The Madīnan School: ʿĀʾishah bint Abī Bakr
She is Umm al-Muʾminīn ʿĀʾishah bint Abī Bakr aṣ-Ṣiddīq at-Taymiyyah al-Qurashiyyah (radiyallāhu ʿanhā), known as al-Ḥumayrāʾ and Umm ʿAbdillāh. Born in Makkah approximately four or five years after the beginning of the Prophet’s Mission. She grew up in a household of early Islām and never knew the days of Jāhiliyyah. The Messenger of Allāh ﷺ contracted marriage with her when she was six years old. She moved into his home and the marriage was consummated when she was nine years of age, after the Hijrah. She remained with him for nine years until his death in the year 11 AH, at which time she was approximately eighteen years old.
She sought knowledge directly from the Prophet ﷺ with a closeness granted to no other, observing his private and public life, his worship, his dealings, and the circumstances of revelation. After his death she dedicated the remaining forty-seven years of her life—until her own passing—to teaching and preserving what she had witnessed. For nearly half a century the Companions and the Tābiʿīn brought to her the matters that confused them, and she clarified them with precision. She narrated approximately two thousand two hundred and ten ḥadīths—more than any other woman and among the highest of all the Companions—covering the Prophet’s night prayer, fasting, purification, family life, and final days. She was deeply learned in fiqh, inheritance, medicine, poetry, and the genealogies of the Arabs.
Her major students included many of the senior Tābiʿīn of Madīnah, among them her nephew ʿUrwah ibn az-Zubayr, her nephew al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad, and others who transmitted the knowledge of the city. Companions such as Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī, Ibn ʿAbbās, and Abū Hurayrah sought her understanding. Abū Mūsā said: “Never was a ḥadīth unclear to us—the Companions of the Messenger of Allāh—and we asked ʿĀʾishah, except that we found some knowledge concerning it with her.” ʿAṭāʾ ibn Abī Rabāḥ said she was the most knowledgeable of people, the most understanding in fiqh, and the best in opinion regarding the affairs of the people. ʿUrwah ibn az-Zubayr said he never saw anyone more knowledgeable in fiqh, medicine, or poetry than ʿĀʾishah. Az-Zuhrī remarked that if the knowledge of ʿĀʾishah were placed against the knowledge of all the other wives of the Prophet ﷺ and all other women, the knowledge of ʿĀʾishah would prove superior.
She was known for her sharp intellect, her courage in speaking the truth, her devotion to the Sunnah, and her long decades of teaching from behind the ḥijāb. Her narrations and fatāwā form a major foundation of the fiqh and ḥadīth of Madīnah and of the entire Ummah. Her dedication to the Dīn was total: from the age of eighteen until her final illness she spent her life transmitting and explaining what she had received directly from the Messenger of Allāh ﷺ.
She died in Madīnah on the night of the seventeenth of Ramaḍān in the year 58 AH at approximately sixty-six or sixty-seven years of age. She requested to be buried at night in al-Baqīʿ. Abū Hurayrah led the funeral prayer after the Witr, and she us was laid to rest there.
The life of Umm Abdillah is an example of a life dedicated to learning and teaching the Dīn to others. Her stay in the life and home of the Rasūl was designed by Allāh that she may learn his inner and outward throughout her life and dedicated her entirety to its transmission thereafter.
May Allāh unite us with her and the other mothers of the Believers in the Firdaws, āmīn.
(Named by an-Nasāʾī among the fuqahāʾ of Madīnah from the Companions, completing the four he listed from that generation.)
Bārakallāhu Fīkum
