The Beginning of the Slander of Aishah: The Lost Necklace

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

This account is drawn directly from ʿĀʾishah's own extended first-person narration, preserved across several pages of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, making the slander episode uniquely well-documented from the perspective of the person at its center.

❧THE JOURNEY AND THE ḤIJĀB

Before setting out on any expedition, the Prophet (ﷺ) would draw lots among his wives to decide who would accompany him, the fairest possible method, since no single journey could include them all and no consistent rotation could apply equally across trips of different length and danger. Taking a wife at all on campaign was itself the exception rather than the rule, generally reserved for expeditions like al-Muraysīʿ where victory was effectively guaranteed. On this occasion, the lot fell to ʿĀʾishah.

By this point the verses of ḥijāb had already been revealed (Dhū al-Qaʿdah, 4 AH), Dr. Qadhi notes this detail does not actually help resolve the year of al-Muraysīʿ itself, since it predates both the fifth- and sixth-year positions. He clarifies a point of frequent confusion: the Qurʾānic term ḥijāb (Q 33:53, "wa idhā saʾaltumūhunna matāʿan fasʾalūhunna min warāʾi ḥijāb") refers specifically to a physical curtain separating a person from the wives of the Prophet (ﷺ), a requirement unique to them, and is distinct from the khimār (headscarf, Q 24:31) and jilbāb (outer garment, Q 33:59) commanded for all believing women, including the Prophet's (ﷺ) own wives and daughters. Because of this additional requirement, ʿĀʾishah traveled inside a howdah, an enclosed canopy mounted on the camel, and even within her own household would only be addressed from behind a curtain, which is why her nephew ʿUrwah, exempted as a maḥram, became her primary later narrator.

❧THE LOST NECKLACE

When the army halted for the night just outside Madinah, the very night ʿAbdullāh ibn Ubayy's hypocrisy had just been exposed by revelation, a detail Dr. Qadhi stresses as essential context for understanding what happens next, ʿĀʾishah stepped away from camp to relieve herself. On her way back she realized her onyx necklace, a sentimental gift from the Prophet (ﷺ), had come loose and gone missing. She went back to search for it and lost track of time doing so.

Meanwhile, exhausted from the tension and long hours of the preceding events, the men responsible for her howdah broke camp without noticing her absence, she recalls, without naming or blaming anyone involved, that she was slight and light enough at the time that the empty howdah's weight did not give her away when they lifted it onto the camel. By the time she returned to camp, having finally found the necklace exactly where she had been sitting, the entire army had already departed.

Confident she would be missed and retrieved, she sat down under a tree and, remarkably, fell asleep.

❧ṢAFWĀN IBN AL-MUʿAṬṬAL

She awoke to a man's voice saying "Innā lillāhi wa innā ilayhi rājiʿūn." It was Ṣafwān ibn al-Muʿaṭṭal al-Sulamī, assigned to bring up the rear of the march and collect anything left behind, who had himself overslept the order to move and was only now catching up. He recognized her, having seen her before the revelation of the ḥijāb verses, and she immediately covered her face with her jilbāb. Dr. Qadhi highlights her instinctive recourse to remembrance of Allah in this moment of shock, contrasting it with the modern habit of reaching for curses or crude exclamations under stress, and encourages cultivating phrases like "subḥān Allāh," "al-ḥamdu lillāh," and "lā ḥawla wa lā quwwata illā billāh" as an instinctive first reflex.

Ṣafwān said not another word to her. He dismounted his camel, brought it to her, and turned his back so she could mount unobserved, then led it by hand on foot the entire remaining distance until they caught up with the rear of the army, where, as it happened, ʿAbdullāh ibn Ubayy ibn Salūl was positioned, the traditional place of the hypocrites at the back of any march. It was from this point, ʿĀʾishah recalls, that the rumors began.

Ṣafwān was unmarried at the time (he married afterward) and was later martyred fighting in the conquest of Armenia during ʿUmar's caliphate.

❧THE FEVER

Upon reaching Madinah, ʿĀʾishah fell seriously ill with a month-long fever, cut off from her usual circle and entirely unaware that a rumor was even circulating, let alone growing, during the very weeks it spread furthest.

Dr. Qadhi pauses the narrative here, deliberately withholding the content of the rumor itself, in keeping with the marked reticence of the classical Sīrah sources, which consistently refer to the episode only as "the slander" (al-ifk) without ever spelling out its content. He draws a broader lesson from this restraint: a culture that refuses to dwell on or publicize the sordid and the shameful protects itself from becoming desensitized to it, in sharp contrast to a media culture that treats every detail of scandal, violence, and vulgarity as content to be broadcast and consumed. The full account of the slander itself, and its resolution, is addressed in the following lecture.