The Trial of ʿĀʾisha: Aesthetics and Norm in an Early Islamic Story About Slander

Abstract

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 Qurʾān. In this essay, I argue that its different iterations and the aesthetics of storytelling contributed toward the creation of a normative world based on Islamic values. The Qurʾān opaquely alludes to an event involving slander in Q al-Nūr 24:11–18. This hortatory passage appears in a context that legislates in matters concerning adultery and slander. It triggers a process of narrative reiteration and amplification in accounts that became part of sīra-maghāzī and ḥadīth literature. In these textual corpora, the Ḥadīth al-Ifk reflects on appropriate behavior by depicting the collision of two types of gender performance, namely a pattern of mourning evoking pre-Islamic practices of vengeance and comportment based on scripture. ʿĀʾisha’s display of patience and forbearance patterned upon Q Yūsuf 12:18 eventually vindicates her.