The Ifk Affair: A Month of Slander, Ali's Counsel, and What Came After

The Night the Caravan Left Without Her

It is the fifth or sixth year after the Hijra — the chroniclers date it differently. The Muslim army is returning from the campaign against Banu al-Mustaliq. The order to march is given at night. A young wife of the Prophet walks away from the camp to relieve herself, notices on her return that her necklace of Yemeni onyx from Zafar has slipped from her neck, and goes back to search for it. She herself recounts that women in those days were light of body — so the men who lifted her covered litter onto the camel never noticed it was empty. The caravan moves off into the dark. She sits down where the camp had been, certain they will miss her and come back — and falls asleep. A soldier assigned to sweep up whatever the army leaves behind, Safwan ibn al-Mu'attal, finds her at dawn, kneels his camel for her, and leads her into Medina in broad daylight, before every watching eye. She is the daughter of Abu Bakr. Her name is Aisha. And for the next month, the city talks.

What was said in that month, who said it, what the Prophet's closest cousin advised him to do about his wife, and what the books record between those same two figures in the decades that followed — all of it stands written in the most authenticated sources Islam possesses.