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Companions · Umm al-Mu'minin · Jurist of the ummah

عائشة بنت أبي بكر

Aisha bint Abi Bakr

The most knowledgeable woman of this ummah; a third of the household rulings of the religion reach us through her.

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Aisha bint Abi Bakr, daughter of as-Siddiq, was the most beloved of the Prophet's ﷺ wives after Khadijah's era. Asked publicly who was dearest to him, he answered: "Aisha," and of men, "her father." Revelation came to him under no wife's blanket but hers, and he ﷺ said: "The superiority of Aisha over women is like the superiority of tharid over other food." When the slanderers attacked her honor in the affair of the ifk, heaven itself acquitted her: verses of Surah an-Nur recited until the Day of Judgment.

Her chamber was the classroom of the ummah. More than two thousand hadith reach us through her; the great companions returned to her for inheritance law, for the Prophet's night prayer, for the description of his character, which she summarized in four words: his character was the Qur'an. He ﷺ died with his head against her chest, in her turn, in her room, and was buried there. She lived on for decades as teacher and corrector of the ummah's memory, and her regret over the day of the Camel deepened her students' love. The Codex records her as the proof that the transmission of this religion stands on a woman's scholarship.

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The superiority of Aisha over women is like the superiority of tharid over other food.

Bukhari 3770 · Muslim 2446

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BeforeKhadijah bint KhuwaylidAfterHamza ibn Abd al-Muttalib
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