Sofia Rehman, Gendering the Ḥadīth Tradition: Recentring the Authority of Aisha, Mother of the Believers (Oxford University Press, 2024).
Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?
Sofia Rehman (SR): The book is born out of my PhD thesis, which in turn was a translation and critical study of Imam Badr al-Din al-Zarkashi's fourteenth-century work, al-Ijaba li-Iradi ma Istadrakathu Aisha Ala al-Sahabah - The Corrective: Aisha's Rectification of the Companions. The book is a compilation of over two hundred statements of the wife of Prophet Muhammad, Aisha bint Abu Bakr, in which she corrected, refuted, and sometimes corroborated statements being attributed to her husband by male Companions of the Prophet Muhammad. The implications of these were many, not least in the genres of the Prophetic tradition (hadith), Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), and Qur’anic exegesis (tafsir), to name a few. It allows for the voice of a woman to be at the very heart of one of Islam’s most sacred sources, the Prophetic tradition, and to echo into a range of disciplines the lived experiences of women and the emergent methodology of Aisha in hadith criticism.
While my topics range from feminism and migration to decolonization and environmental justice, the unifying thread is the question: who is being neglected?
J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?
SR: Gendering the Hadith Tradition is quite vast in the topics it covers. It gives a biography of Aisha bint Abu Bakr, presenting her in a light that is not restricted by patriarchal impositions of what an “ideal Muslim women” is; a history of the development of the hadith tradition; and a translation methodology for the hadith tradition—something I was surprised to find was absent in academic works. Further to this, the book presents Aisha as the rightful authority she was in hadith and Islamic jurisprudence, as well as presenting her ethic of care towards all members of the Muslim community.
J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?
SR: I have always been drawn to exploring who sits at the margins and how Islam serves—or fails to serve—these individuals. When the principles of mercy, justice, and compassion that the Qur’an mandates are not felt by all, it reflects a failure on the part of the community and scholars. This theme is a constant across my work.
In Cut From the Same Cloth? (edited by Sabeena Akhtar), my piece’s focus was on Muslim women and their rights and experiences. In my essay in Violent Phenomena: 21 Essays on Translation, I discussed decolonizing the translation of Arabic Islamic texts. In Gathering: Women of Colour on Nature, my essay engaged with the Qur’anic obligation to care of the earth and tackle the climate crisis.
While my topics range from feminism and migration to decolonization and environmental justice, the unifying thread is the question: who is being neglected? And how can we build an inclusive framework that ensures these forgotten voices are heard and empowered?
J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?
SR: While writing my PhD thesis, I envisioned both scholars and everyday Muslims engaging with it—those who seek to root their practice of Islam in the Qur’anic principles of ‘adl (justice), rahma (mercy), and ihsan (beauty). My hope is that by re-centering the scholarship of Aisha bint Abu Bakr, this book reaffirms her critical contributions and encourages contemporary scholars to revisit her interventions. It could serve as a catalyst for re-examining interpretations of Islam that either no longer resonate with our current realities or have historically overlooked groups such as women, children, and people with disabilities.
Aisha’s contributions demonstrate the vital role women have always played in shaping Islamic thought, even if their voices have not always been given equal recognition in later interpretations. Her authority in hadith criticism, her ability to engage with and correct male Companions, and her intellectual rigor offer a blueprint for how women can contribute to religious scholarship. Today, her legacy challenges us to re-examine the gendered hierarchies within Islamic scholarship and to create more space for women’s perspectives in shaping religious discourse. By revisiting and uplifting voices like Aisha’s, we can encourage a richer, more diverse, and inclusive understanding of Islamic teachings that speaks to the needs of all believers.
Ultimately, I hope this work sparks deeper reflection and inspires a more compassionate understanding of Islamic teachings, not only in the realm of practice but also in scholarship. By engaging with Aisha’s interventions, I aim to encourage a broader rethinking of traditional interpretations and to foster scholarship that better serves the diverse needs of the Muslim community today.
J: What other projects are you working on now?
SR: I am currently exploring how autistic experiences can shape and deepen our theological understanding of God. In particular, I am intrigued by how autistic perspectives on gender, time, and verbal communication might align with Islamic concepts of God as non-gendered, existing beyond time, and communicating with humanity in limited, non-verbal ways. These aspects of God’s nature seem more closely mirrored in autistic experiences than in neurotypical ones. I am investigating what these parallels could mean for Islamic theology and how they might encourage greater inclusivity within our communities, especially for autistic believers whose unique ways of experiencing the world may offer valuable insights into the divine.
J: Could you give us two concrete examples of ‘Aisha correcting the Companions?
SR: This is actually the hardest question because there are so many great offerings to pick from, but I will present two of my favorite instances.
First, Al-Zarkashi states: Aisha was informed that Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī said, ‘The Messenger of God forbids a woman from travelling unless she is accompanied by a maḥram (male guardian).’
ʿAmrah said, Aisha then turned to the womenfolk and said, ‘Not all of you has a maḥram!’
This statement always endears Aisha to me, I imagine her sitting amongst a group of women and then she is told of this statement being made in her husband’s name restricting women’s movement. Instead of engaging the one who relayed the statement or entering into a polemic about the rights and wrongs of that assertion, she turns to her audience, the very women who will be affected by this statement in provocation. This is a pedagogical approach one sees Aisha enact numerous times. She puts the problem to those who will be worst hit to rise up. To not just accept “difficulties” as part of the course of being good Muslim women, but to speak up and say no to authority when it is behaving unjustly. Whilst even al-Zarkashi tries to argue that, in fact, Aisha was in fact validating what Abu Sai’d al-Khudri had said and was repeating it as an emphasis for the women, this is unlikely as she is known to have travelled without a male guardian and makes no apologies for it.
My second example must be one where she is refuting the verbose Abu Hurairah:
Al-Zarkashi states: The Messenger of Allah said, ‘Bad luck is found in three things: the house, the woman, and the horse.’ Aisha responded, ‘Abū Hurayra has not remembered. He entered upon the Messenger of Allah as he was saying, “May Allah curse those who say bad luck is found in three things: the house, the woman, and the horse.” He heard the last part of the statement but not the first.’
Al-Zarkashi further supports Aisha’s stance by citing another narration in which it is said, ‘Aisha became visibly enraged and said, ‘By the One who revealed the Quran upon Abū alQāsim, he never said such a thing, but rather the Prophet of Allah would say, “The people of ignorance used to say, calamity lies in the woman, riding beast, and home”.’ Then she recited, ‘No calamity can ever befall the earth, and neither your own selves, unless it be [laid down] in Our decree before We bring it into being: verily, all this is easy for God.’
In the first statement she gives Abu Hurayrah the excuse of not having heard correctly, whilst in the second she does not offer him that grace but corrects the statement by completing it. She then also offers up a verse of the Qur’an that rejects such superstition, which, in lieu of having the full hadith, should have been enough cause for Abu Hurayra and others to have known there was a deficiency in that narration—either there was information missing or it was a fabrication. For Aisha, the Qur’an is the criterion by which the hadith are to be measured.
Excerpt from the book (from Chapter 1: The Woman, the Man, the Text, pages 18 to 22)
Aisha was the third wife of the Prophet, marrying him after the death of his first wife Khadīja, at the suggestion of Khawla bint Ḥakīm, an early convert to Islam. Aisha did not live with him until after the migration to Medina. She was to become famed as his most beloved wife, exemplified most poignantly in his final days of illness when he pined to be with her, as well as in the stories of a relation- ship which was playful and mutually enriching. In his last few days, she was to nurse the Prophet dutifully, and he was to then be buried in her chamber upon passing.
After approximately twelve years of marriage, she became a widow. During the Caliphate of her father, and then the ten-year rule of ʿUmar b. al-Khatṭạ̄b, she appears to have remained disengaged from political affairs, though she remained active within the Muslim community, responding to their questions and queries pertaining to the faith. However, during the unrest of ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān’s Caliphate, she joined the dissenting voices against him, but was outraged at his murder. Feeling that his murderers had not been brought to justice, she raised an army of a thousand men from Medina, flanked by Ṭalḥa and al-Zubayr, and marched against the fourth Caliph, ʿAlī b. Abū Ṭālib to Basra. They seized control of Basra, and a battle was to ensue between the two camps that came to be known as the Battle of the Camel (Ḥarb al-Jamal), due to Aisha’s presence on the battlefield in the litter of a camel. Aisha was not to find victory on the battlefield though, and while Ṭalḥa and al-Zubayr lost their lives, she returned to Medina and lived out the rest of her life in relative quietude. She passed away in the year 58/678, in Ramadan, twenty years after the defeat. Though it had been her wish to have been buried beside her husband and father, ʿUmar had been buried in that place and so she took her final resting place in al-Baqīʿ cemetery.
Reconstructions of Aisha
Aisha, much like any iconic figure, including the Prophet, has seen her persona constructed and reconstructed repeatedly over time in response to a plethora of demands on her character.3 Whether it is intra-Muslim conflict such as that between Shiʿas and Sunnis, or external criticisms, political pressures, or internal questioning, the image of Aisha has been revisited and reassembled to meet these demands. Particular key flash points appear in the story of her life which are often first to be subject to some revision. These are her age at marriage to Muḥammad, the case of the slander against her, and her involvement in the Battle of the Camel. It is useful to consider how each of these incidents has been revised in light of contemporary pressures. This revision that is often engaged in by scholars as they grapple with newly evolving challenges to Muslim praxis and religious literacy starkly illustrate how the ḥadīth canon, despite the claim for its rigidity, is in fact informally laid open. To meet these needs, the canon is compromised, though this is never overtly admitted, as shall be demonstrated, but until this translates into a flexible position towards the ḥadīth canon, extra-canonical ḥadīth collections remain outside the discourse and alternative readings are still not privileged with scholarly attention, let alone a normative position in the life of the community. Observing these reconstructions of Aisha both illustrates the critical engagement that does take place with the canon as well as affirms the need to scrutinize narrators of ḥadīth traditions from among the Companions.
Such an endeavour additionally exposes the tragic removal of Aisha’s agency— the voice may be hers but the pen that recorded it and wrote its explanation belonged to someone else. As Denise Spellberg notes, while a ḥadīth may be reported as the word of Aisha, and its chain of narrators (sanad) may present her as the source origin for the tradition too, ‘ḥadīth and khabar represent the triumph of both selectivity and the pen as the arbiters of communal Islamic truths’. In other words, while Aisha may appear doubly bound to a tradition by being both the subject of the tradition and the authoritative seal in its chain of narrators, the process of ḥadīth collection and the subsequent canonization process means that the selectivity of scholars engaged in the process have the winning hand. Noting then that the process has been entirely dominated by men further skews the readings that will have been created of her statements. By observing these flash points from her life, and observing their periodic reconstructions, including the disparities in the narratives, it is hoped that something of a more authentic understanding of Aisha can be achieved. The translation of al-Ijāba will take the emerging character of Aisha into consideration then, when translating her words.
Furthermore, these particular case studies allow pause for reflection on the variance that exists between the accountability of prominent male Companions and the accountability of prominent female Companions. In the case of lesser-known Companions and their narrations, it would be fair to assert that the gender of the Companion was inconsequential—all that was required was confirmation of their having been in the company of the Prophet. Aisha was the most beloved wife of the Prophet, honoured with the title of Mother of the Believers; she experienced a personal intervention from God exonerating her in the face of a suspecting community; her intelligence and intellectual inquisitiveness were praised by the Prophet; and yet there are far too many instances where her statements are overlooked in favour of those of male Companions who seem above scrutiny. It could be argued that, as a prominent wife of the Prophet, one should expect her to be the subject of more scrutiny, especially with respect to ḥadīth transmission. Yet the scrutiny is not applied fairly. Instead, it appears to be the case that Companions such as Abū Hurayra for example, who was marked for the shortcomings in his memory, or Abū Bakra, who had been flogged on the orders of ʿUmar b. al-Khatṭạ̄b for contempt of court due to false testimony, find themselves absolved of shortcomings that otherwise render one impugned, while Aisha, who is never charged on any such grounds, is side-lined. There is a kind of collective amnesia when it comes to the indiscretions of male Companions while the misfortunes of a female Companion are fortified as opportunities through which to attack the Prophet, as in the case of the age of Aisha upon marriage or as instances of suspicion which forever negatively impinge on Aisha’s reputation, such as resulted from the slanderous campaign against Aisha or her defeat at the Battle of the Camel. Only Aisha’s defeat becomes a cause for humiliation and embarrassment, both for her and by extension for all women seeking or in a position of leadership. The misdemeanours, failures or shortcomings of her male counterparts are never taken as defects rooted in their biology. With sectarian polemics thrown into the mix too, resulting in heavily iconic depictions of key Companions, Aisha is once again either valorized, such as in Sunni Islam, or denigrated, such as in Shiʿa Islam; both sides constructing images of key Companions in response to the other’s praise or criticism of an individual, as well as in line with their own episteme.
Additionally, it appears that male Companions are allowed to be multifaceted and complex without relinquishing their authority or reliability, while the female Companions are projected as uncomplicated, a homogenous group with few distinguishing markers between them. Perhaps it is because of attitudes like this that sweeping statements regarding women are found littered throughout the ḥadīth corpus, such as the supposed statements of the Prophet claiming that at the end of time, when the anti-Christ appears, the majority of his followers will be women, or that the Prophet witnessed Hell and found most of its inhabitants to be women. By analysing the three key issues in the telling of Aisha’s story, I will not only be mapping the journey that the construction of her persona travels, but also attempt to retrieve her voice and consider how these key events are framed in the Muslim imaginary on the basis of her gender.
