The life of
Aishah is proof that a woman can be far more learned than men and that she can
be the teacher of scholars and experts. Her life is
also proof that a
woman can exert influence over men and women and provide them with inspiration
and leadership. Her life is also proof that
the same woman can
be totally feminine and be a source of pleasure, joy and comfort to her husband.
She did not
graduate from any university there were no universities as such in her day. But
still her utterances are studied in faculties of
literature, her
legal pronouncements are studied in colleges of law and her life and works are
studied and researched by students and teachers
of Muslim history
as they have been for over a thousand years.
The bulk of her
vast treasure of knowledge was obtained while she was still quite young. In her
early childhood she was brought up by her
father who was
greatly liked and respected for he was a man of wide knowledge, gentle manners
and an agreeable presence. Moreover he was
the closest friend
of the noble Prophet who was a frequent visitor to their home since the very
early days of his mission.
In her youth,
already known for her striking beauty and her formidable memory, she came under
the loving care and attention of the Prophet
himself. As his
wife and close companion she acquired from him knowledge and insight such as no
woman has ever acquired.
Aishah became the
Prophet's wife in Makkah when she was most likely in the tenth year of her life
but her wedding did not take place until the
second year after
the Hijrah when she was about fourteen or fifteen years old. Before and after
her wedding she maintained a natural jollity and
innocence and did
not seem at all overawed by the thought of being wedded to him who was the
Messenger of God whom all his companions,
including her own
mother and father, treated with such love and reverence as they gave to no one
else.
About her wedding,
she related that shortly before she was to leave her parent's house, she slipped
out into the courtyard to play with a
passing friend:
"I was playing on a
see-saw and my long streaming hair was dishevelled," she said. "They came and
took me from my play and made me ready."
They dressed her in
a wedding-dress made from fine red-striped cloth from Bahrain and then her
mother took her to the newly-built house where
some women of the
Ansar were waiting outside the door. They greeted her with the words "For good
and for happiness may all be well!" Then,
in the presence of
the smiling Prophet, a bowl of milk was brought. The Prophet drank from it
himself and offered it to Aishah. She shyly declined
it but when he
insisted she did so and then offered the bowl to her sister Asma who was sitting
beside her. Others also drank of it and that was
as much as there
was of the simple and solemn occasion of their wedding. There was no wedding
feast.
Marriage to the
Prophet did not change her playful ways. Her young friends came regularly to
visit her in her own apartment.
"I would be playing
with my dolls," she said, "with the girls who were my friends, and the Prophet
would come in and they would slip out of the
house and he would
go out after them and bring them back, for he was pleased for my sake to have
them there." Sometimes he would say "Stay
where you are"
before they had time to leave, and would also join in their games. Aishah said:
"One day, the Prophet came in when I was
playing with the
dolls and he said: 'O Aishah, whatever game is this?' 'It is Solomon's horses,'
I said and he laughed." Sometimes as he came in
he would screen
himself with his cloak so as not to disturb Aishah and her friends.
Aishah's early life
in Madinah also had its more serious and anxious times. Once her father and two
companions who were staying with him fell ill
with a dangerous
fever which was common in Madinah at certain seasons. One morning Aishah went to
visit him and was dismayed to find the
three men lying
completely weak and exhausted. She asked her father how he was and he answered
her in verse but she did not understand
what he was saying.
The two others also answered her with lines of poetry which seemed to her to be
nothing but unintelligible babbling. She
was deeply troubled
and went home to the Prophet saying:
"They are raving,
out of their minds, through the heat of the fever." The Prophet asked what they
had said and was somewhat reassured when
she repeated almost
word for word the lines they had uttered and which made sense although she did
not fully understand them then. This was
a demonstration of
the great retentive power of her memory which as the years went by were to
preserve so many of the priceless sayings of
the
Prophet. Of the Prophet's wives in Madinah, it was clear that it
was Aishah that he loved most. From time to time, one or the other of his
companions
would ask:
"O Messenger of
God, whom do you love most in the world?" He did not always give the same answer
to this question for he felt great love for
many for his
daughters and their children, for Abu Bakr, for Ali, for Zayd and his son
Usamah. But of his wives the only one he named in this
connection was
Aishah. She too loved him greatly in return and often would seek reassurance
from him that he loved her. Once she asked him:
"How is your love
for me?"
"Like the rope's
knot," he replied meaning that it was strong and secure. And time after time
thereafter, she would ask him: "How is the knot?"
and he would reply:
"Ala haaliha in the same condition."
As she loved the
Prophet so was her love a jealous love and she could not bear the thought that
the Prophet's attentions should be given to
others more than
seemed enough to her. She asked him:
"O Messenger of
God, tell me of yourself. If you were between the two slopes of a valley, one of
which had not been grazed whereas the other
had been grazed, on
which would you pasture your flocks?"
"On that which had
not been grazed," replied the Prophet. "Even so," she said, "and I am not as any
other of your wives. "Everyone of them had
a husband before
you, except myself." The Prophet smiled and said nothing. Of her jealousy,
Aishah would say in later years:
"I was not, jealous
of any other wife of the Prophet as I was jealous of Khadijah, because of his
constant mentioning of her and because God
had commanded him
to give her good tidings of a mansion in Paradise of precious stones. And
whenever he sacrificed a sheep he would send a
fair portion of it
to those who had been her intimate friends. Many a time I said to him: "It is as
if there had never been any other woman in the
world except
Khadijah."
Once, when Aishah
complained and asked why he spoke so highly of "an old Quraysh woman", the
Prophet was hurt and said: "She was the
wife who believed
in me when others rejected me. When people gave me the lie, she affirmed my
truthfulness. When I stood forsaken, she
spent her wealth to
lighten the burden of my sorrow.."
Despite her
feelings of jealousy which nonetheless were not of a destructive kind, Aishah
was really a generous soul and a patient one. She
bore with the rest
of the Prophet's household poverty and hunger which often lasted for long
periods. For days on end no fire would be lit in the
sparsely furnished
house of the Prophet for cooking or baking bread and they would live merely on
dates and water. Poverty did not cause her
distress or
humiliation; self-sufficiency when it did come did not corrupt her style of
life.
Once the Prophet
stayed away from his wives for a month because they had distressed him by asking
of him that which he did not have. This
was after the
Khaybar expedition when an increase of riches whetted the appetite for presents.
Returning from his self-imposed retreat, he went
first to Aishah's
apartment. She was delighted to see him but he said he had received Revelation
which required him to put two options before
her. He then
recited the verses:
"O Prophet! Say to
your wives: If you desire the life of this world and its adornments, then come
and I will bestow its goods upon you, and I will
release you with a
fair release. But if you desire God and His Messenger and the abode of the
Hereafter, then verily God has laid in store for you
an immense reward
for such as you who do good."
Aishah's reply was:
"Indeed I desire
God and His Messenger and the abode of the Hereafter," and her response was
followed by all the others.
She stuck to her
choice both during the lifetime of the Prophet and afterwards. Later when the
Muslims were favored with enormous riches, she
was given a gift of
one hundred thousand dirhams. She was fasting when she received the money and
she distributed the entire amount to the
poor and the needy
even though she had no provisions in her house. Shortly after, a maidservant
said to her: "Could you buy meat for a dirham
with which to break
your fast?"
"If I had
remembered, I would have done so," she said. The Prophet's affection for Aishah
remained to the last. During his final illness, it was to
Aishah's apartment
that he went at the suggestion of his wives. For much of the time he lay there
on a couch with his head resting on her breast
or on her lap. She
it was who took a toothstick from her brother, chewed upon it to soften it and
gave it to the Prophet. Despite his weakness,
he rubbed his teeth
with it vigorously. Not long afterwards, he lost consciousness and Aishah
thought it was the onset of death, but after an
hour he opened his
eyes.
Aishah it is who
has preserved for us these dying moments of the most honoured of God's creation,
His beloved Messenger may He shower His
choicest blessings
on him.
When he opened his
eyes again, Aishah remembered Iris having said to her: "No Prophet is taken by
death until he has been shown his place in
Paradise and then
offered the choice, to live or die."
"He will not now
choose us," she said to herself. Then she heard him murmur: "With the supreme
communion in Paradise, with those upon whom
God has showered
His favor, the Prophets, the martyrs and the righteous..." Again she heard him
murmur: "O Lord, with the supreme
communion," and
these were the last words she heard him speak. Gradually his head grew heavier
upon her breast, until others in the room
began to lament,
and Aishah laid his head on a pillow and joined them in lamentation.
In the floor of
Aishah's room near the couch where he was lying, a grave was dug in which was
buried the Seal of the Prophets amid much
bewilderment and
great sorrow.
Aishah lived on
almost fifty years after the passing away of the Prophet. She had been his wife
for a decade. Much of this time was spent in
learning and
acquiring knowledge of the two most important sources of God's guidance, the
Quran and the Sunnah of His Prophet. Aishah was
one of three wives
(the other two being Hafsah and Umm Salamah) who memorized the Revelation. Like
Hafsah, she had her own script of the
Quran written after
the Prophet had died.
So far as the
Ahadith or sayings of the Prophet is concerned, Aishah is one of four persons
(the others being Abu Hurayrah, Abdullah ibn Umar,
and Anas ibn Malik)
who transmitted more than two thousand sayings. Many of these pertain to some of
the most intimate aspects of personal
behavior which only
someone in Aishah's position could have learnt. What is most important is that
her knowledge of hadith was passed on in
written form by at
least three persons including her nephew Urwah who became one of the greatest
scholars among the generation after the
Companions.
Many of the learned
companions of the Prophet and their followers benefitted from Aishah's
knowledge. Abu Musa al-Ashari once said: "If we
companions of the
Messenger of God had any difficulty on a matter, we asked Aishah about it."
Her nephew Urwah
asserts that she was proficient not only in fiqh but also in medicine (tibb) and
poetry. Many of the senior companions of the
Prophet came to her
to ask for advice concerning questions of inheritance which required a highly
skilled mathematical mind. Scholars regard her
as one of the
earliest fuqaha of Islam along with persons like Umar ibn al-Khattab, Ali and
Abdullah ibn Abbas. The Prophet referring to her
extensive knowledge
of Islam is reported to have said: "Learn a portion of your religion (din) from
this red colored lady." "Humayra" meaning
"Red-coloured" was
an epithet given to Aishah by the Prophet.
Aishah not only possessed great knowledge
but took an active part in education and social reform. As a teacher she had a
clear and persuasive
manner of speech
and her power of oratory has been described in superlative terms by al-Ahnaf who
said: "I have heard speeches of Abu Bakr
and Umar, Uthman
and Ali and the Khulafa up to this day, but I have not heard speech more
persuasive and more beautiful from the mouth of
any person than
from the mouth of Aishah."
Men and women came
from far and wide to benefit from her knowledge. The number of women is said to
have been greater than that of men.
Besides answering
enquiries, she took boys and girls, some of them orphans, into her custody and
trained them under her care and guidance.
This was in
addition to her relatives who received instruction from her. Her house thus
became a school and an academy.
Some of her
students were outstanding. We have already mentioned her nephew Urwah as a
distinguished reporter of hadith. Among her
women pupils is the
name of Umrah bint Abdur Rahman. She is regarded by scholars as one of the
trustworthy narrators of hadith and is said to
have acted as
Aishah's secretary receiving and replying to letters addressed to her. The
example of Aishah in promoting education and in
particular the
education of Muslim women in the laws and teachings of Islam is one which needs
to be followed.
After Khadijah
al-Kubra (the Great) and Fatimah az-Zahra (the Resplendent), Aishah as-Siddiqah
(the one who affirms the Truth) is regarded as
the best woman in
Islam. Because of the strength of her personality, she was a leader in every
field in knowledge, in society, in politics and in
war. She often
regretted her involvement in war but lived long enough to regain position as the
most respected woman of her time. She died in
the year 58 AH in
the month of Ramadan and as she instructed, was buried in the Jannat al-Baqi in
the City of Light, beside other companions of
the
Prophet.
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