Aisha's Corrections of the Companions

When the Mother of the Believers Corrected the Companions

In the first generation of Islam, the reports of the Prophet's words and deeds passed from memory to memory. Companions narrated what they heard; others received it and carried it on. But not every report went unchallenged. On a number of occasions, one voice inside the Prophet's own household examined a narration, weighed it against the Qur'an and against what she had witnessed, and said, in effect: that is not how it was.

That voice belonged to Aisha bint Abi Bakr, the Prophet's wife, whom Muslims call Umm al-Mu'minin — the Mother of the Believers. Some two and a half centuries later, a scholar sat down to gather every case in which she had corrected, qualified, or contradicted the reports of the other companions, and turned them into a book.