of their husbands, or their sons, or the sons of their husbands, or their brothers, or their brothers’ sons, or their sisters’ sons, or their women, or those whom their right hands possess, or the male servants not having need (of women), or the children who have not attained knowledge of what is hidden of women ... and turn to Allah, O Believers! so that you may be successful.” IV Yet somehow or other, despite all his efforts to do Allah’s will, the Prophet’s wives still continued to be rebellious and even fractious. Sadly unmindful of her recent misadventure, Ayesha in particular continued to be as saucy and impudent as ever. When in her distress she had gone to her parents, Ali, who next to Abu Bekr was Mohammed’s bosom friend, had consoled him in this way: “O Prophet! there is no lack of women, and thou canst without difficulty supply her place.” Upon hearing of this, Ayesha took a temporary revenge by shouting in Mohammed’s very face that he liked Ali better than her own father, and a permanent one by treating Ali like a dog for the rest of his life. It chanced, however, that Abu Bekr overheard his vixenish daughter thus berating her husband; utterly unmoved by the fact that she had been standing up for him, Abu at once rushed in and roared, “I will not hear thee lift thy voice against the apostle of God!” But when he seized her and lifted his hand to slap her face, Mohammed interfered; so Abu went away in a foaming rage, while the Prophet heaped coals of fire on Ayesha’s head with the comment, “You see how I delivered you from the man.” Abu continued to growl and grumble for several days, but eventually returned to find the pair completely reconciled. “Include me in your peace as you included me in your quarrel!” he begged; and Mohammed joyfully answered, “We do, we do!” But perhaps Ayesha provoked the Prophet most of all by failing to treat his religious views with proper decorum; when she was particularly miffed about something, she showed her disrespect by refusing to address him as the “Apostle of God.” Once he unwisely told her that, on the day of judgment, all mankind would be raised in the same condition as they had been born--naked, barefooted and uncircumcised. She immediately interrupted his disquisition with the remark that, if this were so, immodest thoughts would prevail, and all that he could think of to say in reply to her untimely jest was that “the business of the day would be too weighty and serious to allow them the making use of that liberty.” With an even more lamentable lack of judgment, he once commented on his great love for Khadija--an indiscretion that brought the swift retort: “Was she not old? Has not God given you a better in her place?” “No, by God!” exclaimed the homesick man, “there can never be a better! She believed in me, when men despised me; she relieved my wants, when I was poor and persecuted by the world.”