another tradition that he cites quotes Mujāhid as stating that Q 33:35 was
revealed about Muḥammad’s wife Umm Salama.191 For their part, al-Nasāʾī
and al-Ḥākim relate that the descent of this verse followed a query posed to
Muḥammad by Umm Salama, who asked him why men are mentioned in the
Quran while women are not.192 Interestingly, al-Tirmidhī and al-Ḥākim also
quote noticeably similar occasion-of-revelation traditions for Q 3:195 as well
as for Q 4:32, which are also said to have been revealed to Muḥammad after
Umm Salama posed similar questions.193 Al-Ḥākim grades these three tradi-
tions that he cites as ṣaḥīḥ, although he expresses some reservation in the case
of the occasion-of-revelation tradition for Q 4:32.194 Al-Tirmidhī seems dubi-
ous about the reliability of any of these traditions. He grades the Umm ʿUmāra
tradition as ḥasan-gharīb, and notes the similarity between the occasion-of-
revelation traditions about Q 4:32 and 3:195, stating that the latter tradition is
mursal.195 This is a particularly fascinating example of the quotation of tradi-
tions by ḥadīth compilers in their tafsīr chapters in response to their already-
established presence in Quran commentaries. These traditions raise complex
historical and interpretive questions.196
Many of these ḥadīths attributed to women on legal-exegetical issues were
also being cited in third/ninth and fourth/tenth century exegetical discourses.
The ḥadīth about the saʿy credited to ʿĀʾisha is a good example of a tradition
that is well known to jurists—the version given in al-Bukhārī and al-Nasāʾī is
related on the authority of Mālik197—as well as to traditionists and exegetes.
Widely circulated ḥadīths such as this seem to have gained entry to exegetical
discourses fairly early on, in part because they were already a fixture in legal
discourses.
190 “mā arā kulla shayʾin illā li-l-rijāl wa-mā arā l-nisāʾ yudhkarna bi-shayʾ ”.
191 Al-Tirmidhī 729, 679 (Abwāb Tafsīr).
192 Al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr ii, 169, 173; al-Ḥākim iv, 1336 (K. al-Tafsīr).
193 Al-Tirmidhī 679–80 (Abwāb Tafsīr); al-Ḥākim iii, 1197, 1189 (K. al-Tafsīr).
194 Al-Ḥākim iii, 1189, 1197; iv, 1336–7 (K. al-Tafsīr).
195 Al-Tirmidhī 729, 679–80 (Abwāb Tafsīr).
196 See Chapter Five for more on this issue.
197 This tradition appears in Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ; see: Muwaṭṭaʾ 351–2 (K. al-Ḥajj).
Ḥadīth and Hermeneutics 195
198 Al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr ii, 23–4 (sub. Q 17:95) and 72 (sub. Q 21:96).
199 Al-Ḥākim iv, 1256, 1361 (K. al-Tafsīr); al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr ii, 240. Similarly: al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ
xxiv, 32.
200 al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr ii, 6 (sub. 18:47); Al-Ḥākim iv, 1460 (K. al-Tafsīr), sub. Q 80:34–7.
201 Al-Bukhārī vi, 435 (K. al-Tafsīr); al-Tirmidhī 761 (Abwāb Tafsīr); al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr ii, 461–2,
507.
202 Al-Ḥākim iv, 1397 (K. al-Tafsīr), sub. Q 49:11.
196 CHAPTER 4
al-Ṭabarī and others (as well as al-Nasāʾī and al-Ḥākim) related this ḥadīth on
her authority, some versions recount that she asked the prophet this question,
but their isnāds do not extend back to her.203
A few traditions offer the audience/reader glimpses of Paradise and Hell.
In one ḥadīth, ʿĀʾisha describes the punishments in Hell undergone by ʿAmr
b. Luḥayy, who had reportedly instituted the custom of dedicating domestic
animals to pagan Arabian deities and then letting them go free.204 Another
interprets the “kawthar” (Q 108:1) that is promised to Muḥammad as a river in
Paradise.205 A ḥadīth attributed to Umm al-ʿAlāʾ al-Anṣāriyya about the death
of a Companion well known for his piety stresses the impossibility of knowing
what any person’s destination in the Afterlife will be.206 This point is also made
in a ḥadīth credited to Umm Mubashshir, which recounts that the prophet said
that “God willing,” those Companions who pledged allegiance under the tree
(i.e. at Hudaybiyya) will not enter Hell.207 This attitude that believers should
adopt in the face of such uncertainty is summed up on a ḥadīth attributed to
ʿĀʾisha, in which she relates that she asked the prophet if the people referred
to in Q 23:60—“Those who give what they give with fearful hearts . . .”—are
those who commit sins, such as theft and wine drinking. He responded that
this verse is speaking of those who fast, pray and give in charity, while fear-
ing that God might not accept such acts of worship.208 As we saw in previous
chapters, a variant reading of Q 23:60 credited to ʿĀʾisha is in circulation by
the end of the second/eighth century; third/ninth and fourth/tenth century
exegetes often continue to quote either a variant reading attributed to her, a
version of this ḥadīth, or sometimes both when discussing this verse.
203 E.g. al-Tirmidhī 705 (Abwāb Tafsīr). Al-Tirmidhī does note the existence of other “com-
plete” isnāds that go back to ʿĀʾisha. This tradition also is found in Ibn Wahb, see: al-Ǧāmiʿ
(1993), fol. 5b, 23–4, fol. 6a,1–6. The lower part of the isnād in Ibn Wahb’s version of this
ḥadīth is missing due to manuscript damage, making it impossible to tell if it is in fact
related on ʿĀʾisha’s authority. While Murányi has vocalized sʾlt as saʾaltu (I asked), thus
presenting ʿĀʾisha as the putative narrator, saʾalat (she asked) would better accord with
the third-person pronouns used throughout the remainder of this ḥadīth.
204 Al-Bukhārī vi, 116 (K. al-Tafsīr).
205 Al-Bukhārī vi, 462 (K. al-Tafsīr); al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr ii, 558–9.
206 Al-Ḥākim iv, 1385–6 (K. al-Tafsīr), sub. Q 46:9. Similarly: al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf v, 451–2.
207 Al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr ii, 36, sub. Q 19:72. This is also a theo-political ḥadīth, as it implies praise
for a number of prominent Companions.
208 Al-Tirmidhī 718–19 (Abwāb Tafsīr); al-Ḥākim iv, 1308 (K. al-Tafsīr). Similarly: al-Ṭabarī,
Jāmiʿ xviii, 40; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf iv, 329. Ibn Abī Ḥātim reportedly cited it (al-Suyūṭī,
Durr vi, 105).
Ḥadīth and Hermeneutics 197
209 Al-Bukhārī vi, 37 (K. al-Tafsīr); al-Tirmidhī 669 (Abwāb Tafsīr); al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr i, 251.
210 Al-Bukhārī vi, 344–5 (K. al-Tafsīr), sub. Q 48:2. See also: al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr ii, 471 (sub. Q 73:2),
and al-Ḥākim iv, 1447 (K. al-Tafsīr), sub. Q 73:1.
211 Al-Bukhārī vi, 339–40 (K. al-Tafsīr); al-Tirmidhī 741 (Abwāb Tafsīr); al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr ii, 292–3;
al-Ḥākim iv, 1387 (K. al-Tafsīr), sub. Q 46:24.
212 Al-Bukhārī vi, 90–1 (K. al-Tafsīr), sub. Q 4:69.
213 Al-Bukhārī vi, 464 (K. al-Tafsīr); al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr ii, 564–5 (sub. Q 110:3). See also: al-Ṭabarī,
Jāmiʿ xxx, 378.
214 Al-Tirmidhī 768 (Abwāb Tafsīr), sub. Q 113:3. Al-Ṭabarī cites it (Jāmiʿ xxx, 398). Al-Thaʿlabī
has a version of it (al-Kashf vi, 602–3).
215 Al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr ii, 538–9. Similarly, al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf vi, 508; note also the saying he
attributes to ʿĀʾisha immediately following this ḥadīth.
216 Al-Bukhārī vi, 179–80 (K. al-Tafsīr); al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr i, 606.
217 Al-Tirmidhī 736 (Abwāb Tafsīr). Similarly: al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf v, 312.
198 CHAPTER 4
Which prayer is meant by the phrase “the middle prayer” is unclear, and its
identity is much debated in legal219 as well as exegetical works from the forma-
tive period. In this tradition about ʿĀʾisha’s codex, the addition of the words,
“and the ʿaṣr prayer” (wa-ṣalāt al-ʿaṣr) eliminate the ʿaṣr (mid-afternoon)
prayer as a possible contender.
Al-Ṭabarī’s Quran commentary indicates that by the third/ninth century,
there were a considerable number of traditions in circulation identifying “the
middle prayer” as the ṣubḥ (dawn) prayer, the ẓuhr (noon) prayer, the ʿaṣr
prayer, and the maghrib (evening) prayer—in addition to those asserting that
its identity is unknown.220 Among those he cites are no less than fourteen tra-
ditions purporting to recount how Q 2:238 was written in the codices of Ḥafṣa,
ʿĀʾisha, or Umm Salama respectively—and they do not agree as to its wording.221
By including this codex tradition which he grades as ḥasan-ṣaḥīḥ in his tafsīr
chapter (as well as noting the existence of a similar tradition about Ḥafṣa’s
codex), al-Tirmidhī apparently sought to highlight what he deemed to be a
222 Women’s codex traditions in and of themselves (as well as their textual functions in clas-
sical Quran commentaries) are a complex historical phenomenon. I am presently prepar-
ing a study of this issue.
223 This observation is chiefly based on Makram and ʿUmar’s Muʿjam al-qirāʾāt, which is
based on several classical Quran commentaries, including al-Ṭabarī’s Jāmiʿ.
224 See for example: Abū ʿUbayd, Faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān 216–79 (Jamāʾ abwāb suwar al-Qurʾān
wa-āyātuhu wa-mā fīhā min al-faḍāʾil).
225 For a survey of such traditions and a discussion of them from the perspective of tradi-
tional ḥadīth criticism, see: Ibrāhīm ʿAlī al-Sayyid ʿAlī ʿĪsā, Al-Aḥādīth wa-l-āthār.
200 CHAPTER 4
included the former in the chapters on “the merits of the Quran” ( faḍāʾīl
al-Qurʾān) in their ḥadīth compilations.
Moreover, al-Bukhārī elects to include a select few in his tafsīr chapter
(and al-Nasāʾī, following in his footsteps, does likewise). Whether in so doing
al-Bukhārī was attempting to introduce traditions of this type into quranic exe-
gesis, or responding to their already widespread use in commentarial or quasi-
commentarial works or discourses, is difficult to say, though the latter appears
more likely. What we do know is that by al-Ḥākim’s time, some Sunni as well
as Twelver Shiʿi exegetes included merit-of-sūra traditions in their tafsīr works
to varying degrees, as the Quran commentaries of both al-Samarqandī as well
as al-ʿAyyāshī (d. 320/932) illustrate.226 Al-Ḥākim, by introducing a little more
than half of the sūras of the Quran with one or two merit-of-sūra traditions in
his tafsīr chapter, is thus promoting while also critically assessing a practice
that already exists in Sunni and Twelver Shiʿi exegesis. His student al-Thaʿlabī
proceeded to further refine this practice in his Quran commentary, by
including at least one merit-of-sūra tradition at the beginning of his discussion
of each quranic sūra.227
While the great majority of the merit-of-sūra traditions found in medieval
Sunni Quran commentaries are ascribed to male Companions famed for their
expertise in quranic recitation, such as Ubayy b. Kaʿb or Ibn Masʿūd, a small
number are attributed to women. Examining those credited to female fig-
ures and presented in the tafsīr chapters compiled by traditionists provides a
good illustration of the legitimating function of gendered constructions of the
sacred past in this process of bifurcation between authoritative and devotional
Quran recitation.
In order for any ḥadīths to be deemed authentic according to the standards
of the ṣaḥīḥ movement, they had to extend back to the prophet. What merit-
of-sūra traditions would be more believable than those that not only had
complete isnāds, but also contained purported eye witness testimony about
Muḥammad’s own personal practice? And who better than the prophet’s wives
to relate ḥadīths about how his daily life was punctuated by his recitation of
226 Of the Tafsīr al-ʿAyyāshī, only the commentary on sūras 1–18 has survived. In most cases,
one or more merit-of-sūra traditions are quoted at the beginning of each sūra in this tafsīr.
Al-Samarqandī places one or two merit-of-sūra traditions at the end of approximately
half of the 114 sūras that he discusses in his Quran commentary. As al-Samarqandī’s tafsīr
is intended to summarize existing Sunni exegetical perspectives, it seems unlikely that
his inclusion of such traditions in a semi-systematic fashion was unprecedented among
Sunnis.
227 For a detailed discussion of this type of tradition and their textual functions in al-Thaʿlabī’s
Quran commentary, see: Saleh, Formation 103–8.
Ḥadīth and Hermeneutics 201
the Quran? Thus, Umm Salama (via her daughter Zaynab) recounts how she
heard Muḥammad reciting Sūrat al-Ṭūr (S. 52, “The Mountain”) as he circum-
ambulated the Kaʿba,228 and ʿĀʾisha relates that every night, he would recite
Sūrat Banī Isrāʾīl (S. 17, “The Children of Israel”) and Sūrat al-Zumar (S. 39, “The
Throngs”).229 Thus, the Quran supplies Muḥammad’s idiom of worship—and
by extension, that of believers in general.
As the latter tradition also illustrates, the recitation of the Quran has the
potential to connect the believer to Muḥammad, through reciting certain pas-
sages or sūras in accordance with Muḥammad’s example. ʿĀʾisha (via ʿAmra)
recounts that Muḥammad used to recite Sūrat al-Aʿlā (S. 87, “The Most High”)
in the first rakʿa of his witr prayer, Sūrat al-Kāfirūn (S. 109, “The Disbelievers”)
in the second, and Sūras al-Ikhlāṣ (S. 112, “Purity [of Faith]”), Falaq (S. 113,
“Daybreak”) and al-Nās (S. 114, “People”) in the third.230 This tradition provides
believers with a model of ritual practice that can be easily imitated. Moreover,
such a connection between the believer and Muḥammad can even be fostered
through listening to another person recite certain sūras or verses. Thus Umm
al-Faḍl reportedly said when she heard Ibn ʿAbbās recite Sūrat al-Mursalāt
(S. 77, “[Winds] Sent Forth”) that his recitation reminded her of hearing the
prophet recite this sūra in the maghrib prayer.231
Nonetheless, the notion that average believers should make quranic recita-
tion a regular part of their devotions raised some practical difficulties. Who
better than a woman to transmit a saying of Muḥammad assuring believers that
a lack of learning or literacy, or even limited fluency in Arabic is not a barrier
to engaging in devotional quranic recitation? The report credited to a female
Companion, Umm Hishām bt. Ḥāritha, that she memorized Sūra Qāf (S. 50) by
hearing the prophet recite it when he would lead the congregation in the dawn
prayer models an approach to learning quranic passages that would be acces-
sible to the average, unlettered believer.232 A tradition attributed to ʿĀʾisha
relates that Muḥammad stated that those who recite the Quran from mem-
ory will be with “the noble, righteous scribes” (al-safara al-kirām al-barara),
while those who recite it with difficulty will have double reward.233
228 Al-Bukhārī vi, 357 (K. al-Tafsīr); al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr ii, 335, sub. S. 52.
229 Al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr ii, 227–8; al-Ḥākim iv, 1359 (K. al-Tafsīr). See also: al-Tirmidhī 656 (Abwāb
Faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān). Al-Thaʿlabī cites it at the beginning of Sūrat al-Zumar (al-Kashf v, 288)
230 Al-Ḥākim iv, 1467 (K. al-Tafsīr). Al-Ḥākim cites this tradition at the beginning of the com-
mentary on Sūrat al-Aʿlā.
231 Al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr ii, 486.
232 Al-Nasāʾī, Tafsīr ii, 326.
233 Al-Bukhārī vi, 431–2 (K. al-Tafsīr). This is the only tradition of any type that al-Bukhārī
cites for Sūrat ʿAbasa (S. 80, “He Frowned”), and its only connection to this sūra is that it
evokes verses 15–16: “by the hands of noble and virtuous scribes” (bi-aydī safara kirāmin
202 CHAPTER 4
The question of how ḥadīth has been related to the genre of Quran commen-
tary historically is a complex one, in part because discussion of the relation-
ship between the two emergent disciplines of quranic exegesis and ḥadīth has
often been theologically charged. Tafsīr and the study of ḥadīth developed in
the formative period along significantly different methodological lines. This
difference is reflected in the literary form of most of the traditions found in
exegetical works conventionally dated to the formative period, as well as in
their isnāds, which are often deficient from the perspective of the traditionists.
Nonetheless, historically, the boundaries between Quran exegesis and
a number of other medieval disciplines, including the study of ḥadīth have
been porous,235 and historically, there has been a marginal current of radically
ḥadīth-based Sunni approaches to tafsīr. This current has chiefly flourished
in two periods: the third/ninth to fourth/tenth centuries, and the thirteenth/
nineteenth until the present.236
barara). Al-Nasāʾī also has this ḥadīth (Tafsīr ii, 492). See also: al-Tirmidhī 652–3 (Abwāb
Faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān).
234 “lā tunzilūhunna l-ghuraf wa lā tuʿallimūhunna l-kitāba—yaʿnī al-nisāʾ—wa-ʿallimūhunna
l-mighzal wa-Sūrat al-Nūr”; al-Ḥākim iv, 1311 (K. al-Tafsīr). This tradition is quoted in a
number of medieval Quran commentaries and has a complex reception history; for more
on this, see Chapter Six.
235 It has been pointed out that medieval quranic exegesis was not limited to Quran com-
mentaries, but was found in works from a range of disciplines; see: McAuliffe, The genre
445–61.
236 Saleh, Preliminary remarks 27–30, 32–4.
Ḥadīth and Hermeneutics 203
237 For a study of Ibn Taymiyya’s hermeneutical theory, see: Saleh, Ibn Taymiyya esp. 144–7.
238 Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima 79–80. While Ibn Ḥanbal is said to have authored a Quran
commentary (al-Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt 54), which does not appear to have come down to us, it
is not clear what the historical basis of his inclusion of Ibn Māja might be. Ibn Māja does
not seem to have been credited with authoring any exegetical work, and at least in the
form that we now have it, his Sunan does not contain a tafsīr chapter.
239 While he does include a biographical notice for al-Bukhārī, this appears to be due to
reports that attribute a Quran commentary to him; see: al-Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt 370–3. It does
not seem that merely having authored a tafsīr chapter in a ḥadīth compilation was suf-
ficient to be classed among the exegetes in al-Dāwūdī’s view.
240 For the parts of Ibn Abī Ḥātim’s commentary that have survived, see the Introduction.
241 E.g. for al-Thaʿlabī’s rejection of ḥadīth narration in and of itself as a valid approach to
tafsīr, see: Saleh, Formation 81–2.
204 CHAPTER 4
that Sunni Quran commentators typically bring into being in their works—the
community of Muḥammad’s followers and the transhistorical community of
exegetes—come closest to being presented as one.242 As we have seen,243 Ibn
Abī Ḥātim includes a small number of early Muslim women in the transhis-
torical community of exegetes that he constructs, in their capacities as sources
or transmitters of ḥadīths.
The third/ninth century traditionists’ assessments of the ḥadīths often
in use in exegetical circles do not appear to have had a direct impact on the
genre of tafsīr until the fifth/eleventh century, when al-Wāḥidī quotes ḥadīths
directly from al-Bukhārī and Muslim as well as from al-Ḥākim in his second
Quran commentary, Al-Wasīṭ. As the Ṣaḥīḥayn had achieved canonical status
for the Shāfiʿīs and Ḥanbalīs by this time,244 al-Bukhārī was an increasingly
unavoidable reference point for adherents of those schools in particular. A
number of later medieval Sunni exegetes include ḥadīths from the compila-
tions discussed above (including ḥadīths attributed to women, most often to
ʿĀʾisha) in their Quran commentaries. For instance, Ibn ʿAṭiyya quotes ḥadīths
from al-Bukhārī, al-Tirmidhī and al-Nasāʾī, while al-Qurṭubī quotes from
al-Bukhārī and al-Tirmidhī, among others.245 In works such as these, ḥadīths
are but one of a number of interpretive tools brought to bear on the quranic
text, and although they form a noticeable part of the exegetical discourse, they
do not by any means dominate it, nor are they accorded veto power over its
conclusions.
The ḥadīth literature and quranic exegesis have historically been intertwined
in ways that are not part of the tafsīr genre per se. This interrelationship
has resulted in some fascinating literary trajectories, which span the gamut
between high literary productions that would have been written for a schol-
arly, specialist audience, and works intended for lay consumption. Examples
246 It is unfortunate that although the classical genre of ḥadīth commentary is both immense
and comprises an important part of the textual evidence we have for the reception his-
tory of the ḥadīth literature by Muslims, it has barely been researched to date. A ground-
breaking article on this genre is: Tokatly, The Aʿlām al-ḥadīth 53–91. For the related textual
genre of ḥāshiya (gloss) in Islamic law and quranic exegesis respectively, see: El Shamsy,
“The ḥāshiya in Islamic 289–315; Saleh, The gloss 217–59.
247 For this work, see: Brown, Canonization 295–7; Blecher, Ḥadīth commentary 261–87.
248 Abū l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. ʿUmar b. Ibrāhīm al-Qurṭubī, Al-Mufhim li-mā ashkala min talkhīṣ
Kitāb Muslim vii, 314–438.
206 CHAPTER 4
249 ʿAbd al-ʿAẓīm al-Mundhirī, Mukhtaṣar Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim li-Imām Abī l-Ḥusayn Muslim b.
al-Ḥajjāj al-Qushayrī al-Nīsābūrī li-l-Ḥāfiẓ Zakī al-Dīn ʿAbd al-ʿAẓīm b. ʿAbd al-Qawī b. Salama
al-Mundhirī al-Dimashqī, 564–81.
250 Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ishbīlī, Al-Jamʿ bayn al-Ṣaḥīḥayn iv,
361–96.
251 These commentaries and other works on the Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim have attracted little sustained
scholarly attention to date. In the absence of detailed historical and literary studies on
these works, it is unfortunately not possible to say much about their tafsīr chapters.
252 For a discussion of this, see Chapter Six.
CHAPTER 5
[God’s] saying: {Tell believing men to lower their gazes}, meaning that they
should avert their gazes from all that is sinful; {min} here [acts as] a con-
necting particle,1 according to the tafsīr of al-Suddī. Qatāda said, “They
are to lower their gazes from what is not lawful for them to look at.”
Hammād b. Salama reported on the authority of Yūnus b. ʿUbayd, on the
authority of Abū Zurʿa b. ʿAmr b. Jarīr al-Balkhī, on the authority of his
father, (who) said, “I asked the Messenger of God about the sudden
glance, and he answered, ‘Avert your gaze.’” Al-Rabīʿ b. Ṣabīḥ related on
the authority of al-Ḥasan (that) the Messenger of God said, “Son of Adam,
for you is the first glance, what is the need for the second?”
[God’s] saying: {and guard their private parts}; Saʿīd related on the
authority of Qatāda, (that) he said, “From what is not legally permissible
to them.” This is concerning free men and male slaves. {That is purer for
them. God is well aware of everything they do}.
His saying: {And tell believing women to lower their gazes}; meaning
that they should lower their gazes; {min} here [acts as] a connecting
particle,2 according to the tafsīr of al-Suddī. Saʿīd related on the authority
of Qatāda (that) he said, “From what is not lawful for them to look at.”
{And guard their private parts} from what is not lawful for them, and this
is concerning the free woman and the female slave.
And [God’s] saying, {and not display their adornment except what appears
of it}; this is concerning free women.
Shurayk and Sufyān and Yūnus b. Abī Isḥāq reported on the authority
of his father, on the authority of Abū l-Aḥwaṣ, on the authority of
ʿAbdallāh b. Masʿūd (that) he said, “{except what appears of it} (means)
the clothing.”
Al-Ḥasan b. Dīnār reported that al-Ḥasan (said) much the same.
1 I.e. in the verse itself: “qul li-l-muʾminīn yaghuḍḍū min abṣārihim” (Q 24:30a).
2 I.e. in the verse itself: “wa-qul li-l-muʾmināt yaghḍuḍna min abṣārihinna” (Q 24:31a).
This passage from the Tafsīr of Yaḥyā b. Sallām which explicates Q 24:30–1 pro-
vides an apt illustration of what I term “the primary exegetical gaze” at work:
here, the exegete gazes—literally, as well as in a more figurative sense—at the
body of scriptural text, in addition to other materials that he deems relevant
to the task of interpretation. The exegete’s gaze is moreover directed towards
the Muslim communal body as a whole, which he genders and hierarchically
organizes through his interpretation of these quranic verses. Significantly, the
exegete takes on the role of intermediary between God and the community
being addressed, as he determines whether each verse or portion of a verse
is directed towards all of its members, or only its free men (or free women) or
slaves (male or female). Here, the practice of exegesis is constructed as a dis-
course of power. As such, it affirms and reinforces social hierarchies, especially
when it is undertaken by free elite males.
In this passage, a transhistorical community of exegetes is brought into
being, through Yaḥyā’s quotations of oral and (apparently) written exegeti-
cal sources, at his discretion. This transhistorical community contains several
3 I.e. the adornment referred to in the phrase, “except what appears of it” (illā mā ẓahara
minhā) in Q 24:31.
4 “bi-thawbihā ʿalā thawbihā fa-shaddathu.” The text may have been corrupted here; for more
on this, see below.
5 Yaḥyā i, 440–1.
Constructing the Abode of the Mothers of the Believers 209
male Companions, a greater number of male Successors, and also male fig-
ures who lived after them. By contrast, only two female figures are included by
Yaḥyā in this transhistorical community of exegetes: ʿĀʾisha bt. Abī Bakr, and
secondarily Umm Shabīb, an obscura who was apparently a female Successor
from Baṣra.6 During the second/eighth century, quoting traditions attributed
to ʿĀʾisha (and less often, to another wife of the prophet, Umm Salama) as part
of the interpretation of quranic verses discussing free women’s veiling and
seclusion is in the process of becoming conventional in proto-Sunni exegesis.
The inclusion of ʿĀʾisha and Umm Shabīb within Yaḥyā’s transhistorical com-
munity of exegetes, then, likely reflects larger developments within contem-
porary tafsīr discourses rather than simply an individual’s interpretive choice.
In this passage, Yaḥyā grants these male and female figures what I term a
“secondary exegetical gaze”—meaning, an exegetical gaze that is textually con-
structed as subsidiary to the primary exegetical gaze, and is therefore limited
in its scope as well as in its interpretive authority. Unlike the primary exegetical
gaze, the secondary exegetical gaze can be wielded by females as well as males.
Yet, it is instructive to note the ways that the secondary exegetical gazes held
by these male and female figures are presented as similar and yet different.
In this passage, we see that while Companions and Successors cited as
sources of materials relevant to exegesis can be (free) female as well as (free)
male, nonetheless, (free) male voices are overwhelmingly dominant, not only
through sheer force of numbers, but also in terms of the range and depth of
authority attributed to them. Most of these figures are presented here as hand-
ing down valued information deemed relevant to exegesis through all-male
transmission networks that extended well beyond the era of the Successors.
While the secondary exegetical gazes imputed to these male figures are by
definition subsidiary to the primary exegetical gaze of the author and ulti-
mately dependent on the latter’s willingness to include them, some of them
nonetheless are depicted as wielding a noteworthy level of interpretive author-
ity. Al-Suddī (d. 127/745), a male Successor, seems to be presented here as the
author of a written tafsīr, which Yaḥyā in turn quotes from. In this way, the
secondary exegetical gaze assigned to al-Suddī appears more concrete and less
ephemeral than the other orally transmitted interpretations that Yaḥyā cites in
this passage.
6 The very brief entry given by Ibn Saʿd states that Umm Shabīb al-ʿAbdiyya was one of the
people of Baṣra, and that she related traditions from ʿĀʾisha. An example is given of such a
tradition, and it is transmitted by Ḥammād b. Salama (Ṭabaqāt viii, 530). She does not appear
to have been a well-known transmitter; neither al-Mizzī nor Ibn Ḥajar (in his Tahdhīb) have
a notice for her.
210 CHAPTER 5
The secondary exegetical gaze imputed to ʿUmar is also rendered more con-
crete, though in his case through violence. ʿUmar, presumably when he was
caliph, sees a veiled female slave, and strikes her. In one version of the incident,
the reason for this action of his is clarified with his reported command that
she not imitate free women. While neither ʿUmar nor the slave woman (nor
for that matter any of the transmitters) quotes or alludes to any quranic verse,
by citing retellings of this incident as part of his commentary on Q 24:31, Yaḥyā
frames ʿUmar’s gaze at her and his subsequent use of force against her as rele-
vant to exegesis, if not interpretive. By contrast, although the enslaved woman
presumably sees ʿUmar, her gaze is not acknowledged, nor is it presented as
in any way exegetically consequential. Her subjectivity is ignored and thus
erased. Whether or not her choice of attire could be taken to reflect her own
understanding of Q 24:31 is therefore not considered here, while her body is
appropriated and depicted as a canvas upon which ʿUmar violently enacts his
hierarchical vision of social order.7
While ʿĀʾisha bt. Abī Bakr (unlike the unnamed slave woman) is given a sec-
ondary exegetical gaze in this passage, its range and scale do not approach
that imputed to some of the male figures just discussed. ʿĀʾisha provides an
interpretation for a short phrase in the quranic text. In so doing, her exegeti-
cal gaze surveys the bodies of other adult females in the community (subject
here to Yaḥyā’s stipulation that these are only free women’s bodies), and deter-
mines what types of adornment they are permitted to display, according to her
understanding of Q 24:31.8 In contrast to the slave woman, ʿĀʾisha’s own veiling
practices—which she is given the privilege of enacting upon her own body,
seemingly of her own volition—are presented as both interpretive and author-
itative for how the community is to understand this portion of the quranic
verse in question.
At the same time, the (male) exegete as the possessor of the primary
exegetical gaze—and through him, the audience/reader—is granted a care-
fully delimited vision of an ostensibly secluded wife of the prophet not only
7 Traditions depicting ʿUmar or other male Companions hitting their wives or other women
have attracted a fair amount of scholarly attention, though unfortunately little in the way of
sustained analysis. For a survey of a number of such traditions, see: Marín, Disciplining wives
12–17. For the use of traditions about ʿUmar’s often violent policing of enslaved women’s garb
in some legal constructions of ṣalāt as a gendered hierarchical performance, see: Geissinger,
Umm al-Dardāʾ 312–17. For a discussion of some of the textual functions of gendered violence
in tafsīr works, see Chapter One (above).
8 I.e. when they are in the presence of free men to whom they are neither married nor so
closely related to that marriage to them would be forbidden. For views attributed to ʿĀʾisha as
to how such rules relate to slave men, see below.
Constructing the Abode of the Mothers of the Believers 211
part of exegetes, who decide which voices to quote or ignore, and who elect to
construct the abode of Muḥammad’s wives as what Michel Foucault terms a
heterotopia on the pages of their Quran commentaries. In these tafsīr works,
this abode is constructed so as to transcend place and time.
Moreover, the abode of the wives of Muḥammad continues to be invoked
and elaborated upon to varying degrees by a number of Quran commentators
throughout the medieval period. Centuries after the passing of the wives of
the prophet as well as of those women and men who met them and report-
edly transmitted traditions from them, their long-vanished and now idealized
abode remained in demand as a space within which complex and controver-
sial questions could be authoritatively resolved. Such questions range from
pietistic matters with implications for the construction of communal identity
to highly charged legal issues related to intra-communal boundaries as well
as to the maintenance of social-hierarchical order.
The following discussion is based on a number of tafsīr works belonging
to several different sub-genres: these include encyclopedic Quran commen-
taries from the third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries (those of al-Ṭabarī, Ibn
al-Mundhir, al-Māturīdī, and al-Thaʿlabī), along with the madrasa-style com-
mentary of al-Samarqandī, the linguistically-focused works of al-Zajjāj and
al-Naḥḥās, and the aḥkām al-Qurʾān of al-Jaṣṣāṣ. Also, several medieval Quran
commentaries which depend to varying extents on al-Ṭabarī (al-Māwardī),
al-Thaʿlabī (al-Wāḥidī’s al-Wasīṭ, as well as the tafsīrs of al-Baghawī,
al-Zamakhsharī, and al-Qurṭubī)11 or both (Ibn ʿAṭiyya) have been utilized.
For comparative purposes, a Quran commentary authored by an ʿIbāḍī (Hūd),
as well as of two Twelver Shiʿi commentaries (al-Ṭūsī and al-Ṭabrisī) are also
referred to where this is deemed necessary. Such a wide range of sources has
been consulted in order to allow us to chart the development and elabora-
tion of the textual phenomenon with which this chapter is concerned over
time. As the genre of medieval Quran commentary is “genealogical,”12 exegetes’
constructions of the abode of the wives of the prophet as a space where exe-
getical questions could be authoritatively resolved, as well as their citations of
individual traditions ascribed to any of these women, are embedded within
wider, ongoing interpretive discourses. These discourses would have been well
known to both the authors of classical tafsīr works as well as to their audi-
ences/readers. While anything approaching a complete picture of this web of
associations will likely continue to elude us, some sense of its scope can be had
11 Though, it should be kept in mind that al-Qurṭubī also quotes from al-Ṭabarī at times.
12 Saleh, Formation 14–15. For a discussion of this issue, see the Introduction (above).
Constructing the Abode of the Mothers of the Believers 213
Exegetes from the formative and classical periods, particularly those who are
proto-Sunni or Sunni, often present the abode of the Mothers of the Believers
as an imagined space within which social, legal, theological and other bound-
aries are negotiated, contested and constructed; a few examples of this have
already been discussed in Chapter Three. Moreover, their Quran commentar-
ies typically do so in a matter-of-fact way, as though this were a “natural” and
uncontroversial practice (at least among Sunnis) that existed from the begin-
ning. However, such a presentation has the effect of eliding the complexities
of the historical process of the transformation of the rooms of Muḥammad’s
house-mosque inhabited by his wives into a mythologized and idealized space
of this type.
The quranic text polemically constitutes Muḥammad’s wives’ abode as a site
where divinely ordained mores are to be exemplified, both in contradistinc-
tion to the practices of the Arab pagans,13 and in accordance with the “original”
monotheistic message of previous prophets that Muḥammad is to revivify.14
Also, it refers to these women as “mothers” of the believers, which appears to
be an honorific title denoting a degree of religious authority in the community,
and instructs them to preserve Muḥammad’s revelations and teachings.15 It is
noteworthy that the quranic text typically speaks of these women as a group,
and nowhere suggests that any one of them is a more reliable source of knowl-
edge than the others.
The quranic text does not record any of Muḥammad’s wives’ responses to
these directives. Therefore, the only available sources that provide any indica-
tion as to what their response(s) might have been are tradition-based works
that were not written down until well after all of these women had passed
away. It should be borne in mind that even the physical traces of the rooms in
which they had lived did not survive for long. ʿĀʾisha’s room famously became
13 “Wives of the Prophet, you are not like any other woman . . . stay at home, and do not
flaunt your finery as they used to in the pagan past, keep up the prayer, give the prescribed
alms, and obey God and His Messenger. . . .” (Q 33:32)
14 See for example: Q 33:37 and 66:1–12.
15 See Chapter One.
214 CHAPTER 5
the place of burial for Muḥammad, and after him, for Abū Bakr and then
ʿUmar.16 The rooms that had belonged to the rest of the prophet’s wives were
reportedly demolished by the end of the first century hijrī during the reign of
al-Walīd b. ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān, in order to allow for the (re)construction
of the prophet’s mosque.17 Therefore, the earliest sources that we have which
present the abode of the Mothers of the Believers as a normative space within
which social, legal, theological, and sectarian boundaries can be negotiated are
depicting a site that was no longer visible; it had been transmuted into if not
engulfed by an elaborate shrine.18 Not only the women who had inhabited it,
but also its original dimensions, architectural features, furnishings, and precise
relationship to the spaces surrounding it continued to exist only in memory,
through the oral transmission of ḥadīths and āthār and their eventual preser-
vation in writing.
The Ḥadīth literature presents several of the prophet’s wives in particular as
answering questions about religious matters posed to them by various inhabit-
ants of Medina, as well as by visiting pilgrims. Ibn Saʿd singles out ʿĀʾisha and
Umm Salama in this regard: “. . . The wives of the prophet preserved many say-
ings of the prophet, but none like ʿĀʾisha and Umm Salama. ʿĀʾisha used to give
religious rulings during the reigns of ʿUmar and ʿUthmān, [and continued to
do so] until she died. . . .”19 In a similar vein, proto-Sunni and Sunni exegetes
construct the abode of the wives of the prophet as a space where Meccan,
aristocratic voices appear to predominate through their focus on traditions
attributed to ʿĀʾisha—and much less frequently, to Umm Salama, occasionally
to Ḥafṣa bt. al-Khaṭṭāb, and rarely, to other wives.
Yet, Muḥammad’s wives’ abode was not the only imagined space where
exegetical debates could be authoritatively resolved that was available for
invocation by Quran commentators. A few other imagined sites have also
apparently been memorialized for such a purpose. Chief among these was the
dwelling of the prophet’s youngest daughter, Fāṭima, which Sunni exegetes
at times invoke as an exemplary space within which the “proper” gendered
social order obtained.20 Perhaps more surprisingly, even the Damascene
In these texts, the primary exegetical gaze plays a key role in the construction
of the abode of the Mothers of the Believers as a heterotopia. Not only does
the exegete’s analytical gaze take in the quranic text, but also human bodies.
The bodies of the many different social categories of persons who make up the
umma and empire, as well as the spaces that they inhabit and move within—
whether the street, the public baths, or the confines of their own homes—are
encompassed by an exegetical gaze that is regulatory.24
This exegetical-textual dynamic constructs a “scopic regime”—meaning, it
constructs a way of seeing that has been molded by human beings, and has
changed and developed through time.25 The scope of the primary exegetical
gaze parallels, reflects and reinforces to a significant extent the (free) man’s
societal and familial position of overlord and guardian that Quran commenta-
tors of the formative and classical periods outlined in their exegeses of quranic
verses such as Q 4:34.26 Thus, it is an exercise of power.27 In this way, the act of
tafsīr itself is constructed as emblematically “masculine.”
Among the sites that the primary exegetical gaze is represented as survey-
ing is the abode of the Mothers of the Believers. Given that an aspect of men’s
gazing which the quranic text famously attempts to regulate is their ability to
see the wives of Muḥammad or have visual access to their rooms (Q 33:53, 55),
it is rather paradoxical that Quran commentators so often render these women
and this space textually visible. While commentators utilize Muḥammad’s
wives and their rooms as models of the “proper” practice of veiling and seclu-
sion of (free) elite women, at the same time, they do not depict their abode as a
“private” space off limits to the male exegetical gaze—nor by extension, to the
gazes of the presumably largely male readers/audiences of these tafsīr works.
24 For the public bath (ḥammām) as a site requiring regulation, see e.g.: al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ
xviii, 145.
25 This analysis of the workings of what I term the primary exegetical gaze in classical
quranic exegesis owes its genesis to Fedwa Malti-Douglas’ discussion of the male gaze
in medieval Arabic literature; see: Malti-Douglas, Woman’s body 29–53, as well as to her
application of the concept of “scopic regime” to modern Arabic women’s literature in her
monograph, Men, women, and god(s), esp. 205–6; 242, n. 5. She borrows the concept of
“scopic regime” from Martin Jay’s Scopic regimes 3. Jay in turn derives it from the French
film critic, Christian Metz. However, it should be noted that in the texts I am discussing
here, there is no unitary “male gaze” per se. As we will see, the gazes of males are regulated
differently depending on social and especially free/slave status.
26 For a discussion of this, see Chapter One.
27 For vision as a form of power, see: Ruggles, Vision and power 7.
Constructing the Abode of the Mothers of the Believers 217
This “bare bones” version of the tradition not only associates ʿUmar with the
revelation of a particular quranic verse, but presents his divinely approved
concern with upholding the moral and social order as unfolding within the
very abode of the prophet’s wives.
This basic tradition has a number of variants. According to one (which is
ascribed to ʿĀʾisha), ʿUmar urges Muḥammad to instruct his wives to seclude
themselves. When his advice is not taken, he verbally harasses Sawda when the
women go out at night to relieve themselves, hoping that a divine revelation
how the story of ʿUmar “completing” Q 23:14 (Muqātil ii, 360) is linked by some exegetes
discussing Q 6:93 to the story of ʿAbdallāh b. Abī Sarḥ, the scribe who independently sug-
gested an ending for a verse he was transcribing; shocked when Muḥammad agreed with
him, he is said to have declared his prophecy a fraud (al-Farrāʾ i, 344; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf
ii, 556).
32 E.g., al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ i, 679; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf i, 188; al-Māturīdī i, 561.
33 E.g., al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ x, 52; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf iii, 155–6; al-Māturīdī v, 261.
34 For ḥadīths in Sunni compilations that express ambivalence about ʿUmar, see: Lazarus-
Yafeh, ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb—Paul of Islam? 8.
35 For a discussion of a few of these, see: Hakim, Conflicting images 159–77.
36 Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xxii, 44 (see also page 42 for a similar version); al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf v, 128.
Following al-Thaʿlabī, see: al-Wāḥidī, al-Wasīṭ iii, 480; similarly, al-Zamakhsharī v, 89. See
also: Hūd iii, 379, who seems to be quoting the Tafsīr Yaḥyā b. Sallām (Yaḥyā ii, 733).
Constructing the Abode of the Mothers of the Believers 219
will come to the prophet about the issue of seclusion—and the Verse of the
Ḥijāb is revealed.37 Fascinatingly, this latter version implies that ʿUmar is in
fact more attuned to how God wishes affairs in the prophet’s wives’ abode to
be ordered than even Muḥammad himself.
In yet another version, ʿUmar himself takes the initiative to order the wives
of Muḥammad to seclude themselves. Zaynab bt. Jaḥsh objects, “O son of
al-Khaṭṭāb, you would jealously guard us, while the revelation descends in
our houses?!”38 Then, the Verse of the Ḥijāb is revealed to Muḥammad.39 This
tradition no sooner acknowledges that the wives of the prophet could plau-
sibly be regarded as being more attuned to the divine will than anyone else
(except Muḥammad himself) due to their unparalleled proximity to the reve-
latory process, then it rejects any such notion. The revelation of Q 33:53 tells
the reader/audience that in fact, it is ʿUmar rather than any of the prophet’s
wives who is cognizant of God’s intent, to the degree that in his instruction to
them, he unknowingly anticipates the revelation. This tradition inserts ʿUmar
into the communicative process depicted by the Quran between the prophet
and his wives—and, even more audaciously, between them and God. It has
the effect of overshadowing the quranic portrayal of divine address of these
women, which after all can hardly compare to ʿUmar’s ability to anticipate
divine revelations word for word.
Some ḥadīths in circulation even combine several instances in which ʿUmar’s
advice turns out to be in accordance with divine revelation into one tradition,
and traditions of this type were sometimes incorporated into later classical
tafsīr works. For example, the following ḥadīth is recounted by al-Baghawī in
his discussion of Q 33:53:
I said, ‘Messenger of God, if only you would take the station of Abraham
as a place of prayer.’ (Q 2:125) I also said, ‘Messenger of God, good and bad
persons visit you. If only you would order the Mothers of the Believers to
[observe] seclusion!’ So God sent down the Verse of the Ḥijāb. I heard
about some of the Messenger of God’s troubles with his wives, so I visited
37 Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xxii, 44–5; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf v, 128; see also: al-Māwardī iv, 419;
al-Baghawī iii, 466; Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq b. Ghālib b. ʿAṭiyya al-Andalūsī,
Al-Muḥarrar al-wajīz fī Tafsīr al-kitāb al-ʿazīz xii, 102.
38 “yā Ibn al-Khaṭṭāb innaka la-taghār ʿalaynā wa-l-waḥy yanzil fī baytinā”
39 Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xxii, 43, 45; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf v, 128; see also: al-Māwardī iv, 419;
al-Zamakhsharī v, 90; Ibn ʿAṭiyya xii, 102.
220 CHAPTER 5
them and sat with them one by one, and I said, ‘If you don’t cease, God
will give him better wives than you.’ Until I came to Zaynab, and she said,
‘ʿUmar, is the Messenger of God unable to advise his wives, that you advise
them?’ Then I left, and God sent down, ‘His Lord may well replace
you with better wives if the prophet decides to divorce any of you . . .
(Q 66:5).’”40
The dynamics of the primary exegetical gaze and its relationship to the abode
of the wives of the prophet in these tafsīr works typically operate in accordance
with the “ideal” social order envisioned by their authors. The exegetical gaze
surveys everything, and in so doing mirrors the social and religious authority
that free male Muslims “should” possess. Even the ostensibly secluded abode
of the wives of the prophet lies within its purview.
Nonetheless, these tafsīr texts concede a measure of interpretive authority
to the gazes of a few of these women—to ʿĀʾisha in the main, but also at times
to Umm Salama, and occasionally to other wives—at other persons within
their abode, or even at persons in the community beyond its walls. In what fol-
lows, we examine several pietistic as well as legal-exegetical traditions in order
to analyze the dynamics and scope of this “secondary exegetical gaze,” largely
within classical Sunni Quran commentaries.
40 Al-Baghawī iii, 466. This ḥadīth appears in summarized form in Ibn ʿAṭiyya (al-Muḥarrar
xii, 103). Al-Thaʿlabī also has a version (al-Kashf i, 188, sub. Q 2:125).
Constructing the Abode of the Mothers of the Believers 221
specifics about Muḥammad’s daily life or personality, exegetes soon found ways
to enable the text to present him as a model for emulation by the faithful. While
some recent studies of tafsīr works have drawn attention to this process,41 the
role played in this by traditions attributed to a small number of early Muslim
women has been passed over in silence. The following examples illustrate that
traditions of this type often foster an affective piety by transporting believers
of later generations back in time to the very domicile of Muḥammad, where
they encounter him through the medium of words attributed to ʿĀʾisha.
A vivid example of this process can be seen in a ḥadīth attributed to ʿĀʾisha
quoted by al-Samarqandī as part of his commentary on Q 46:24—“When they
[the people of ʿĀd] saw a cloud approaching their valley, they said, ‘This cloud
will give us rain!’ ‘No indeed! It is what you wanted to hasten: a storm wind
bearing a painful punishment.” This ḥadīth vividly conveys Muḥammad’s pious
fear during unsettled weather. ʿĀʾisha relates that whenever he saw a cloud,
the colour of his face would change, and he would pace uneasily, because it
reminded him of God’s destruction of the sinful people of ʿĀd.42 In this com-
mentary on Q 46:24, al-Thaʿlabī quotes a version of this ḥadīth attributed to
ʿĀʾisha which also recounts the words of the supplication that Muḥammad
would recite in such situations.43
There is nothing in the wording of Q 46:24, a verse that discusses the
destruction of the long dead people of ʿĀd, that mentions or even alludes
to Muḥammad’s response to unsettled weather. Muqātil b. Sulaymān and
al-Ṭabarī (as well as al-Māturīdī) explain this verse without making any refer-
ence to this. Various versions of this tradition credited to ʿĀʾisha seem to have
initially been associated with Q 46:24 in traditionist rather than exegetical
circles,44 and the purpose of this linkage is primarily pietistic.
The citation of traditions of this type is one way that exegetes both locate
Muḥammad within sacred history and affirm the completeness of his mission.
His God-fearing response collapses the centuries that presumably lie between
the people of ʿĀd and himself. It also has the effect of symbolically providing
closure to their story; while they did not heed the warnings of the prophet sent
to them, many generations later, an Arabian prophet (and by extension, his
community) would do so. For the medieval audience/reader, well aware of the
many ḥadīths that purport to recount the wording of the supplications recited
by Muḥammad in various situations and circumstances including inclement
weather, this tradition also presents him as a model of ritual action. Traditions
on this latter theme begin to appear in Quran commentaries as early as the
second/eighth century.
In this type of pietistic tradition, a female narrator often has the effect
of strengthening its apparent authority, as well as enhancing its emotional
impact. Who better to testify to Muḥammad’s uprightness—particularly as
his character is reflected in mundane activities that would often take place in
the domestic sphere—than a woman, especially if she is widely believed to
be his most beloved wife? Through these traditions credited to ʿĀʾisha, believ-
ers can gain intimate knowledge of Muḥammad’s personality, along with the
possibility of an affective bond with him.45 In traditions such as these, ʿĀʾisha
both recognizes Muḥammad’s actions as exemplary, and by describing them
to others, makes the emulation of his practice possible for later generations. In
addition, through her embodiment of the reverent attitude that any believer
should have toward Muḥammad’s sunna, she is an exemplar in her own right.
Yet, by contrast, in some pietistic traditions she serves as a foil against
which the positive qualities of Muḥammad are all the more evident. The story
of Muḥammad and the hostile Jewish visitors, recounted by al-Ṭabarī as com-
mentary on Q 58:8—“. . . when they come to you, they greet you with words
God has never used to greet you . . .”—is a telling example:
45 Women’s involvement in the development of the affective dimensions of religious tra-
ditions is fairly common cross-culturally. For examples of this from medieval European
Christianity, see: Bynum, Holy fast and holy feast.
Constructing the Abode of the Mothers of the Believers 223
inwardly, ‘Why does God not punish us for what we say?’ Hell will be punish-
ment enough for them: they will burn there—an evil destination. (Q 58:8)”46
While Q 58:8 does not specify who exactly it is referring to among Muḥammad’s
contemporaries, the context seems to indicate that this verse is aimed at mal-
contents among his own followers. This verse (as well as the quranic passage
that it is part of) seems to depict a community that is internally divided, with
some factions giving little if any recognition to Muḥammad as a leader. Such
a picture could raise theological questions about Muḥammad’s ability to exer-
cise prophetic authority, as well as about the uprightness of the Companions as
a group. Al-Samarqandī notes the existence of different opinions as to who this
verse refers to: pagan Arabs in Mecca, or the Medinan “Hypocrites” and Jews.47
One of the exegetical purposes of this ḥadīth is to settle this difference of opin-
ion in favour of identifying those accused of conspiring against Muḥammad
in Q 58:8 as Jews, as is apparent from Muqātil b. Sulaymān, who recounts this
anecdote, with ʿĀʾisha appearing as a character, though not as its source.48 The
version of the ḥadīth from al-Ṭabarī quoted above cements this identification
by couching this story in the form of an occasion-of-revelation tradition.49
But ʿĀʾisha’s presence in the story even as a character was not always regarded
as necessary for it to serve its theological-exegetical purpose. According to
al-Māturīdī (whose brief retelling of this anecdote neither includes ʿĀʾisha in
the story, nor names her as its source), this incident testifies to the truth of
Muḥammad’s prophethood, because God protected him from his opponents’
harm and revealed to him their secret thoughts.50 In this way, a verse with the
potential to raise theologically troubling questions is transformed into a proof
of faith.
In the version of this tradition from al-Ṭabarī that is quoted above, however,
this story also encapsulates a pietistic message. The Jewish visitors turn the
traditional Muslim greeting, al-salām ʿalayk (peace be upon you)—which the
46 Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xxviii, 17. It is taken up in by al-Māwardī (al-Nukat v, 491), and a version
appears in Ibn ʿAṭiyya, though no source for it is mentioned (al-Muḥarrar xiv, 345). For
other, similar versions see: al-Samarqandī iii, 335; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf vi, 130; al-Wāḥidī,
al-Wasīṭ iv, 264; al-Baghawī iv, 281. Al-Ṭūsī alludes to this story, giving ʿĀʾisha as its source
(al-Tibyān ix, 549).
47 Al-Samarqandī iii, 335.
48 Muqātil iii, 332.
49 Al-Ṭabarī quotes no less than three versions of this tradition credited to ʿĀʾisha in his dis-
cussion of Q 58:8, and the first two are structured as occasion-of-revelation traditions
(Jāmiʿ xviii, 17–18).
50 Al-Māturīdī ix, 568.
224 CHAPTER 5
Quran presents as the greeting that the righteous will receive as they enter
Paradise51—into a curse: “death be upon you.” Moreover, they pronounce this
curse almost surreptitiously, appearing to give the expected greeting. ʿĀʾisha’s
angry interjection draws the attention of the audience/reader to this perfidi-
ous act.
Thus far, the Muslim audience/reader is likely to sympathize and identify
with ʿĀʾisha’s indignant response. Yet, ʿĀʾisha as narrator almost immediately
disrupts this identification by recounting Muḥammad’s calm reproof of her.
In dramatic contrast to her invective, his response is measured and restrained,
an example of ḥilm (forbearance).52 In this story, her chief role is to serve as
a foil, against which Muḥammad’s status as an exemplar appears all the more
clearly. As his reputedly favourite wife, she is particularly well suited to fulfill
this literary function.
These two traditions discussed thus far, different as they are, reflect ʿĀʾisha’s
complex position as a source of ḥadīths with pietistic themes. The complexity
of the roles that she plays in these texts is particularly evident in the interpre-
tive history of Q 68:4—“you [Muḥammad] have a strong character (wa-innaka
laʿalā khuluqin ʿaẓīm).” In the Tafsīr Muqātil b. Sulaymān, “khuluqin ʿaẓīm”
receives nothing more than a gloss noting that it means “the religion of Islam.”53
Similarly, al-Farrāʾ glosses it as “a mighty religion.”54 As a major theme of Sūrat
al-Qalam (Q 68, “The Pen”) is the defence of Muḥammad from his opponents’
claims that he is mad or deluded, these glosses fit the context reasonably well.55
However, in the Jāmiʿ Ibn Wahb, it is related that when ʿĀʾisha was asked
about the meaning of the phrase “khuluqin ʿaẓīm,” she responded, “His charac-
ter (khuluq) was the Quran, and action according to what it contains.”56 While
this tradition depicts ʿĀʾisha as someone who is consulted as to the meanings
of unusual expressions in the quranic text, significantly, many versions of it
present her rather as a source of information on Muḥammad’s conduct and
personality. This is true of the several versions that are quoted in al-Ṭabarī’s
tafsīr. For example, Saʿd b. Hishām recounts:
I went to ʿĀʾisha, Mother of the Believers, and said, “Tell me about the
character of the Messenger of God.”
She responded, “His character was the Quran. Haven’t you read, ‘You
have a strong character’ (Q 68:4)?”57
57 Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xxix, 20. While the edition that I am using has “Saʿīd b. Hishām” as the
questioner, this appears to be a mistake. For Saʿd and his questioning of ʿĀʾisha about the
prophet’s prayers at night, see Chapter Four.
58 Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xxix, 20.
59 Al-Naḥḥās v, 5.
60 For an analytical discussion of al-Thaʿlabī’s treatment of Q 68:4 within the context of his
hermeneutics, see: Saleh, Formation 115–18.
226 CHAPTER 5
Messenger of God, and she replied, ‘His character was the Quran.’ ”61 Thus,
ʿĀʾisha is positioned as belonging to the earliest layer of interpretation, yet also
as a link between this, and later pietistic elaborations of this verse that cele-
brate the prophet as a uniquely righteous and exalted figure. An explanation of
her statement that is attributed to Qatāda immediately follows: it means that
Muḥammad carried out what God ordered him, and abstained from what God
prohibited. Next, al-Thaʿlabī quotes a couple of sayings credited to Sufi figures,
to the effect that Muḥammad’s character is exalted because of his unswerving
dedication to God.
Al-Thaʿlabī then shifts the focus from Muḥammad’s character to that of
the believer. Not only did Muḥammad possess all noble traits of character
(makārim al-akhlāq), but (as a ḥadīth attributed to Abū Hurayra states) he
was sent to inculcate this in others. Al-Thaʿlabī further supports this conten-
tion with a ḥadīth credited to ʿĀʾisha, who relates that Muḥammad said that
through good character, the believer can attain the rank of one who stands in
prayer at night and fasts by day. For the reader/audience familiar with many
of the various widely known ḥadīths attributed her in which she describes
seeing the prophet praying at night and engaging in supererogatory fasting,
this statement has the effect of evoking ʿĀʾisha’s abode, where she witnesses
Muḥammad’s acts of worship—as do later generations, through her transmis-
sion of ḥadīths on this topic.
At this point, al-Thaʿlabī recounts a ḥadīth transmitted by Umm al-Dardāʾ
from her husband, Abū l-Dardāʾ, from Muḥammad, who is reported to have
said, “Nothing weighs more heavily in the balance [of deeds] than good
conduct.”62 Finally, two more ḥadīths (related by ʿAlī and Abū Hurayra respec-
tively) also underline the importance of having good character.
In this interpretive trajectory of al-Thaʿlabī’s, a quranic verse which affirms
Muḥammad’s worthiness in the face of pagan insults becomes not only a testi-
mony to Muḥammad’s peerlessness as a human being, but also an exhortation
to his community in general to develop good character and in this way, to fol-
low his example.63 The ḥadīths attributed to ʿĀʾisha play an important role in
pointedly remarks that Muḥammad was not only sent to interact with the
enemies of God and the saints, the small and the great, the knowledgeable
and the ignorant—but also with his wives. As (he says) no one can relate suc-
cessfully with such an array of persons without possessing a sublime character,
God provided Muḥammad with this, as well as with constant guidance. Among
the quranic verses that al-Māturīdī quotes in order to illustrate such divine
direction is Q 66:1—“Prophet, why do you prohibit what God has made lawful
to you in your desire to please your wives?”68
Through their inclusion of such traditions in their Quran commentar-
ies, these exegetes in effect position ʿĀʾisha to varying extents as a mediator
of the relationship between Muḥammad and later generations of believers.
This is a potentially powerful rank, not least because what constitutes the
prophetic sunna was a contested issue on several levels. Some exegeses of
Q 68:4 appear to present her performance of such a role as straightforwardly
stemming from ʿĀʾisha’s proximity to the prophet. The late medieval exegete
al-Biqāʿī (d. 885/1480) emphatically declares in his discussion of the verse:
“. . . [Muḥammad’s] character—according to the witness of the most know-
ing of all people about it, his wife, the Mother of the Believers, the Truthful,
ʿĀʾisha, daughter of the Abū Bakr the Truthful—[was] the Quran.”69 However,
al-Māturīdī’s exegesis of the verse reminds us that in actuality, the emergence
of ʿĀʾisha as an oft-cited authority on these matters even in Sunni Quran com-
mentaries is the result of multiple acts of interpretation. Moreover, as we have
seen, some non-Sunni exegetes, such as Hūd and al-Ṭūsī, were nonetheless at
times willing to concede this status of intermediary to her.
Al-Māturīdī’s pointed quotation of Q 66:1 in his discussion of Q 68:4 illus-
trates the fact that the symbolic authority attributed to ʿĀʾisha as a ḥadīth
transmitter was far from being unproblematic even for Sunnis. Weighty con-
siderations of social hierarchy are at stake in al-Māturīdī’s exegesis of the latter
verse, as the power to define norms of behaviour was most often deemed a
(free) male prerogative, with women typically represented as recipients rather
than originators of discourses about social and ethical norms and ideals.
68 Al-Māturīdī x, 136–7. The wives said to have taken the leading role in provoking the crisis
referred to in Q 66:1 are generally identified as Ḥafṣa and ʿĀʾisha; see: Muqātil iii, 376;
al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xxviii, 175–7. For more on this, see below.
69 Burhān al-Dīn Abū l-Ḥasan Ibrāhīm b. ʿUmar al-Biqāʿī, Naẓm al-durar fī tanāsub al-āyāt
wa-l-suwar viii, 98.
Constructing the Abode of the Mothers of the Believers 229
70 E.g., al-Bukhārī iii, 2–3 (Abwāb al-ʿUmra), also: iv, 217–218 (K. Farḍ al-khums); Ibn Ḥanbal
vi, 330, 334, 338.
71 Al-Bukhārī iv, 494 (Bāb al-Manāqib).
72 Stowasser, Women in the Qurʾan 105–6.
73 It is important to recall that the conceptions of domestic privacy found in medieval
Muslim texts developed through time; see: Alshech, ‘Do not enter houses’ 291–332.
230 CHAPTER 5
came to visit her clothed in garments made of thin Syrian fabric, the prophet
reproved her.77 This ḥadīth depicts an incident that is said to have happened
within Muḥammad’s wives’ abode and during his lifetime. Yet, at the same
time, it also transcends its walls, addressing an aspect of the social impact of
the conquests, which became an issue of concern after his death.
The secluded domain of the prophet’s wives is also represented in tafsīr
texts as a site where gendered distinctions (and with them, social order)
are authoritatively clarified, even in notoriously unclear situations. In the
Ghaylān’s daughter tradition discussed in Chapter One, the mukhannath who
used to visit the wives of the prophet scandalously blurs gendered categories.
This tradition dramatises the scandal inherent in his transgression of gender
boundaries: momentarily, a not-male person appears to arrogate to himself
the rank and power of the free, elite male warrior who apportions the spoils
of war, which includes the bodies of the captured women.78 By so doing, he
verbally blurs a key component that differentiates the gender performance of
the free male from those of others. In the end, it is the curtain secluding the
wives of the prophet that represents the reimposition of order. The mukhan-
nath quickly finds himself on the other side of it, barred from visiting them in
future.
Al-Ṭabarī and al-Thaʿlabī evidently understand this ḥadīth to mean that
only mukhannaths who are impotent may visit secluded women,79 and thus
employ the curtain as a means through which gender categories are ever (re)
negotiated. This dynamic is also evident in the citation by other exegetes of
legal views ascribed to a few of the wives of Muḥammad on allied controver-
sial topics, such as the question of whether a woman must conceal her hair
in front of her adult male slave,80 or if eunuchs are included in the quranic
permission for “such men as attend them who have no sexual desire” (Q 24:31)
to see a (free) woman’s adornments.81 At issue in these situations is where the
boundaries of free adult manhood lie.
82 “fa-mā stamtaʿtum bihi minhunna ilā ajalin musammā fa-tūhunna ujūrahunna” (al-Ṭabarī,
Jāmiʿ v, 17; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf ii, 264–5; see also: al-Ṭūsī iii, 166.
Constructing the Abode of the Mothers of the Believers 233
is clearly aimed at undercutting any attempt to argue that the verse does not in
fact refer to mutʿa. Al-Ṭabarī finally sides with the first interpretation, matter-
of-factly dismissing the traditions on variant readings as unacceptable due to
their divergence from the canonical quranic text.83
While al-Ṭabarī might give the impression that in the third/ninth century,
this was simply a rather arcane disagreement about the interpretation of a
few words, his contemporary al-Zajjāj makes the sectarian significance of this
debate clear. How (he rhetorically asks) can anyone maintain that the verse
refers to mutʿa when the jurists have agreed that the practice is forbidden?
While he attempts to make a philological argument in favour of interpreting
the phrase as a reference to marriage, his discussion leaves little doubt that his
underlying concern has less to do with linguistics than with determining intra-
communal boundaries. For al-Zajjāj, the “correct” interpretation of this phrase
is a litmus test that differentiates those in accord with “community” consensus
and those whom he regards as being in grave error, such as the mutʿa-practicing
Rāfiḍiyya (i.e. Shiʿis).84 It would seem that his vehemence is a reaction to those
who suggested a less uncompromising position on the matter.85
In al-Māturīdī’s Quran commentary, the abode of the prophet’s wives is
invoked in his discussion of this verse, with a tradition attributed to ʿĀʾisha.
Al-Māturīdī relates that when ʿĀʾisha was asked about mutʿa, she responded
that she saw no mention of any permissible sexual relationship in the Quran
aside from marriage and concubinage, quoting Q 23:5–7 as proof of this
assertion: “. . . who guard their chastity except with their spouses or their
slaves—with these they are not to blame, but anyone who seeks more than
this is exceeding the limits.”86
As is evident from this tradition, one of the chief concerns animating the
controversy over mutʿa was its implications for the distinction between mar-
riage and concubinage. In theory at least, a wife’s main responsibility was to
produce “legitimate” offspring for her husband, while a concubine was prop-
erty intended to provide sexual pleasure; not coincidentally, concubines were
always slave rather than free women.87 However, with mutʿa one had the
legally recognized possibility of a free woman who was ostensibly married, yet
whose husband had no financial obligations to her beyond the agreed-upon
fee tendered in exchange for her sexual availability—and who, like a concu-
bine, was not counted among the maximum four wives that a man could have
at a time.88 In the course of his emphatic defense of mutʿa, Al-Ṭūsī indirectly
acknowledges the import of the problem this could pose for the construction
and maintenance of the gender hierarchy by discussing this same tradition
attributed to ʿĀʾisha, though without mentioning her name.89 Addressing the
question of how to categorize the woman involved in such a relationship, he
asserts that she is in fact a wife.90
It is indubitable that this debate is about intra-communal self-definition
at least as much as it is about the question of which sexual relationships are
permitted by the quranic text. The former concern has played a powerful role
in shaping the exegetical discourse on Q 4:24.91 The inclusion of this tradition
attributed to ʿĀʾisha by some Sunni exegetes is in part an attempt to counter-
balance the reported views of some men closely related to Muḥammad, par-
ticularly Ibn ʿAbbās, asserting that mutʿa is licit. While classical Sunni Quran
commentaries also cite counter-traditions ascribed to Ibn ʿAbbās and ʿAlī that
87 However, any offspring fathered by the owner of a concubine was also considered
“legitimate.”
88 I.e. there was no legal limit to the number of mutʿa wives that a man could have at any
given time; see: al-ʿAyyāshī i, 159–60.
89 Al-Ṭūsī clearly knows that this tradition is ascribed to ʿĀʾisha, as he credits it to her in his
exegesis of Q 68:4, as we saw above.
90 Neither party in a mutʿa relationship inherits from the other, and the relationship is
automatically dissolved at the end of the stipulated period. While critics of the practice
objected that a valid marriage necessarily creates inheritance rights, and can only be ter-
minated by following a recognized legal procedure, al-Ṭūsī points out that these general
rules have some well-known exceptions even according to Sunnis (al-Tibyān iii, 165–6).
91 See for example al-Wāḥidī’s discussion of the issue in his otherwise philologically-ori-
ented commentary, al-Basīṭ. He begins with the claim that all scholars agree that this
phrase refers to ordinary marriage, and uncritically quotes part of al-Zajjāj’s attempt to
linguistically explain away the word “istamtaʿtum.” Then, he launches into a vivid descrip-
tion of the practice of mutʿa during Muḥammad’s time, thus indirectly acknowledging
that the verse does in fact refer to it. However, he goes on to make the “orthodox” Sunni
argument that this initial permission for mutʿa was abrogated, and most uncharacter-
istically relies on the multiple citation of traditions—including the one attributed to
ʿĀʾisha—in order to make this assertion (Nurosmaniye 236, fols. 509a–9b).
Constructing the Abode of the Mothers of the Believers 235
92 E.g., al-Jaṣṣāṣ ii, 148; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf ii, 266. A particularly pointed tradition of this
type has ʿAlī passing by Ibn ʿAbbās, who is in the act of giving a ruling declaring that mutʿa
is permissible, and ʿAlī himself corrects him (al-Wāḥidī, al-Basīṭ, Nurosmaniye 236, fol.
509b).
93 Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ v, 17; al-Māturīdī iii, 116; al-Jaṣṣāṣ ii, 147; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf ii, 265; al-Ṭūsī
iii, 167). For ʿUmar and mutʿa, see: Hakim, Conflicting images 163ff.
94 Al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf ii, 266.
95 For instance, the Khārijīs famously debated the issue of whether a “believing” (i.e. Khārijī)
female slave could be sold to an “unbelieving” (i.e. non-Khārijī) man; see: Montgomery
Watt, Islamic philosophy 11.
96 For interpretations of Q 2:223 as giving men permission to practice ʿazl, see: al-Thaʿlabī,
al-Kashf i, 350; al-Māwardī i, 284. Al-Māturīdī disapproves of ʿazl with a free woman, as in
his view the main purpose of sex with such women is reproduction (Taʾwīlāt ii, 137–8).
236 CHAPTER 5
97 For varying Shiʿi opinions, see: al-ʿAyyāshī i, 130–1; al-Qummī i, 100.
98 Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ ii, 484–5; al-Zajjāj i, 234; al-Jaṣṣāṣ i, 351–2; ʿImād al-Dīn b. Muḥammad
al-Ṭabarī al-maʿrūf bi-Il-Kiyyā al-Harrāsī, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān i, 140–2.
99 Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ ii, 483; al-Samarqandī i, 205; al-Jaṣṣāṣ i, 353; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf i, 349.
100 The legality of anal intercourse as well as of different sexual positions is discussed and
debated in the Talmud; see: Boyarin, Carnal Israel 109ff.
101 Although in actual fact, Sunni classical exegesis of Q 2:223 and Jewish legal discourses on
sexual positions and acts are intertwined historically; see: Maghen, Turning the tables
161–209.
102 For this debate, see: Brown, The body and society; Boyarin, Carnal Israel 5–10.
103 Al-Zajjāj i, 234.
104 E.g., al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ ii, 484; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf i, 351; similarly, Ibn al-ʿArabī i, 174.
Remarkably, while this tradition appears in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, a crucial word is missing, so
Constructing the Abode of the Mothers of the Believers 237
that Ibn ʿUmar’s stance on the issue becomes unknown. Ibn Ḥajar reports that this word
is missing in all copies of the work (!); see: Fatḥ al-bārī viii, 37 (K. al-Tafsīr).
105 E.g., al-Qurṭubī iii, 94.
106 Al-Ṭūsī ii, 223–4.
107 The issue at stake was not only whether the practice was lawful or prohibited in itself, but
that it could be used to evade the ban on intercourse during menses (Ibn Abī Ḥātim ii,
405), or perhaps to avoid detection of premarital sex.
108 Al-Ṭabarī, al-Jāmiʿ ii, 487. Al-Jaṣṣāṣ has a shortened version (Aḥkām i, 353); for a similar
ḥadīth, see: Ibn ʿAṭiyya ii, 255.
238 CHAPTER 5
While the exegetical discourse on this verse outlined above largely features
(free) male voices109 employing the imagined bodies of anonymous women
as a backdrop to their debates, this tradition momentarily acknowledges one
such woman as a subject. Due to both classical Islamic law and traditional
custom, non-procreative sexual acts increasingly became flash-points for con-
flicts of interest between men and women,110 particularly for concubines.111
Moreover, in the context of the legal emphasis on a wife’s sexual obedience as
a key “right” of her husband upon her, a ban on anal intercourse would at least
in theory somewhat broaden women’s legal grounds for resisting men’s sexual
control.112
Yet, the focus of the tradition does not remain on the female questioner
for long. Not only is her reaction to the prophet’s response not recorded, but
the closing phrase of the tradition effectively directs the attention of the audi-
ence/reader away from her concerns or desires to those of her husband.113 This
tradition envisions male-female sexual relationships as venues of gender per-
formance par excellence, with men playing the active role and enacting it upon
female bodies; as with the exegetical discourse on Q 2:223 in general, it is con-
cerned first and foremost with regulating and directing the performance of
male desire.
The concern is palpable among Sunni exegetes that the performance might
go awry, that men might enter the “wrong” orifice and thereby commit what
exegetes variously term “minor sodomy” (al-lūṭiyya al-ṣughrā),114 or “the act of
109 Notably, attacks on the Ibn ʿUmar tradition at times highlight the slave status of the trans-
mitter, Nāfiʿ.
110 Ahmed, Arab culture 52–3.
111 Al-Māturīdī notes that while a free woman’s permission is necessary for ʿazl, a concu-
bine’s is not, as no man is legally obliged to “spoil” his property (Taʾwīlāt ii, 139). As a
concubine who bore a child for her master could not be sold and was to be freed upon his
death, her pregnancy could represent a significant financial loss to her owner or his heirs.
Significantly, some of the traditions opposing anal intercourse with women are framed
as men discussing whether it is licit with slave-girls (e.g. al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ ii, 485), likely
because it was a much surer way to avoid pregnancy than ʿazl.
112 Al-Qurṭubī draws attention to this aspect of the question when he asserts that the con-
trol of the wife’s person that a husband acquires in marriage is limited to the vagina, i.e.
that it does not extend to the anus ( fa-ghayr mawḍiʿ l-nasl lā yanāluhu milk al-nikāḥ);
see: al-Jāmīʿ li-l-aḥkām iii, 94. For a detailed discussion of medieval jurists’ conceptions of
sexual rights in marriage, see: Ali, Sexual ethics 6–13.
113 This is the case even in more detailed versions of this tradition; e.g.: al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ ii,
487–8; Ibn Abī Ḥātim ii, 404.
114 E.g., al-Jaṣṣāṣ i, 352; al-Māturīdī ii, 137.
Constructing the Abode of the Mothers of the Believers 239
the people of Lot.”115 That the spectre of Lot’s people is seldom absent from this
exegetical debate illustrates that what is at stake here is the reproduction of
the social order itself on the ideational as well as the physical level. There was
always the risk that men might pursue sexual pleasure for its own sake to an
“immoderate” degree,116 which could include turning their penetrative sexual
attentions to males.
The anxiety that the latter prospect produced is apparent in these texts.
Exegetes, whether Sunni or otherwise, faced the challenge of upholding male
prerogatives such that these would strengthen rather than pose a threat to
social and communal hierarchies. The recourse by some exegetes to the imag-
ined abode of the wives of the prophet in their interpretations of Q 2:223 serves
to hold fears of social chaos at bay, so that they could be discussed through the
screen of Umm Salama’s reporting about a nameless female questioner.
Thus far, we have examined some of the ways in which a number of mostly
Sunni Quran commentators from the formative period until the sixth/twelfth
century construct and invoke the abode of the Mothers of the Believers as a
space within which several exegetical issues involving varying degrees of con-
troversy can be addressed and resolved. In the examples discussed above,
two female figures in particular—ʿĀʾisha bt. Abī Bakr and Umm Salama—are
granted a degree of interpretive authority. It remains to consider the implica-
tions of such constructions of interpretive authority and gendered construc-
tions of autonomy and authority in a broader sense. In order to do this, we
will examine a cluster of occasion-of-revelation traditions for Q 3:195, 4:32 and
33:35 that were briefly mentioned in Chapter Four.
. . . I heard Umm Salama, the wife of the prophet saying: “I said to the
prophet, ‘Messenger of God, why are we not mentioned in the recitation
( fī l-qurʾān) as men are?’”
She went on: “And nothing silenced me until that day at noon when he
called from the pulpit,118 while I was doing my hair. So I twisted up my
hair, and then went out to another of [the women’s] rooms. I pressed my
ear against the [wall of] palm stalks,119 and then he recited on the pul-
pit—‘O people, God says in His book, For men and women who are devoted
to God, believing men and women [inna l-muslimīna wa-l-muslimāti wa-l-
muʾminīna wa-l-muʾmināt]. . . .’”120
At first glance, Umm Salama’s question is rather puzzling. It is true that while
the masculine plural form of “muslim” (muslimūn or muslimīn) is found in
numerous verses in the Quran, the feminine plural form (muslimāt) very rarely
appears,121 and only in Q 33:35 is it used alongside the masculine plural form.
Nonetheless, the expression “believing men and women” (al-muʾminīn wa-l-
muʾmināt) appears in two quranic verses which are traditionally held to have
been revealed well before the hijra,122 as does at least one verse asserting that
whoever does good and is a believer, “whether male or female” (min dhakarin
aw unthā) will be rewarded by God.123 While such linguistic constructions
making positive mention of male and female believers in tandem cannot be
described as a common feature of quranic style prior to the hijra, they none-
theless would seem to have been present well before Umm Salama is said to
have asked this question—which according to this tradition was in the abode
of the prophet’s wives in Medina.
That different versions of the question said to have been posed by Umm
Salama (and according to some traditions, by the female Companion Nusayba
bt. Kaʿb124 along with her), or by other women are quoted by exegetes suggest
men and women, men and women who remember God often—God has prepared for-
giveness and a rich reward.”
118 “fa-lam yaraʿnī dhāt yawm ẓuhran illā nidāʾahu ʿalā l-minbar.” I would like to thank Walid
Saleh for his assistance in translating this sentence.
119 I.e. presumably palm stalks and clay; see: Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 191.
120 Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xxii, 14; also: al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf v, 112.
121 It is only found in Q 33:35 and 66:5.
122 Q 85:10 and 71:28.
123 Q 40:40; see also Q 16:97.
124 Ibn Saʿd relates that she took part in several battles—Uḥud, Khaybar, Ḥunayn and
Yamāma (633–4), where her hand was cut off—that she gave allegiance at the Second
ʿAqaba, and was present at al-Ḥudaybiyya (Ṭabaqāt viii, 450–4).
Constructing the Abode of the Mothers of the Believers 241
that attempts were made to “clarify” the meaning of the incident.125 This tradi-
tion should probably be understood as an attempt to account for why several
sūras traditionally dated to the late Medinan period—Sūrat al-Tawba (S. 9,
“Repentance”),126 Sūrat al-Nūr, Sūrat al-Aḥzāb, Sūrat al-Fatḥ (S. 48, “Victory”)
and Sūrat al-Ḥadīd (S. 57, “Iron”)—stand out among other quranic sūras for the
number of references that they contain to male and female believers and male
and female doers of righteous deeds.127 It is noteworthy that these sūras also
speak repeatedly of male and female polytheists, male and female “Hypocrites”
and males and females who behave “sinfully.”128 However, this tradition has the
effect of marginalising references of the latter types by highlighting the refer-
ences to male and female believers.
Significantly, similar occasion-of-revelation traditions are provided by
al-Ṭabarī for Q 3:195 and Q 4:32. Umm Salama is reported to have said to
Muḥammad, “I do not hear God mentioning women in the hijra at all.” Then,
Q 3:195 was revealed:
Their Lord has answered them: ‘I will not allow the deeds of any one of
you to be lost, whether you are male or female; you come from each other.
I will certainly wipe out the bad deeds of those who emigrated and were
driven out of their homes, who suffered harm for My cause, who fought
and were killed. I will certainly admit them to gardens graced with flow-
ing streams, as a reward from God: the best reward is with God.’129
Do not covet what God has given to some of you more than others—men
have the portion they have earned and women the portion they have
earned—you should rather ask God for some of His bounty: He has full
knowledge of everything.130
125 See for example: al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ xxii, 13–14; al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf v, 111–12.
126 S. 9 is also known as Sūrat al-Barāʾa, “Immunity.”
127 See: Q 9:71–2; 24:12, 26, 30–1; 33:35, 36, 58, 73; 48:5, 25; 57:12 and 18.
128 See: Q 9:67–8; 24:2, 3, 26; 33:73; 48:6 and 57:13.
129 Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ iv, 259. Similarly: al-Thaʿabī, al-Kashf ii, 216; Ibn al-Mundhir ii, 538–9;
al-Samarqandī i, 324; al-Māwardī i, 443; al-Baghawī i, 305; Ibn ʿAṭiyya iii, 467; al-Ṭūsī iii, 89.
130 Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ v, 60; similarly: al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf ii, 276; Ibn al-Mundhir ii, 676–7;
al-Māturīdī iii, 148; al-Zajjāj ii, 27; al-Samarqandī i, 350; al-Māwardī i, 477; al-Baghawī i,
334; Ibn ʿAṭiyya iv, 34–5; al-Ṭūsī iii, 184.
242 CHAPTER 5
believers, as in Arabic, the masculine plural form can refer to a group com-
posed of both males and females, as well as a group containing only males.
With regard to Q 33:35, it is stated in al-Farrāʾ’s Maʿānī that:
The questioner asks, “How is it that male and female believers are men-
tioned [here], when [mentioning] the first is sufficient?”136 It is because a
woman said, ‘Messenger of God, what good is there for anyone except the
men? They are the ones who are commanded and forbidden.’ And in
addition to that, she mentioned the Ḥajj and jihād. So, God mentioned
[women] on account of that [question of hers].137
I said, “Messenger of God, I do not hear God mention women with regard
to the hijra.”138 So God sent down, And your Lord answered them: I will not
allow the deeds of any one of you to be lost, whether you are male or
female.139
A woman—or women—said, “We made the hijra, and the hijra and the
jihād are not mentioned, except about you (men)?!”140 So, God sent down:
136 “wa-yaqūl al-qāʾil: kayfa dhukira l-muslimīna wa-l-muslimāt wa-l-maʿnā bi-aḥadihimā kāf”.
137 Al-Farrāʾ ii, 343, sub. Q 33:35.
138 “yā Rasūl Allāh lā asmaʿ Allāh jalla wa-ʿazza dhakara al-nisāʾ fī l-hijra bi-shayʾ”.
139 Ibn al-Mundhir ii, 538.
140 “qālat imraʾa aw niswa hājarnā wa lā tudhkaru l-hijra wa-l-jihād illā fīkum”.
244 CHAPTER 5
I will not allow the deeds of any one of you to be lost . . . you come from each
other.
Sufyān commented, “And in this is the ruination of the Khārijīs.”141
originated with Yaḥyā b. Sallām rather than with Hūd himself.146 But regardless
of its origins, opposition to the idea that women could legitimately aspire to
fight in the jihād is far from being uncommon in the Quran commentaries used
in this study, though these exegetes typically express this in their discussions
of Q 4:32.147
There seem to have been several issues at stake in such opposition: one was
evidently a concern with the negotiation of sectarian boundaries. In contra-
distinction to Khārijī (and especially, Azraqī) Others, proto-Sunni and Sunni
exegetes would construct fighting on the battlefield as an emblematically
male act.148 The main focus was not so much on preventing actual women
from fighting149 as it was upholding an idealized gendered hierarchical social
order as divinely ordained. Al-Ṭabarī summarizes the traditions in which Umm
Salama or a group of unnamed women ask why they are not permitted to fight
(and also in some versions, why they only receive half of the inheritance shares
that males are entitled to) as “women desiring the rank of men”150—a desire
which he states that God forbids.151 According to al-Māturīdī, as it is a divinely
given blessing that the burden of fighting in the jihād is not laid upon women,
if women object to this then they are guilty of sinful ingratitude (kufrān).152
Finally, the traditions and exegeses that link Q 4:32 and 33:35 imply a careful
delimitation of any social ramifications that the latter verse might be thought
to have. The emphatic description of the male and female believers who pos-
sess the same positive character traits and perform the same key rituals in
Q 33:35 thus could not be interpreted so as to relativise or call into question
Concluding Remarks
both religiously legitimated authority and intellectual ability with (free) mas-
culinity, but attempt to mark the boundaries of maleness by defining it over
against femaleness. As such, the primary exegetical gaze is both constructed as
emblematically masculine, and presented as far more exegetically consequen-
tial than the secondary exegetical gaze.
The quotation of traditions ascribed to ʿĀʾisha and Umm Salama on pietistic
matters as well as on hotly debated legal questions in the tafsīr works under
discussion here is an example of the exegetical authority that could at times be
attributed to female figures constructed as possessors of a secondary exegeti-
cal gaze. However, the exegetical discourses surrounding Q 33:35, 3:195 and 4:32
provide particularly pointed illustrations of the gendered limitations placed
upon such an exegetical gaze. Whatever the “original” shape and meaning(s)
of the traditions about women’s questions might have been or what quranic
verse(s) it/they might have “initially” been linked to, exegetes utilize such tradi-
tions at their discretion in order to (re)affirm gendered hierarchical construc-
tions as divinely ordained. Moreover, some of the versions of these traditions
imply that it is sinful even to question the justice of gendered social hierarchies
that are presented as divinely given.
It is not Umm Salama or ʿĀʾisha, but rather the exegetes—the possessors
of the primary exegetical gaze—who are given the power to survey the body
of text in its entirety as well as human bodies and the spaces that these bod-
ies occupy, including the imagined abode of the Mothers of the Believers, and
thus it is exegetes who hold interpretive control over all three realms. But for
Quran commentators from the formative and medieval period, the main issue
at stake even in these particular examples was not “the place of (free) women”
per se, nor even the question of whether or to what extent any woman might be
able to interpret the Quran authoritatively. Rather, their chief concern was the
construction and maintenance of a gendered social hierarchy, which included
the gendering of religious and interpretive authority as emblematically “mas-
culine” as a matter of course.
CHAPTER 6
1 Al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf iv, 342. For the appearance of this tradition in other exegetical works, see
below.
2 Abū l-Ṭāhir Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Silafī of Alexandria (d. 576/1180); for him, see: Lane,
A traditional Muʿtazilite 57–8.
3 “wa ajāza li-l-Silafī wa Zaynab al-Shaʿriyya” (al-Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt 511).
4 Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis 31.
Zaynab bt. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Shaʿrī of Naysābūr (d. 615/1218) had received a
general license (ijāza ʿāmma) from al-Zamakhsharī to transmit all of his works,
which included his Quran commentary, and her name appears in one of the
chains of transmission of the Kashshāf.5 In this entry, she is a footnote in what
is otherwise a man’s story.
This chapter examines the (re)construction of memory in some medieval
Quran commentaries as a gendered process through the lens of one interpre-
tive trajectory—the continued citation of exegetical materials ascribed to
women who are for the most part Companions or (much less often) Successors.
To varying extents, a number of medieval exegetes followed their predecessors
such as al-Ṭabarī, al-Thaʿlabī and others in citing such exegetical materials. The
spinning tradition illustrates an important means—the isnād—through which
exegetical materials of this type continue to be incorporated into some medi-
eval Quran commentaries. At the same time, this tradition also raises some
complex historical questions about portrayals of wittingness, processes of
inclusion and exclusion, and the implications of (re)constructions of idealised
visions of the sacred past in a number of early and later medieval Sunni Quran
commentaries for the gendering of exegetical authority.6 Beginning with a
discussion of the spinning tradition’s implications for some exegetes’ (re)con-
structions of exegetical authority, this chapter then focuses on some of the
considerations involved in select Quran commentators’ decisions to include
or exclude exegetical materials ascribed to female figures, to the extent that
this can be reconstructed. While such decisions were apparently shaped by
the interaction of a number of factors, ultimately it was the individual (male)
exegete who enjoyed the authority to select from the past and the present in
the course of the interpretive process.
As the brief mention of Zaynab al-Shaʿriyya in al-Dāwūdī’s biographical
entry for al-Zamakhsharī illustrates, regardless of what al-Thaʿlabī’s choice
to quote the spinning tradition in his Quran commentary might lead us to
assume, available evidence indicates that a few women from scholarly families
apparently participated in certain ways on the margins of the tafsīr tradition.
It seems that this was possible because rather paradoxically, the persistent
The free woman keeping busy with her spinning is an ancient image that
appears in Greco-Roman as well as in rabbinic texts, where it represents
female chastity and propriety, and a vision of the world in which gender roles
are distinct and “properly” ordered.7 The spinning tradition takes this ancient
image and links it to Sūrat al-Nūr, and also to the abode of the wives of the
prophet through its isnād, which presents ʿĀʾisha as having transmitted it from
Muḥammad.
As is well known, a prominent theme of Sūrat al-Nūr is the regulation of
sexual behaviour. This sūra addresses several topics related to this issue,
reproaching those who spread slanderous rumours (Q 24:11–25), and laying
down regulations for dealing with accusations of zinā (Q 24:2–9), as well as
outlining standards of “modest” attire and conduct (Q 24:30–1, 58–60). This
tradition thus associates women’s learning to spin as well as their instruction
in Sūrat al-Nūr with female modesty and sexual restraint, while implying that
housing women in upper rooms or teaching them to write poses a threat to
their chastity.8 Significantly, it was in ʿĀʾisha’s apartment that the verses of
Sūrat al-Nūr which are held to have established her innocence were reportedly
revealed.9 The spinning tradition thus both implicitly evokes the memory of the
7 For a detailed examination of the figure of the spinner in rabbinic texts, see: Peskowitz,
Spinning fantasies.
8 Presumably, this is because if women are housed in upper rooms they could more easily
see the surrounding neighbourhood and perhaps be glimpsed by others, while the ability to
write would enable communication with people beyond the walls of their domicile.
9 For different Sunni and Shiʿi retellings and interpretations of the “tale of the slander” during
the formative period and later, see Chapter Four.
(RE)CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE SACRED PAST, GENDER, AND EXEGESIS 251
10 The verbs in this tradition are in the masculine plural. See: Chapter Four, n. 234.
11 Abū ʿUbayd 250 (Jamāʿa abwāb suwar al-Qurʾān wa-āyātihi wa-mā fīhā min al-faḍāʾil).
For the second tradition, see also: Bukhārī vi, 267 (K. al-Tafsīr) and Abū Dāwūd iv,
28 (K. al-Libās), as well as Chapter Four and the Conclusion of this study.
12 I.e. S. 9, “Immunity,” also known as Sūrat al-Tawba (“Repentance”).
13 Al-Samarqandī ii, 451; Abū ʿUbayd 241 (Jamāʿa abwāb suwar al-Qurʾān wa-āyātihi wa-mā
fīhā min al-faḍāʾil).
14 Franzmann, Women and religion 74. For differing interpretations of the well-known rab-
binic debate on female access to Torah (or possibly, Talmudic) study, see: Wegner, Chattel
or person? 161–2; Boyarin, Unheroic conduct 152–3. For a late antique debate in a Christian
252 CHAPTER 6
centuries used in this study appear to suggest that women’s ability to commu-
nicate in writing is or ought to be an issue of concern.
Interestingly, some of these sources matter-of-factly depict the abode of the
wives of the prophet as a site within which some free elite women have access
to writing. Several traditions present ʿĀʾisha and Umm Salama writing letters
to various persons, although it is not clear whether the actual writing is being
done by the women themselves, or if they are dictating to scribes.15 The codex
traditions discussed above in Chapter Four present ʿĀʾisha, Umm Salama and
Ḥafṣa employing the services of scribes to have copies of the muṣḥaf made
for them after Muḥammad’s death. According to al-Balādhurī, these three
wives of Muḥammd could read, and Ḥafṣa was also able to write.16 A widely
cited ḥadīth presents Muḥammad himself approvingly mentioning that Ḥafṣa
had been taught how to write by a female Companion al-Shifāʾ bt. ʿAbdallāh
(20/640).17 While sources of this type give little reason to suppose that partial
or complete literacy was very common among women in Arabia at that time,
they do present it as a specialized accomplishment of a few Qurayshi female
aristocrats.18
Nonetheless, the question of whether women should learn how to write
apparently came to be seen a controversial question by the fourth/tenth cen-
tury in some quarters at least, as al-Ḥākim’s inclusion of the spinning tradition
in his chapter on tafsīr illustrates. Why this would become an issue of concern
community as to whether it is permitted for women to author books in their own names,
see: Jensen, God’s self-confident daughters 171.
15 E.g.: al-Ḥumaydī i, 292; Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 106; Ibn Ḥanbal vi, 340; ʿAbd al-Razzāq,
Muṣannaf xi, 451 (K. al-Jāmiʿ).
16 Frolov, The spread of literacy 136. Several traditions depict ʿĀʾisha reading from a codex;
e.g.: Ibn Wahb, Koranwissenschaften, fol. 23b, 20–24a, 1; Ibn Abī Dāwūd, 192 (Wa-qad
rakhaṣa fī l-imāma fī l-muṣḥaf ); Abū ʾUbayd, 186 (Bāb al-Qārīʾ yuḥāfiẓ ʿalā juzʾihi wa-
waradahu min al-Qurʾān bi l-layl wa-l-nahār fī ṣalāt aw ghayr ṣalāt).
17 E.g. ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Muṣannaf xi, 16 (K. al-Jāmiʿ); Ibn Ḥanbal vi, 403; Abū Dāwūd iii, 393
(K. al-Ṭibb). Interestingly, al-Ḥākim also has this ḥadīth about al-Shifāʾ teaching Ḥafṣa
to write, which he grades as ṣaḥīḥ according to the standards of al-Bukhārī and Muslim;
al-Dhahabī concurs with this assessment of his; see: al-Ḥākim vii, 2462 (K. Maʿrifat
al-Ṣaḥāba). Its placement in his chapter on the Companions suggests that al-Ḥākim
understood this ḥadīth as a reflection of al-Shifāʾ’s distinctive merits rather than as an
endorsement of women’s writing in general. For al-Shifāʾ, see: Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, al-Istīʿāb
iv, 423–4; he notes that some say that “al-Shifāʾ” was a nickname, and that Laylā was her
actual name (see also Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb xii, 435). She had reportedly been literate long
before her (early) conversion to Islam.
18 For the concentration of literacy in a few elite Meccan families, see: Frolov, The spread of
literacy 136–7.
(RE)CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE SACRED PAST, GENDER, AND EXEGESIS 253
version of the spinning tradition that forbids the teaching of Sūrat Yūsuf (S. 12,
“Joseph”) to women.28
Both al-Ḥākim and his student al-Thaʿlabī29 evidently played a part in
its introduction into exegetical discourses as well as its continued citation.
Al-Ḥākim’s assessment of this tradition as reliable seems to have played some
part in its continued use by exegetes. Nonetheless, several Quran commenta-
tors who quote it acknowledge that its reliability is in question.30
It is noteworthy that the attitude to women’s access to writing expressed in
the spinning tradition was not congruent with the lived realities of the times of
the exegetes who elected to include it in their Quran commentaries. Available
evidence indicates that some elite medieval women could and did commu-
nicate in writing for a range of purposes, whether by writing themselves, or
through scribes.31 Nor does it seem that a Quran commentator’s inclusion of
this tradition in his commentary necessarily signaled complete opposition to
women writing.32
Rather, it appears that the continued citation of the spinning tradition by
a number of medieval Quran commentators was primarily due to its pithy
encapsulation of an idealized hierarchical social order. This tradition, in its
gendering of access to the quranic text as well as of attaining complete literacy,
upholds interpretive authority as emblematically masculine. The spinning
28 According to this version of the tradition, women are not to be housed in upper rooms, or
taught writing or Sūrat Yūsuf, but should be taught spinning and Sūrat al-Nūr (al-Ṭabrisī v,
315; Muḥsin Fayḍ al-Kāshānī iii, 55). Al-Ṭabrisī credits this latter version of it to the imāms
rather than to ʿĀʾisha, however.
29 Although as we have seen, al-Thaʿlabī quotes Ibn Fanjawayh, another teacher of his, as his
source for it. For Ibn Fanjawayh, see: Saleh, Formation 75.
30 Al-Khāzin follows his citation of this ḥadīth with the statement that God knows best
(Tafsīr al-Khāzin iii, 307), while al-Suyūṭī and al-Shawkānī state that it is marfūʿ (Durr vi,
124; Fatḥ 1203). Ibn al-Jawzī reportedly held that it is not authentic (ʿĪsā, Al-Aḥādīth wa-l-
āthār al-wārida fī faḍāʾil al-suwar 466), and also faults al-Thaʿlabī for including merit-of-
sūra traditions in his Quran commentary at all (Saleh, Formation 39), but he nonetheless
includes this tradition in his own tafsīr.
31 Meisami, Writing medieval women 58, 79, n. 76. For a brief survey of references to female
scribes and calligraphers (many of whom were slaves, and some also owned by women) in
classical works, see: al-Munajjid, Women’s roles 144–7. Several studies have drawn atten-
tion to entries in medieval biographical dictionaries which credit some female scholars
with the ability to write; see for example: Bulliet, Elite women 71; Lutfi, Al-Sakhāwī’s Kitāb
al-nisāʾ 119–20.
32 E.g. Ibn al-Jawzī was a student of Shuhda bt. Abī Naṣr, known as “al-kātiba” (the writer),
and he reportedly praised her skills in calligraphy (al-Dhahabī, Siyar xx, 543). For more on
her, see below.
(RE)CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE SACRED PAST, GENDER, AND EXEGESIS 255
tradition implies that women should be taught the Quran primarily in order
to admonish them, and that their access to instruction of any type needs to be
supervised and controlled by their (male) guardians. In this way, women’s full
participation in certain types of scholarly pursuits or venues is rendered for-
ever open to pious debate and at least theoretically, to potential objection on
putatively moral grounds. The result is that in contrast to their female counter-
parts, free Muslim men are constructed as the unmarked category of persons
whose untrammeled access to the full range of available intellectual undertak-
ings and expressions is simply assumed.33
Here again, a gendered vision of participation in the generation and trans-
mission of knowledge, and hence of access to religious authority, is apparent.
This tradition locates this construction of religious authority within the exem-
plary abode of the wives of the prophet (or, alternatively for al-Ṭabrisī and
Muḥsin Fayḍ al-Kāshānī, that of the ahl al-bayt as represented by the twelve
imams), while its quotation in a number of Quran commentaries reinforces its
putative connection to the quranic text itself.
33 The reception history of the spinning tradition, as well as its historical impact on the lives
of real people in various contexts, is a complex topic that remains to be fully researched.
For its presence in a Mamluk manual for market inspectors, see: Berkey, The transmission
161. For a nineteenth century treatise written by a ḥadīth scholar in India, Shams al-Ḥaqq
al-ʿAẓīmābādī, arguing against the view that women should not learn to write (and assert-
ing that the spinning tradition is inauthentic), see: Sayeed, Muslim women’s religious 3–4.
256 CHAPTER 6
than for males of equivalent social status to pursue advanced levels of study or
to wield religious authority.34
ʿĀʾisha’s overt contribution to quranic exegesis as represented in the spin-
ning tradition is depicted as tangential (merit-of-sūra traditions are not directly
interpretive), and as having taken place through oral transmission. Here, her
participation in the exegetical process is inextricably bound to the isnād. In
previous chapters, we have seen a number of examples of the important, even
central role that isnāds have often played in some Quran commentators’ incor-
poration of female figures into the transhistorical exegetical communities
which they construct in their tafsīr works.
A number of medieval exegetes whose works belong to the Sunni “main-
stream” incorporate āthār and ḥadīths ascribed to or said to have been trans-
mitted by female Companions and (much less frequently) female Successors.
As we have seen, this practice seemingly dates back to the formative period.
Yet, it should be noted that those medieval Quran commentators who quote
materials of this type not only elected to continue this exegetical convention
from the past, but often also to further elaborate upon it.
The following general observations can be made about the tafsīr works
conventionally dated to the formative period surveyed in Chapter Two, as
well as the third/ninth and fourth/tenth century encyclopedic commentaries
of al-Ṭabarī, al-Māturīdī and al-Thaʿlabī,35 and the madrasa commentary of
al-Samarqandī:
To varying extents, these observations also hold true for a number of medi-
eval commentaries utilized in this study. However, it should be recognized that
while past practice played an important role due to the genealogical nature of
34 For this dynamic as it pertains to ʿĀʾisha as well as to the famous ascetic, Rābiʿa of Baṣra
(d. 185/801), see: Spellberg, Politics 58–9. As it relates to pious or Sufi women, see: Cornell,
Introduction 17–19; Silvers, Early pious, mystic, and Sufi women.
35 What survives of Ibn al-Mundhir’s commentary suggests that these observations are also
applicable to it.
36 This is also true for female dually signifying figures.
(RE)CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE SACRED PAST, GENDER, AND EXEGESIS 257
the classical tafsīr genre, medieval Quran commentators were not mechani-
cally copying their predecessors when they quoted āthār, ḥadīths or other
exegetical materials ascribed to female Companions and Successors. Rather,
in his construction of a transhistorical community of exegete on the pages of
his Quran commentary, each was engaged in the negotiation and (re)construc-
tion of the sacred past as part and parcel of the exegetical process. Moreover, a
number of factors were operative in the decision to incorporate such materials
(or not).
ʿĀʾisha bt. Abī Bakr remained the most commonly cited female figure by far
in Sunni classical tafsīr works, and exegetes persisted in utilizing the abode of
the wives of the prophet as a space within which controversial issues could be
negotiated. Yet, it is noteworthy that a number of classical Quran commenta-
tors continued to incorporate traditions ascribed to or transmitted by other
less well known female Companions as well as some female Successors. This
often seems to have occurred because a woman’s name happened to be in the
isnād of a tradition that a given exegete had elected to include.
Practices regarding the inclusion (or not) of isnāds thus had an impact on
the inclusion of female Successors in the transhistorical communities of exe-
getes constructed on the pages of Quran commentaries. Such approaches to
citation have varied over time for a number of historical and methodological
reasons. Some tafsīr works conventionally dated to the formative period, such
as the Tafsīr Yaḥyā b. Sallām, make use of isnāds to a degree, but the bulk of the
exegetical material it contains is not furnished with them. If anything, this has
the effect of highlighting the role attributed to a number of male Successors as
sources of exegesis, as when interpretations are ascribed to them in this work,
their names stand out rather than seeming to blend into a sea of isnāds. But
since female dually signifying figures and female Successors are usually quoted
as transmitters rather than as independent sources of exegetical materials, the
appearance of a couple of the names of the former and none of the latter is a
corollary of the inclusion of few isnāds in this work.
By contrast, al-Ṭabarī provides isnāds for most of the traditions that he
quotes, as does Ibn al-Mundhir. This method of citation had the potential
to result in the incorporation of more female dually signifying figures and
Successors in the transhistorical community of exegetes in a given tafsīr work,
depending on which traditions are selected for inclusion. Nonetheless, this
approach to citation was not universally popular even in al-Ṭabarī’s time,37 in
part because it was unwieldy and stood to become only more so as time went
37 Al-Māturīdī for instance sometimes gives the name of the Companion or Successor to
whom a particular tradition is attributed, but he does not cite isnāds.
258 CHAPTER 6
he40 said, “Surely there is a claim on wealth in addition to the zakāt.”41 Another
version of this tradition (henceforth, “the claim over wealth tradition”) which
is also attributed to her clearly ascribes these words to the prophet and also has
him recite Q 2:177 in order to underline the point.42 Of these three traditions, it
is only this latter one that could be described as directly interpretive. However,
as we have seen, al-Ṭabarī also quotes a version which does not include this
quranic verse. Moreover, he includes yet another version in which it is al-Shaʿbī
rather than Muḥammad who answers this question about wealth and recites
Q 2177.43 This suggests that Fāṭima bt. Qays was subsequently added to the
“original” isnād in order to retroject it from al-Shaʿbī back to the prophet.44
In his discussion of this quranic verse, al-Thaʿlabī elects to quote several tra-
ditions attributed to women. According to the first tradition, Ḥafṣa bt. Sīrīn
related from another female Successor, Umm Rāʾiḥ,45 who reported from the
Companion Sulaymān b. ʿĀmir that the prophet said that charitable giving to
relatives is rewarded doubly (henceforth, “the rewarded doubly tradition”).
The second tradition has the Companion Umm Kulthūm bt. ʿUqba recount
that Muḥammad said that the most praiseworthy type of charitable giving is
to a close relative who is one’s enemy (henceforth, “the close relative tradi-
tion”). In the third tradition, one of the prophet’s wives, Maymūna, relates that
when she freed a female slave of hers, Muḥammad remarked that if she had
instead given the slave to her maternal uncles then her reward from God would
have been greater. Finally, the fourth tradition quotes a Successor, Fāṭima bt.
al-Ḥusayn,46 as reporting that the prophet instructed that the beggar has a
40 It appears that al-Ṭabarī assumes that the “he” refers to Muḥammad here, but given the
different versions of this tradition as well as the questions about its isnāds, this is unclear.
41 “inna fī l-māl la-ḥaqqan siwā l-zakāt”.
42 Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ ii, 118.
43 Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ ii, 117–18. This version is also quoted by al-Suyūṭī, who ascribes it to ʿAbd
al-Ḥamīd (Durr i, 416).
44 For more on this, see below. But notwithstanding the issues with its isnād, the directly
interpretive version of the claim over wealth tradition ascribed to Fāṭima bt. Qays was
reportedly cited by Ibn al-Mundhir, as well as by Ibn Abī Ḥātim and Ibn Mardawayh
(al-Suyūṭī, Durr i, 416).
45 The manuscript renders her name as Umm Rāʾiḥ bt. Ḍalīʿ (al-Thaʿlabī, M 99, fol. 2a, sub.
2:177). However, biographical dictionaries give her name as Umm al-Rāʾiḥ al-Ḍabiyya
al-Baṣriyya, otherwise known as al-Rabāb bt. Ṣulayʿ (al-Mizzī, Tahdhīb xxxv, 171–2; Ibn
Ḥajar, Tahdhīb xii, 368).
46 Fāṭima bt. al-Ḥusayn is the granddaughter of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, and the sister of ʿAlī b.
al-Ḥusayn, the fourth imam of the Twelver Shiʿis. Ibn Ḥibbān graded her as a reliable
260 CHAPTER 6
transmitter (Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt viii, 517; al-Mizzī, Tahdhīb xxxv, 254–5). As she was born
after Muḥammad’s death, she cannot have transmitted directly from him.
47 Al-Thaʿlabī, M 99 fols. 2a–2b, sub. 2:177. At issue here is that anyone who has a horse would
not appear to be in need of charity.
48 Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ ii, 119.
49 Neither al-Māturīdī nor al-Samarqandī cite any traditions credited to women at this junc-
ture. Al-Suyūṭī (in his Durr) suggests that Ibn al-Mundhir included two ḥadīths attrib-
uted to Fạ̄ṭima bt. Qays as noted above, but not any of those credited to women which
al-Thaʿlabī quotes for Q 2:177.
50 Al-Māwardī i, 225–6.
(RE)CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE SACRED PAST, GENDER, AND EXEGESIS 261
ḥadīth of Fāṭima out of hand, and suggests that it could refer to an anoma-
lous situation, such as a person possessing wealth who has a needy relative
unable to earn on their own behalf.51 Ibn al-ʿArabī, taking a Mālikī view of the
question, rejects the opinion that paying zakāt alone on wealth is insufficient
as well as this ḥadīth, which he states has a faulty isnād.52 While Ibn ʿAṭiyya
alludes to the claim over wealth tradition, he does not quote it.53 However,
al-Qurṭubī (also a Mālikī) elects to further expand on Ibn al-ʿArabī’s point,
noting that although the ḥadīth critic al-Dāraquṭnī (d. 385/995) had accepted
this tradition and al-Tirmidhī and Ibn Māja had included it in their respective
ḥadīth collections, al-Tirmidhī had indicated that there are problems with its
isnād. Al-Qurṭubī adds that it has also been reported as al-Shaʿbī’s own saying,
which is more accurate.54
Following al-Thaʿlabī, al-Baghawī chooses to quote the doubly rewarded
tradition. Although he does not include the other three traditions attributed
to women found in al-Thaʿlabī’s discussion of Q 2:177, when commenting
on the word “beggars” he incorporates two versions of a well-known ḥadīth
in which a Companion, Umm Bujayd, relates that the prophet said that one
should give to a beggar even if all that one can offer is a burnt hoof.55 In his
epitome of al-Baghawī’s Quran commentary, the only tradition attributed by
name to a woman which al-Khāzin opts to include in his discussion of Q 2:177
is the ḥadīth of Umm Bujayd, which he notes is found in Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ
and was also related by Abū Dāwūd and al-Tirmidhī. Interestingly, he (unlike
al-Baghawī) also cites two versions of the beggar on horseback tradition which
al-Thaʿlabī had quoted, but without isnāds; one version is attributed to ʿAlī b.
Abī Ṭālib and the other to another male Companion, Zayd b. Aslam.56 As a
result of his concern with duly authenticated ḥadīths coupled with his omis-
sion of their isnāds, Fāṭima bt. al-Ḥusayn’s name does not appear.57
For his part, al-Zamakhsharī elects to quote a version of the rewarded dou-
bly tradition as well as a version of the close relative tradition in his exegesis
of Q 2:177, but does not provide isnāds or attribute them to anyone. Also, he
credits the beggar on horseback tradition to Muḥammad and the claim over
wealth tradition to al-Shaʿbī.58
This brief overview of exegetical discourses on part of Q 2:177 from the third/
ninth to the eighth/fourteenth centuries is a good illustration of the interac-
tions of some of the factors at play in exegetes’ decisions regarding the citation
of traditions ascribed to early Muslim women. Most of the Quran commen-
taries discussed above are genealogically interlinked in one way or another:
al-Māwardī’s tafsīr is an epitome of al-Ṭabarī’s. Al-Baghawī, al-Zamakhsharī
and al-Qurṭubī rely to varying extents on al-Thaʿlabī, and al-Khāzin is an epit-
ome of al-Baghawī’s commentary. Al-Qurṭubī evidently has a complex rela-
tionship to many of these works; throughout his entire Quran commentary, he
quotes from Ibn al-ʿArabī and Ibn ʿAṭiyya, but also at times refers to al-Ṭabarī
and al-Māwardī.
In the example just discussed, the influences of such genealogical relations
can be discerned. Individual factors shaping these various exegetes’ choices
evidently include their methodological approach (e.g. encyclopedic, summa-
tive, legally-oriented), as well as the interpretive concerns that they bring to
this verse (e.g. legal, grammatical, admonitory). Among the external factors
influencing their selections of traditions ascribed to women are legal debates,
Sunni ḥadīth critics’ discourses, and the emergence of a Sunni ḥadīth canon.
As has already been noted, the practices of shortening or altogether omitting
isnāds, as well as of summarising or alluding to a ḥadīth rather than quoting it
in full could significantly reduce the presence of female names in the transhis-
torical exegetical communities constructed on the pages of tafsīr works.
While factors such as these provide the beginnings of an explanatory frame-
work for examining the citation of exegetical materials attributed to female
figures in some medieval Quran commentaries belonging to the Sunni exe-
getical “mainstream,” they do not enable us to predict what role(s) exegetical
materials of this type might play in a given tafsīr work. One can never quite
be sure what one might find. Medieval Quran commentators had a wide array
of written works as well as orally transmitted materials to draw upon, which
ranged from collections of variant quranic readings to pietistic or Sufi stories
about virtuous people.
For example, in Chapter Three we saw that several texts conventionally
dated to the formative period appear to suggest that Umm al-Dardāʾ had
58 Al-Zamakhsharī i, 364–7. For a detailed overview of the textual functions of ḥadīths in the
Kashshāf, see: Lane, A traditional Muʿtazilite 149–80.
(RE)CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE SACRED PAST, GENDER, AND EXEGESIS 263
extensive knowledge of the written quranic text, and also that “she”59 is
included in Ibn al-Jazarī’s late medieval biographical work on Quran recit-
ers. However, of the eight tafsīr works discussed in Chapters Two and Three
(at least, in the often incomplete form that they have come down to us), only
the Tafsīr Yaḥyā b. Sallām presents “her” as a source of any type of exegetical
material—i.e. of one pietistic tradition. None of them quotes Umm al-Dardāʾ
as a source of quranic recitations.
Nonetheless, al-Zamakhsharī and Ibn ʿAṭiyya between them did opt to
include a few variant readings attributed to Umm al-Dardāʾ.60 These particular
readings do not appear in the tafsīr works of al-Ṭabarī, al-Māturīdī, al-Thaʿlabī,
or al-Samarqandī. As available evidence does not seem to suggest that they
were already a widely established part of the exegetical discourse on these two
verses, it is unclear why al-Zamakhsharī and Ibn ʿAṭiyya would decide to quote
them some five centuries after “her” death. The various manuscripts of Ibn
ʿAṭiyya’s tafsīr hint that scribal errors may possibly have played a role in creat-
ing, suppressing, or perhaps even “reviving” at least one of these readings.61
But whatever the case, the influence of al-Zamakhsharī’s and Ibn ʿAṭiyya’s
respective decisions is apparent in the Quran commentary of Abū Ḥayyān
al-Gharnāṭī, who cites both of these readings.62
Another example of the unexpected appears in Ibn al-Jawzī’s tafsīr, at the
end of his interpretation of the latter part of Q 2:228:
59 As discussed in Chapter Two, there is a debate as to whether the kunya “Umm al-Dardāʾ”
refers to one person or two. Therefore, “she” is in quotation marks here.
60 Al-Zamakhsharī iii, 126; Ibn ʿAṭiyya vii, 128 (sub. Q 10:22); Ibn ʿAṭiyya x, 414 (sub. Q 24:1).
61 Some of the manuscripts attribute the variant reading of Q 24:1 to Abū l-Dardāʾ (Ibn
ʿAṭiyya x, 414, n. 1). Given that Abū l-Dardāʾ was apparently much better known as a puta-
tive source of variant readings, it could be hypothesised that this reading was “originally”
attributed to him, but that a scribal error resulted in its ascription to Umm al-Dardāʾ.
However, it could be argued that in this case, the ascription to Umm al-Dardāʾ is the lec-
tor difficilior. This question requires further research before any firm conclusions can be
drawn.
62 Al-Gharnāṭī v, 184 (sub. Q 10:22); vi, 521 (sub. Q 24:1). Abū Ḥayyān refers repeatedly in his
commentary to al-Zamakhsharī as well as to Ibn ʿAṭiyya. One of these readings is also
cited by Abū Ḥayyān’s student, al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī, in his commentary; see: Shihāb al-Dīn
Abū l-ʿAbbās b. Yūsuf b. Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Samīn al-Ḥalabī, Al-Durr al-maṣūn
fī ʿulūm al-kitāb al-maknūn iv, 17 (sub. Q 10:22). The latter makes frequent reference to
al-Gharnāṭī, as well as to al-Zamakhsharī and Ibn ʿAṭiyya. For Abū Ḥayyān’s and al-Samīn
al-Ḥalabī’s respective receptions of al-Zamakhsharī’s tafsīr, see: Saleh, The gloss 233–4.
264 CHAPTER 6
. . . The saying of the Almighty {and the men have a degree over them}. Ibn
ʿAbbās said: by means of what they give to them of the mahr, and spend
on them of wealth. Mujāhid said, “Through jihād and inheritance.” Abū
l-Mālik said, “He can divorce her, and she cannot do anything about it.”
Al-Zajjāj said: “She obtains pleasure from him as he obtains it from her,
and for him is the excellence [over her] due to his provision [for her].”
And it is related from Abū Hurayra on the authority of the Prophet, that
he said, “If I were to command any one of you to prostrate before any
person, I would order the woman to prostrate before her husband.” And
the daughter of Saʿīd b. al-Musayyab said, “We did not used to speak to
our husbands except [in the way that] you would speak to your leaders.”63
This passage quotes well-known and oft-cited exegeses of this portion of the
verse which appear in a number of Quran commentaries—with the exception
of the saying attributed to the unnamed daughter of Saʿīd. It is very rare for any
post-Successor female figure to be quoted as a source of exegetical materials
in the tafsīr works utilized in this study, although anecdotes about anonymous
pious or Sufi women deemed to be in some way interpretive do occasionally
make an appearance.64 Moreover, available evidence does not suggest that Ibn
al-Jawzī is following exegetical convention here.65 His choice to incorporate
it into what is otherwise a summary of typical opinions is all the more inter-
esting, given that his commentary belongs to the madrasa-style genre and
was expressly intended to be brief and to the point.66 It is possible that his
inclusion of these words attributed to her might stem from his concern (as
expressed in the introduction of his biographical work, the Ṣifat al-ṣafwa) that
pious women in history not be entirely overlooked.67
Saʿīd is said to have had four daughters,68 and it is unclear which one of
them is meant here. It is said that he unceremoniously married an unnamed
daughter to a student of his, Kathīr b. al-Muṭṭalib b. Abī Wadāʿa; the latter
reportedly described her as “among the most conversant with the Book of God,
and the most knowledgeable of the sunna of the Messenger of God, and the
most cognizant of a husband’s rights.”69 It is possible that this daughter is the
one who is the putative source of Ibn al-Jawzī’s quotation—or that he has no
particular girl in mind, but is referencing a mythical construction: the anon-
yma who might or might not be a historical figure, but whose very anonymity
in the stories told about her signifies her self-effacing (and therefore exem-
plary) female piety.70
This passage is a particularly pointed example of a representation of a
female figure who is granted a degree of authority within the text, yet at the
same time her inclusion emphatically (re)affirms the gendered hierarchies of
social and interpretive authority constructed in the work overall. There is no
indication that this statement attributed to Saʿīd’s daughter was “originally”
intended to interpret the Quran, much less this particular verse. Nonetheless,
her words are deemed worth quoting by Ibn al-Jawzī, who exercises his
discretionary power as an exegete and gives her the last word in his interpreta-
tion of Q 2:228. Her (limited) textual authority and the larger gendered hierar-
chies of societal and exegetical authority (re)constructed and (re)affirmed in
Ibn al-Jawzī’s tafsīr are inextricably intertwined. This is because it is through
this hierarchy that certain female personas—here, the anonymous, self-abne-
gating daughter and wife—historically came to be validated and idealised as
“proper” modes of female piety. Therefore, they could be deemed worthy of
memorialisation in positive terms,71 and occasionally granted a voice, at the
discretion of (male) religious authorities.72
While exegetes made deliberate choices as to what they would or would
not incorporate, the level of intentionality that they assumed the putative
female sources or transmitters of āthār and ḥadīths to possess is unclear for
several reasons. As we have seen, in many if not most cases the female figure
69 “aḥfaẓ al-nās li-kitāb Allāh wa aʿlamihim bi-sunnat Rasūl Allāh wa-aʿrafihim bi-ḥaqq zawj”
(al-Dhahabī, Siyar iv, 234). Al-Thaʿlabī relates that Saʿīd married off an unnamed daughter
for two dirhams (al-Kashf ii, 258); it is unclear if this is a reference to the same story.
70 Whether or not this is the case, it can be surmised that the reader is likely to connect this
quotation with the story of the marriage of the unnamed daughter of Saʿīd, due to the
lack of names. The question of the historicity of such stories will not be taken up here. Ibn
al-Jawzī’s fondness for anecdotes about unnamed pious women is illustrated in his Ṣifat
al-ṣafwa, which contains a number of them.
71 For a critical discussion of the ways that accounts of women’s piety in classical Muslim
sources have been idealised, see: Silvers, Early pious, mystic and Sufi women.
72 To date, we have very little information as to what any pre-modern Muslim women
thought about such idealised models of female piety.
266 CHAPTER 6
While ʿĀʾisha is presented as the source of the first two versions of this tradition,
it is not clear from where her understanding of the verse is derived—though
the reader/audience would likely infer that she learned it from the prophet.
But in the latter version, the act of interpretation is imputed to ʿĀʾisha herself.
In view of Ibn Abī Ḥātim’s concern with avoiding redundancy in his commen-
tary by quoting only the exegetical traditions from the most knowledgeable
Companions that have the soundest isnāds,76 this indicates his esteem for her
as a source and an authority, as well as her status in the text as an extraordinary
female figure. While in this particular example she is portrayed as engaging in
exegesis, this is strikingly atypical.
As there are a significant number of ḥadīths credited to a small number of
early Muslim women found in the ḥadīth works regarded by medieval Sunnis
as most reliable, a noticeable number of such ḥadīths came to be incorpo-
rated into ḥadīth-based Quran commentaries. However, no particular desire
on the part of exegetes authoring commentaries of this type to foreground
these is in evidence. In the course of his hermeneutical theorizing, neither Ibn
Taymiyya—nor, following him, Ibn Kathīr—expresses any particular inter-
est in the ḥadīths credited to any female Companion, not even to ʿĀʾisha bt.
Abī Bakr. Rather, in their discussions of Companions and Successors famed
for their trustworthy transmission of ḥadīths and/or knowledge of the Quran’s
interpretation, female figures are notably absent.77 The inclusion of a signifi-
cant number of ḥadīths attributed to ʿĀʾisha in particular (and to a lesser extent,
some other female Companions and Successors) in late medieval ḥadīth-based
Quran commentaries is evidently a methodological byproduct rather than the
result of an intentional focus.
To this point, our focus has been on Quran commentators’ quotations of exeget-
ical materials attributed to or reportedly transmitted by women. Nonetheless,
several of the sources used for this study also provide a few glimpses of a small
number of scholarly women prior to the late nineteenth century CE on what
can be termed the margins of tafsīr.
aḥadukum lā yurīd minhu illā l-ṣidq fayakūna ʿalayya ghayr mā ḥalafa ʿalayh” (Ibn Abī
Ḥātim ii, 408, iv, 1190).
76 See the Introduction (above).
77 See for example: Ibn Taymiyya, Muqaddima 64; Ibn Kathīr i, 13. The last two chapters of
Ibn Taymiyya’s Muqaddima are quoted verbatim in Ibn Kathīr’s introduction to his Quran
commentary; see: Saleh, Ibn Taymiyya 124.
268 CHAPTER 6
78 For the decline of female involvement in ḥadīth transmission in the second/eighth cen-
tury, see Chapter Three.
79 For example, Karīma bt. Aḥmad al-Marwaziyya (d. 463/1070) was a well-known transmit-
ter of al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ; for her, see: al-Dhahabī, Siyar xviii, 233–5. For her career, see:
Sayeed, Shifting fortunes 226–30.
80 There is a growing body of scholarship on medieval women ḥadīth transmitters; see
for example: Roded, Women in Islamic 63–89; Berkey, Transmission of knowledge 161–81;
Sayeed, Women and ḥadīth 71–94.
81 Sayeed, Shifting fortunes 223–6.
(RE)CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE SACRED PAST, GENDER, AND EXEGESIS 269
ḥadīths or books (which they would then be expected to learn when they were
older), so that they could receive the teacher’s ijāza (certification) to transmit
this material later. Ijāzas could also be obtained without having had direct con-
tact with the teacher. Therefore, a girl from a scholarly family, whose relatives
facilitated her attendance at the classes of a noteworthy ḥadīth scholar while
she was small (or obtained ijāzas on her behalf) and who moreover had the
necessary motivation later on to learn the material could become a renowned
transmitter decades later, especially if she also acquired a reputation for
piety and lived to an advanced age.82 In this way, possible conflicts between
her involvement in ḥadīth transmission and ideals of gender segregation and
seclusion for free women as well as (early) marriage and childbearing would
be at least theoretically kept to a minimum. It is interesting to note that such a
trajectory also parallels the life-pattern of ʿĀʾisha bt. Abī Bakr as it is presented
in classical biographies of her to some extent. The foundation for ʿĀʾisha’s repu-
tation as an important source of knowledge was established before her widow-
hood at the age of eighteen, but her transmission of Muḥammad’s teachings is
said to have chiefly occurred during the last few decades of her life, before her
death at age sixty-six.
That these factors also appear to have enabled and promoted such involve-
ment on what could be termed the fringes of quranic exegesis is apparent in the
outlines of the life of Zaynab bt. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Shaʿrī presented in medi-
eval biographical dictionaries. As we have seen, she received a general license
from al-Zamakhsharī to transmit all of his works, and her name appears in one
of the chains of transmission of his Quran commentary. The daughter of a reli-
gious scholar, she was born in 524/1129. As al-Zamakhsharī died in 538/1144, she
must have been less than fourteen years of age when she received this ijāza. It
is unlikely that she studied the Kashshāf with al-Zamakhsharī,83 although she
presumably learned it when she was older. Neither do tafsīr works appear to
have been the focus of her studies and teaching. Zaynab also heard the Ṣaḥīḥ
al-Bukhārī from several teachers, and later taught ḥadīth herself. She was
famed for the shortness of her isnāds, which was made possible not only by
82 This trajectory can be seen in the life of the seventh-eighth/thirteenth-fourteenth century
ḥadīth transmitter Zaynab bt. al-Kamāl; see: Sayeed, Women and ḥadīth 75–82. For more
on her, see below.
83 Aside from the fact that she was fairly young when she received the ijāza—which was
in any case a general one—Lane notes that available sources specifically name only
one (male) student of al-Zamakhsharī’s who studied his Quran commentary with him
(A traditional Muʿtazilite 55).
270 CHAPTER 6
her having begun her studies at an early age, but by the fact that she lived until
age 91.84
Another example of women on tafsīr’s margins is found in the Tafsīr
Mujāhid b. Jabr. As it has come down to us, the text contains the records of the
sessions for the reading aloud (qirāʾa) of its eight constituent parts. At these
assemblies, one part of the text would be read out, and its transmitter would
verify the accuracy of the students’ written copies. These records list one girl or
woman (or at times two) as having been present for several of these sessions
in the month of Shawwāl in 482/1089. Both are related to the transmitter of the
text, Abū l-Faḍl Aḥmad b. al-Ḥasan b. Khayrūn of Baghdad (d. 488/1095)85—
Kāmila is his daughter, while Sitt al-Ḥasan is the sister of his grand-nephew.86
Being present at such gatherings was regarded as a religiously meritorious act.
However, it is unclear whether either of them played any active role in the
further transmission of this text.
Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī’s Muʿjam al-mufahras, which gives the isnāds of the
books that he studied, includes isnāds for a number of works on the Quran
and its interpretation. Of the isnāds for works of this type which contain the
names of female scholars, nearly all of the books in question appear to have
been composed of traditions. Moreover, most deal with aspects of the recita-
tion or study of the Quran, but are not directly exegetical. For example, the
well-known Damascene ḥadīth transmitter, Zaynab bt. al-Kamāl (d. 740/1339)
is credited with having transmitted a faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān work, and a work on
abrogating and abrogated verses (nāsikh wa-l-mansūkh), as well as one about
Meccan and Medinan verses.87 On the few occasions when a woman who
transmitted an exegetical work is mentioned, the work in question most often
seems to have been ḥadīth-based. For instance, Fāṭima bt. Muḥammad b.
al-Munajjā reportedly transmitted the Tafsīr of Sufyān b. ʿUyayna (as well as a
couple of faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān works).88 Only once is this not the case: Shuhda bt.
84 Al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām 239–40, years 611–20. Al-Dhahabī describes her as a righteous
woman, long-lived, famous, and with an elevated isnād, which was brought to an end
by her death: “wa-kānat shaykha ṣāliḥa ʿāliyat al-isnād muʿammara mashhūra inqaṭaʿa
bi-mawtihā isnād ʿālin.”
85 For Abū l-Faḍl Aḥmad b. al-Ḥasan b. Khayrūn, see: al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām, 231–3,
years 481–90 AH.
86 Mujāhid 431, 499, 562, 629–30, 697.
87 Shihāb al-Dīn Abū l-Faḍl Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Al-Muʿjam
al-Mufahras aw tajrīd asānīd al-kutub al-mashhūra wa-l-ajzāʾ l-manthūra 107, 109, 111. For
Zaynab’s career as a ḥadīth transmitter, see: Sayeed, Women and ḥadīth 75–82.
88 Ibn Ḥajar, Muʿjam 107, 109, 111. Fāṭima lived during the eighth-ninth/fourteenth-fifteenth
centuries. The tafsīr of Sufyān b. ʿUyayna is apparently lost; see: Gilliot, Beginnings 16.
(RE)CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE SACRED PAST, GENDER, AND EXEGESIS 271
Abī Naṣr Aḥmad b. al-Faraj al-Dīnawārī (d. 574/1178), who is celebrated in clas-
sical biographical works for her transmission of ḥadīths and various books as
well as for her skills as a calligrapher, is not only credited with having transmit-
ted a faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān work, but also the linguistically-focused Maʿānī l-Qurʾān
of al-Zajjāj.89
While these examples are suggestive, they are too few in number as well as
too disparate in geographical region and time to serve as a basis for more than
some tentative observations. These women typically belong to scholarly fami-
lies. We have two instances, both in the sixth/twelfth century, of women trans-
mitting an exegetical work with a linguistic focus. However, the remaining
examples are of women attending the reading of portions of a tradition-based
exegetical work (in the fifth/eleventh century) and transmitting tradition-
based texts related to the study of the Quran or in several cases to its exegesis,
in sixth/twelfth, eighth/fourteenth and ninth/fifteenth centuries. There is little
or nothing to suggest that most of these women would have had advanced
knowledge of quranic exegesis, or even a particular interest in transmitting
books connected with it. Rather, in the case of those who were transmitters,
their main focus appears to have been the ḥadīth, and their transmission of
some works related to the study of the Quran and/or its exegesis seems to have
been an extension of that for the most part.
These women were transmitters/“editors”90 of these books; their role was
to ensure that the text was copied and passed down accurately. The gather-
ings at which the transmission of these books took place had a practical
function—that of providing a means for these texts to be accurately pre-
served and passed on—as well as what can be termed the ritual function of
(re)affirming the links between the participants and the books to the sacred
past, through the isnād. In these examples considered here, the female trans-
mitters’ role was to pass on works authored by others. In this process, they
served as conduits for baraka as well as of duly legitimated access to some of
the authentically transmitted books which were part of the educational forma-
tion of religious scholars. Such religious authority as these women themselves
Two other apparently tradition-based exegetical works with a female transmitter in their
isnāds are also listed (Muʿjam 109, 110).
89 Ibn Ḥajar, Muʿjam 107, 115. For Shuhda, see: al-Dhahabī, Siyar xx, 542–3; al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh
al-Islām 145–7, years 571–80 AH. For her scholarly career, see: Sayeed, Muslim women’s
religious education 98–100.
90 Asma Sayeed characterises the role played by medieval female transmitters of ḥadīth
compilations as that of “editors” (Sayeed, Shifting fortunes 236). My thinking about medi-
eval women on the margins of tafsīr owes much to her ground-breaking research.
272 CHAPTER 6
91 For a reproduction of the Arabic manuscript as well as an English translation, see: Boyd
and Mack, The collected works 60–71, 364–83. Asmāʾu also wrote a short poem intended
to help people to memorize the names of the sūras of the Quran; for this work, see: The
collected works 23–6, 382–9.
92 For a biography of Asmāʾu (1793–1865 CE), see: Boyd, The caliph’s sister.
93 As the editors note, it belongs to the “medicine of the prophet” genre. For a brief overview
of this work as a representative of this genre within its literary, geographical and historical
context, see: Boyd and Mack, The collected works 57–60.
94 For Shuhda’s compilation of 115 ḥadīths with “elevated” isnāds, see: Sayeed, Shifting for-
tunes 277. Sayeed notes that while this work evidences Shuhda’s knowledge of isnāds, it
does not demonstrate “legal acumen or creativity.”
(RE)CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE SACRED PAST, GENDER, AND EXEGESIS 273
Concluding Remarks
95 Homerin, Living love 232–33. Originally from Syria, she spent much of her career in Cairo.
274 CHAPTER 6
figure who transmitted and one who interpreted), so the effect of tying female
participation to transmission was to render it marginal and subsidiary within
transhistorical exegetical communities, as well as to associate it with passivity.
Nonetheless, one rather paradoxical result of this persistent linkage between
transmission and female figures was that it also opened up possibilities for lim-
ited involvement on the margins of the medieval tafsīr tradition for a small
number of women from scholarly families. At this point, it is difficult to say
much about this interesting phenomenon, which remains to be researched.
One can however observe that it highlights the fact that the primary exegetical
gaze discussed in Chapter Five is a theological construction, which should not
be mistaken for an accurate description of lived realities.
Conclusion
1 At least, in the Taʾwīlāt ahl al-sunna as it has come down to us.
Conclusion 277
had from such encyclopedic Quran commentaries, as well as from the madrasa
Quran commentary of al-Samarqandī.
With the rise of the ṣaḥīḥ movement in the third/ninth century, several
ḥadīth scholars attempted to intervene in the ongoing interpretive discourses
on the Quran. Their chief concern appears to have been that a number of Quran
commentators were making exegetical use of traditions. In al-Bukhārī’s view,
it was discerning ḥadīth scholars such as himself who could authoritatively
distinguish between reliable and unreliable ḥadīths, while the exegetes lacked
the requisite knowledge to be able to do so. By including a tafsīr chapter in
his well-known compilation of ḥadīths that he judged to be ṣaḥīḥ, al-Bukhārī
seems to have intended to make available to non-specialists reliable versions
of ḥadīths that were often already being used exegetically. Al-Tirmidhī and
al-Nasāʾī (and in the century following, al-Ḥākim) followed suit, with each
incorporating a tafsīr chapter into a ḥadīth compilation of theirs.
One result of these ḥadīth compilers’ focus on complete isnāds that extend
back to the prophet whenever possible is that these tafsīr chapters inadver-
tently highlight the existence of ḥadīths credited to female figures (in particu-
lar, to ʿĀʾisha) that could be deemed to have some bearing on various exegetical
questions. These tafsīr chapters provide a window into the types of ḥadīths
ascribed to early Muslim women that were being used exegetically at that
time. It is noteworthy that these chapters had a limited impact on several
medieval tafsīr works from the fifth/eleventh century and later, which quote
some ḥadīths from them.
Nonetheless, the entry of ḥadīths into tafsīr works predated the compila-
tion of any of these tafsīr chapters, and unfolded quite independently of them.
This process of entry seems to have begun in a very limited way in the second/
eighth century, and continued to expand in the third/ninth and fourth/tenth
centuries, as can be seen from the encyclopedic Quran commentaries penned
during this time. The influence of al-Ṭabarī and especially al-Thaʿlabī on a
number of other later Quran commentators is at times reflected in quotations
of traditions attributed to a female figure that had come to be associated with
a particular quranic verse. Such influence is apparent in classical Quran com-
mentaries such as those of al-Māwardī, al-Wāḥidī (in his Waṣīṭ), al-Baghawī,
al-Zamakhsharī and Ibn ʿAṭiyya for example. Of these commentaries, the lat-
ter three in particular had a significant impact on late medieval Sunni Quran
commentary.2 A number of late medieval exegetes evidently continued to
2 For al-Baghawī’s popularity in the late medieval period, see the Introduction. From the sev-
enth/thirteenth century onward, the Quran commentary of al-Zamakhsharī, as well as those
of al-Rāzī and al-Bayḍāwī respectively, were central to the study and teaching of quranic
278 Conclusion
exegesis in Sunni madrasas (Saleh, Preliminary remarks 10–11; Saleh, Marginalia 302–9). Ibn
ʿAṭiyya is often quoted by al-Qurṭubī in his Quran commentary, as we have seen.
Conclusion 279
not very commonly portrayed as speaking with the express intention of inter-
preting the quranic text for the community.
Exegetical materials belonging to several different literary genres and
deemed to pertain to a wide range of exegetical topics are ascribed to female
figures. However, women are most commonly quoted as sources of exegeti-
cal materials on legal, eschatological, and pietistic topics. Female figures are
rarely presented as sources of qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ or other narratives, unless these
pertain to events during Muḥammad’s lifetime. Nor are women often quoted
as pronouncing on theological-exegetical matters, and only a small number of
variant or other quranic readings are attributed to them.
The literary features of these representations of female figures as sources
of exegetical materials contributed to the gendering of exegetical authority
in these tafsīr works in several intertwined ways. Not only do many of these
depictions present the scope and scale of women’s putative exegetical involve-
ment as typically limited in comparison to men’s, but the textual roles that
these portrayals play within the tafsīr works that quote them are not usually
exegetically definitive. Finally, these representations have historically been
heard, read, and quoted against a wider backdrop of legal theoretical struc-
tures and pietistic ideals linked by exegetes to the quranic text itself, that con-
struct free males (in contradistinction to females) as an unmarked category of
persons whose access to the highest levels of learning and interpretive author-
ity is assumed. Even regular and direct access to the quranic text itself is legally
constructed as an emblematically “masculine” ability.
Given this backdrop, those few early Muslim women who have been memo-
rialized as having contributed to the exegetical process appear as all the more
exceptional. The exegetical salience of the abode of the wives of the prophet
for Sunni exegetes in particular, as well as the genealogical nature of the clas-
sical tafsīr genre, are important factors that encouraged the continued quota-
tion of exegetical materials ascribed to women—particularly to ʿĀʾisha and a
few other wives of Muḥammad—even into the late medieval period. At the
same time, these factors did not tend to promote the inclusion of later genera-
tions of women within the transhistorical exegetical communities that Quran
commentators construct in their works. Within the classical Sunni tafsīr genre,
a variety of materials ascribed to female figures and deemed to be relevant to
quranic exegesis in some way were in circulation, and were selectively utilized.
Nonetheless, this was done in ways that ensured that the interpretive enter-
prise was continuously (re)constructed and (re)affirmed as emblematically
“masculine.”
Finally, on a more general note, the research findings presented in this study
open up a number of fascinating avenues for future exploration.
Conclusion 281
commentaries has not been considered in any detail here. More research is
needed on this question. There are some indications that the education of a
few medieval Sufi women included the study of some tafsīr works, whether
Sufi or otherwise, as the example of the Qādirī Sufi scholar, ʿĀʾisha al-Bāʿūniyya
demonstrates.5 It is evident that much remains to be done before we will be
in the position to offer even a rudimentary chronological outline of women’s
involvement in medieval exegesis or in the study of the quranic text more
broadly.
Afterword
5 For her book containing quotations from al-Qushayrī’s Quran commentary, see Chapter Six.
6 For a number of the political and sectarian factors involved in the production of such printed
editions, see: Saleh, Preliminary remarks 14–16; Saleh, Formation 229.
7 Some efforts have also been made to translate (and sometimes also to abridge) certain pre-
modern Quran commentaries into other languages, in order to make them accessible to
Muslims who do not read Arabic.
8 As at www.altafsir.com, a site which was established in 2001 by the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute
for Islamic Thought in Jordan. While the overwhelming majority of Quran commentaries
available on this site are in Arabic, English translations are also provided for a few short clas-
sical tafsīr works.
284 Conclusion
is a very significant departure from the ways that Quran commentaries were
formerly studied and utilized.9
Yet another important modern development pertains to hermeneutics.
While the ḥadīth-based hermeneutical approach put into practice by Ibn Abī
Ḥātim, and several centuries later, by Ibn Kathīr remained marginal within
the genre of Sunni tafsīr throughout the medieval period, it would achieve an
unprecedented degree of attention in the twentieth century. Salafī scholars
and thinkers energetically promoted Ibn Taymiyya’s Muqaddima as the correct
method to adopt when interpreting the Quran. One result of this is that among
Sunnis, the most popular Quran commentary today is arguably Ibn Kathīr’s
Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓīm.10
These developments raise a number of complex questions as to what they
might portend for contemporary Muslim debates about gender roles, as well
as whether pre-modern constructions of interpretive authority as emblem-
atically “masculine” might be significantly modified as a result. Historically
unprecedented lay access to pre-modern Quran commentaries carries with
it the possibility that highly restrictive and even abusive interpretations of
certain verses—as well as some ḥadīths often quoted in these works—that
pose controversial questions for modern audiences may in this way become
popularized.11 That some editors are concerned about this issue is made evi-
dent by their provision of detailed footnotes refuting exegeses that they regard
as particularly egregious,12 or noting that ḥadīths which they view as problem-
atic were deemed weak or forged by some traditional ḥadīth critics.13 At the
same time, increased access to pre-modern quranic commentary can have the
effect of opening it up for lay questioning, critique, and even subversion.
9 The work of Nimat Hafez Barazangi (discussed below) is an interesting illustration of the
possibilities afforded by electronic access to classical Quran commentaries. She reports
that in her research, she found electronic versions of the tafsīrs of al-Ṭabarī, al-Qurṭubī,
Ibn Kathīr and the Tafsīr al-Jalalayn significantly facilitated comparing underlying con-
cepts in their interpretations of particular verses; see: Barazangi, Woman’s identity 58.
10 Saleh, Preliminary remarks 10–11, 15.
11 For the emergence and development of contemporary Muslim debates about the authen-
ticity and relevance of the ḥadīth literature, see: Brown, Rethinking tradition.
12 Fatima Mernissi draws attention to this phenomenon in her discussion of al-Ṭabarī’s exe-
gesis of Q 4:34 and the editor’s comments on it (in the Shakir edition); see: Mernissi, The
veil 159.
13 For example, the spinning tradition continues to attract such editorial comment; see for
example: al-Wāḥidī, al-Wasīṭ iii, 302, n. 3, 5. Some editors even offer detailed religious refu-
tations of the notion that women should not learn to write; see for example: al-Thaʿlabī,
al-Kashf iv, 342, n. 1; Ibn al-Jawzī, Zād vi, 3–4, n. 2.
Conclusion 285
true believers respond to divine commands. The first recounts that as soon as
some male Companions who were drinking wine heard that Q 5:90–1 had been
revealed, they immediately poured their drinks onto the ground.16 The second
is presented in the form of occasion-of-revelation traditions for Q 24:31 attrib-
uted to ʿĀʾisha that are related by Ibn Kathīr in his Quran commentary, on the
authority of Ibn Abī Ḥātim. The latter of these traditions praises the women
of the Anṣār as unmatched in their level of faith, because as soon as their male
relatives informed them that this verse had been revealed to Muḥammad, they
covered themselves with their wraps, and the next morning went out thus
attired to perform the dawn prayer. Al-Qaradāwī states that it is such an unhes-
itating response to divine commands that befits believing women.17
While it is apparent that of these two examples of praiseworthy obedi-
ence, the one provided for women to emulate involves a significantly more
far-reaching change of lifestyle,18 what is particularly noteworthy is how the
latter ḥadīth genders the diffusion of knowledge of the revelation in the early
Muslim community, as well as its subsequent interpretation. It states that once
this verse was revealed, “their men returned (home) to them [i.e. the women],
and recited to them what God had sent down to them about them. A man
would recite (it) to his wife, his daughter, his sister, and to every female relative
of his.”19
Here, ʿĀʾisha herself is credited with having related this ḥadīth, and she is
also depicted as an omniscient narrator, having seemingly witnessed the rev-
elation of Q 24:31, as well as what subsequently transpired in every Medinese
household. But the women that al-Qaradāwī presents as exemplars for contem-
porary female believers through his quotation of this ḥadīth are the women of
the Anṣār. Unlike ʿĀʾisha, they are not present when Q 24:31 is revealed, and
therefore only learn of it later through their male relatives. Of all (free) mem-
bers of the community, their access to knowledge of the revelation is seem-
ingly the most indirect, even when its content directly pertains to them. There
is no suggestion in this ḥadīth that any of these women attempted to verify the
accuracy of what they had been told, or raised questions about its meaning—
rather, they simply put it into practice.
While this depiction evidently accords with Salafī representations of the
Quran and the sunna as sources of relatively straightforward guidance that
usually require minimal interpretation, its gendered dimensions are also
apparent. In this idealized picture of knowledge transmission, it is men who
typically possess the greatest degree of knowledge of the revelation, and their
conveyance of it to their female relatives is generally an enactment of a patri-
archal social structure that in theory places every girl or woman under the
tutelage of a male. Here, as female acquisition of knowledge is usually embed-
ded within such a patriarchal paradigm and is an expression of it, even when
women in turn transmit such knowledge it usually reinforces this pattern
rather than calling this paradigm into question.
Some Muslim feminist authors have elected to popularize their own selec-
tions of ḥadīths quoted in classical Quran commentaries, which in their view
imply a critique of androcentric interpretations, or even invalidate them.
A particularly well-known example is Fatima Mernissi’s discussion of the
occasion-of-revelation tradition quoted by al-Ṭabarī (and others) in which
Umm Salama recounts that after she asked the prophet why women are not
mentioned in the revelation, Q 33:35 was revealed.20 However, some female
scholars who are involved in contemporary social justice-oriented interpre-
tations of the Quran maintain that pre-modern Muslim women were never
involved in quranic exegesis. In the early 1990’s, Amina Wadud asserted that
as classical Quran commentaries have always been written by men, they over-
look or exclude women’s experiences and viewpoints, or present these from
an androcentric perspective.21 More recently, Nimat Hafez Barazangi declares
20 Mernissi, The veil 118–19. For a more recent invocation of this story in order to legitimate
modern Muslim women’s reinterpretations of the Quran, see: Barlas, Women’s readings
255–6. While Mernissi reads this tradition as an indication that some female Companions
vigorously resisted patriarchal control, contemporary conservative Muslim scholars and
writers typically read it as an exemplary instance of a wife of the prophet seeking to
know how to better obey God (e.g. Nadwi, al-Muḥaddithāt 4–5). Q 33:35 itself has come
to be commonly quoted even by very conservative authors as proof of women’s “spiritual
equality” in Islam (Ali, Sexual ethics 114–15)—but they do not understand such spiritual
equality as implying or supporting social-legal equality.
21 Wadud-Muhsin, Qurʾan and woman 2. Wadud is an African American Muslim. For an
overview of her interpretive approach, see for example: Barlas, Amina Wadud’s herme-
neutics 97–123; Hammer, Identity, authority, and activism 443–64. Qurʾan and woman was
reprinted by Oxford University Press in 1999, and it has been translated into a number of
different languages, including Arabic, Bahasa Indonesian, Persian and Turkish.
288 Conclusion
that despite the presence of ḥadīths attributed to some early Muslim women
in classical Quran commentaries, women have historically been barred from
participating in the production of Islamic knowledge, including tafsīr.22
While Wadud utilizes al-Zamakhsharī’s tafsīr in her book, Qurʾan and woman,
she does not elect to discuss the presence of ḥadīths ascribed to women that
are quoted in it or in other classical Quran commentaries. However, Barazangi
draws attention to the problems presented by some of these ḥadīths for mod-
ern Muslims who read the Quran as upholding and promoting justice, and
regard women as possessing ethical agency on par with men.
For example, she critically discusses an occasion-of-revelation tradition for
Q 4:12823 in which ʿĀʾisha relates that Sawda feared that Muḥammad would
divorce her; in an effort to avert this, Sawda waived her right that he regularly
spend time with her as he did with his other wives, and permitted him to use
“her” time to be with ʿĀʾisha instead. Barazangi finds the reported behaviour
of Muḥammad and Sawda as well as ʿĀʾisha in this story to be in violation of
quranic ideas of justice. Therefore, she asks how it is possible for Muslims to
accept this ḥadīth in the form that it has come down to us as a credible inter-
pretation of Q 4:128. While Barazangi expresses doubts about the reliability
of these ḥadīths, she also muses that if this incident did take place as they
describe then this might indicate that the prophet’s wives did not fully imple-
ment or perhaps even understand quranic teachings on individual ethical
responsibility.24
As this brief and necessarily incomplete survey makes apparent, ḥadīths or
other exegetical materials attributed to early Muslim women and cited in pre-
modern tafsīr texts continue to be quoted, studied and otherwise referenced
by contemporary Muslim scholars and authors writing from a wide variety of
confessional perspectives, and with diverse aims in mind. Ḥadīths of this type
function as part of the classical exegesis of particular quranic verses; they can
also be quoted in contexts that are not primarily exegetical, in order to serve as
means of admonition, inspiration, and ethical reflection. This ongoing circula-
tion and reception of exegetical materials credited to early female figures is yet
another complex and fascinating phenomenon that remains to be researched.
22 Barazangi, Woman’s identity 2, 50, 82. Barazangi is a Syrian-American Muslim. For her
interpretive approach, see: Hammer, Identity, authority, and activism.
23 “If a wife fears high-handedness or alienation from her husband, neither of them will be
blamed if they come to a peaceful settlement, for peace is best. Although human souls
are prone to selfishness, if you do good and are mindful of God, He is well aware of all
that you do.”
24 Barazangi, Woman’s identity 128–33.
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Index of Quranic References
Sūra 2 Sūra 7
2:58 96 7:31 93
2:125 218
2:127 189 Sūra 8
2:153 83 8:67 218
2:158 190
2:177 91, 97, 110–11, 112, 113, 258–62 Sūra 9 241, 251
2:178 42n49 9:60 85
2:183 190
2:184 84, 134 Sūra 10
2:199 189 10:16 94
2:204 83, 197
2:214 183 Sūra 11
2:222 235 11:46 94, 134, 136
2:223 232, 235–6, 239
2:225 83, 84, 95, 103, 127, 266 Sūra 12
2:228 42n47, 263–4 12:18 177, 179
2:238 198 12:110 79, 134, 142–3, 183
2:260 92
2:275–6 191 Sūra 14
2:279–80 191 14:48 195
2:282 46n68
2:284 181 Sūra 15
15:28–9 39
Sūra 3
3:7 78, 83, 103, 123–4, 182 Sūra 17 201
3:195 76, 194, 241, 242, 243, 244, 247 17:88 94
3:200 117 17:110 76
Sūra 4 Sūra 18
4:1 39–41, 63 18:82 184
4:3 116 18:103 78
4:6 191
4:8 85, 147 Sūra 19
4:23 92 19:59 78
4:24 232, 234
4:32 194, 241, 242, 243, 245, 247 Sūra 20
4:34 42–6, 63, 216 20:63 95, 96, 110
4:43 189 20:124 184
4:123 181
4:127 191 Sūra 21
4:128 79, 191, 288 21:68–9 10
4:159 83 21:69 3, 13
4:162 91, 95, 97, 110 21:98 96, 134
Sūra 5 Sūra 22
5:6 189 22:25 78
5:67 144, 186
5:69 95, 110 Sūra 23
5:89 191, 266 23:5–7 233
5:90–1 286 23:12 92
Index Of Quranic References 309
Sūra 27 Sūra 46
27:65 144 46:17 178
27:82 155 46:24 84n89, 221
Sūra 31 Sūra 47
31:34 148 47:4 90
Sūra 36 Sūra 58
36:55 92 58:1–4 192
36:69 85, 103, 125–6 58:8 222–3
36:72 94, 134
36:82 46
310 Index Of Quranic References
Sūra 59 Sūra 83
59:7 169 83:26 95, 118
Sūra 60 Sūra 84
60:12 90, 193 84:8 78–9, 89, 103, 195
“Al-” has been omitted from the beginning of entries. Where possible, I have provided death
dates for pre-twentieth century CE historical figures, with the exception of a number of
Companions and Successors whose death dates are debated or unknown. I have followed the
Hijrī/Common Era dating format, omitting hijrī dates after 1700 CE.
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Abī Bakr (d. ca. 53/672) as a source of eschatological traditions
85, 87, 178 78–9, 89, 98, 195–6
ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī (d. 211/826) as a source of exegetical materials 1, 64,
tafsīr work of 74, 75, 80–1, 128–9 106, 113–14, 165, 204
use of materials credited to women as a source of legal materials 68–9, 79,
81–8, 124, 134, 153 83, 84, 85, 95, 98, 189–93, 209, 210–11,
ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Abī Bakr 85 214, 218, 230–2, 244, 266
Abraham 3, 13, 218 as a source of merit-of-sūra traditions
Abū l-ʿĀliya (d. 90/708–9) 82, 155 201–2, 248ff
Abū l-Dardāʾ (d. 32/652) 99–100, 153, 172, as a source of narrative 67–8, 84, 90,
226 184–5
Abū Bakr (d. 12/634) 83–4, 86, 87, 125, 129, as a source of periphrastic exegesis 76,
147, 177, 186, 187, 214, 217 78, 83, 84, 89, 95, 208
Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150/767) 44 as a source of pietistic traditions 98, 128,
Abū Ḥayyān al-Gharnāṭī (d. 745/1344) 221ff
and gender 52 as a source of quranic readings 79, 84,
Quran commentary of 116n21, 217n29 94, 96, 98, 134, 142–3, 175, 178, 179, 183,
use of materials credited to women 263 197–8
Abū Hurayra (d. 58/678) 122n43, 149n161, as a source of theological traditions
176, 226, 264 85–6, 90, 99, 125, 142–4, 148, 181, 182–4
Abū ʿUbayda (d. 210/825) as a source of theo-political traditions
his Majāz al-Qurʾān 90, 91 83, 86–7, 186–9
historical influence of 21, 91, 168, 243 as a speaker of pure Arabic 92–3
use of materials credited to women codex of 133, 198, 252
91–3, 106 ʿĀʾisha bt. Saʿd b. Mālik 101, 103
adab literature 25n103, 144n142 Akhfash al-Awsaṭ (d. 215/830)
Adam 39–41 maʿānī l-Qurʾān work of 90, 96
Ādam b. Abī Iyās (d. 220/835) 74, 88, 89 historical influence of 91
adjacent interpretation 13, 260 use of materials credited to women
“affair of the slander” see ʿĀʾisha bt. Abī Bakr, 96–7
accusation against Albānī, Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn (d. 1999 CE)
aḥkām al-Qurʾān, genre of 24 282
ahl al-bayt 60n141, 85, 87, 187–8, 217n30, 255 ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/660) 87, 92, 128–9,
ʿĀʾisha al-Bāʿūniyya (d. 922/1516) 273, 283 186, 187, 217, 226, 234, 259n46, 261
ʿĀʾisha bt. Abī Bakr (d. 58/678) 3n8, Amma Sarah 145
accusation against 77, 86, 94, 104, 127, ʿAmra bt. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (d. 103/721) 68,
128–30, 177–9, 250–1 82, 153, 172, 174, 176, 179, 180n104, 201
and female literacy 202, 248–51, 252 anal intercourse 50–1, 235–9
and hermeneutics 123–4, 163, 182 apocalyptic traditions 81, 90, 99, 103, 173,
and poetry 126–7, 130 195–6
and political authority 55–9 Apophthegmata partum 120, 145
apartment of 132, 226, 250 ʿaql 39, 43–4, 122
as a foil 152, 222–4 asceticism 160, 164
as a prominent source of ḥadīths 62, 81, ascetics, female 55–6, 100, 120, 145, 154,
88, 98, 105, 131–2, 169, 173, 175, 176–9, 180
188, 205–6, 256–7, 276 ʿAshūrāʾ see fasting
312 General Index
Asmāʾ bt. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Abī Bakr 82, doubly rewarded tradition, the 259, 261
85, 147 dually signifying figures 100–1, 105, 153
Asmāʾ bt. Abī Bakr (d. 73/692) 76n34, 99,
103, 175, 185, 230–1 elegy (marthiyya) 911, 112, 115–16, 117
Asmāʾ bt. ʿUmays 92–3 eloquence 47–53, 115, 144
Asmāʾ bt. Yazīd 94, 135–6, 172, 175, 193, 197 eunuchs 45n67, 231
Asmāʾu daughter of Shehu Usman dan Fodio Eve (Ḥawwāʾ) 39–41
(d. 1865 CE) 272–4 exegetical gazes
Assmann, Jan 15, 248 construction of 208–11, 215, 246–7,
āthār-based exegetical works 74–5 273–4, 278–9
ʿĀtika bt. Zayd 97 See also primary exegetical gaze;
ʿAyyāshī (d. 320/932) 24n101, 200 secondary exegetical gaze
exceptional women 255–6, 264–5, 279, 280
Baghawī (d. 516/1122)
Quran commentary of 11, 12, 20, 219 faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān works 136, 138, 268, 270–1
use of materials credited to women 10, Farrāʾ (d. 207/822)
12, 227, 253, 261, 277 historical influence of 91
baraka 268, 271 maʿānī l-Qurʾān work of 90, 93, 224, 243
Barazangi, Nimat Hafez 284n9, 287–8 use of materials credited to women
Battle of the Camel 56–9, 62n150, 77, 86, 87, 93–6, 104, 110–11, 113
165, 215n23, 244 fasting 84, 134, 159, 189–90, 226
Battle of al-Qādisiyya 117 Fāṭima daughter of Muḥammad 86, 87, 187,
bayʿa (oath of allegiance) 84, 90, 104, 116, 214
127, 172, 193 Fāṭima al-Naysābūriyya (d. 223/838) 180
Bayḍāwī (d. 791/1388) 11, 277n Fāṭima al-Sahmiyya 78
beards 45 Fāṭima bt. al-Ḥusayn 259–60, 261
beggar on horseback tradition, the 260, 262 Fāṭima bt. Muḥammad b. al-Munajjā 270
Beruriah 119, 145 Fāṭima bt. Qays
biographical dictionaries and charitable giving 258–9, 260–1
as historical sources 6 the Ḥadīth of 83, 88, 132, 145–7, 149
Biqāʿī (d. 885/1480) 228 Fāṭima bt. ʿUtba b. Rabīʿa 175, 193
Brown, Jonathan 163, 174, 282 fitna 147
Bukhārī (d. 256/870) 171, 172, 199–200, 204 fixed-term (mutʿa) marriage 192, 232–5
and exegesis 162–3 Foucault, Michel 212, 215
and the ṣaḥīḥ movement 163, 174–5, 277 framing 5–6, 118, 124, 210
tafsīr chapter of 167–9, 177–8, 180, 182–3, Furayʿa bt. Mālik b. Sinān 174, 192
186, 188–93, 197, 200–1, 203, 205
Butler, Judith 16, 25 Galen 35–6
gecko tradition, the 2–15, 17
Calder, Norman 2, 8–9, 10, 121n40 gender
captives, female 32, 38, 231 and biology 16, 32
charity (ṣadaqa) 85, 87, 153, 196, 260 and exegetical authority 25, 41, 53, 62,
claim over wealth tradition, the 258–9, 260, 63–5, 107–8, 111, 113–14, 120, 141ff, 216,
262 247, 265, 273–4, 280, 286–7
close relative tradition, the 259, 260, 261–2 and Greek medical theories 35–6, 44, 45
Companions, the and hierarchy 42–53, 245–6
Sunni views of 59, 113, 187, 196, 266 and myth 39–41
concubines see slaves, female and religious authority 43, 46, 208–9,
conflict arbitration traditions 141n131, 192, 228
279 and violence 42–3, 242–5
controversy traditions 82, 86, 108, 141, 142–4, as a social construct 16–17, 25, 30–53,
279 63–4, 237, 254–5, 275, 280
cultural labour 6, 15 in the study of the tafsir genre 15–16,
275
daughter of Saʿīd 264–5 in late antiquity 119–20, 144–5, 166n25,
divorce (talāq) 43, 45, 46, 47, 68–9, 83, 250, 281
145–6, 191, 232 performance of 37–8, 42–3, 231, 235–9
General Index 313
Zaynab bt. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Shaʿrī Zaynab bt. Jaḥsh (d. 20/640) 81, 103, 128,
(d. 615/1218) 248–9, 269–70 131–2, 173, 188, 195, 219–20
Zaynab bt. Abī Salama (d. 73/692) 81, 169, Zaynab bt. Kaʿb b. ʿUjra 173
173, 201 ẓihār 47n73, 192
Zaynab bt. al-Kamāl (d. 740/1339) 270 Zuhrī, Ibn Shihāb (d. 124/742) 4, 10, 128–9