The Trial of ʿĀʾisha: Aesthetics and Norm in an Early Islamic Story About Slander
Abstract The Ḥadīth al-Ifk, which reports allegations of adultery made against the Prophet’s young wife ʿĀʾisha, is a story about slander that kept being narrated, reiterated, and amplified in the first centuries of Islam. It “traveled” through textual corpora with very different claims to validity, beginning with the...