it is Aisha who shimmers, lifelike, on the pages of the early Muslim histories. Her voice carries across the centuries, preserved in 2,210 hadiths. And what a voice: bell-clear and courageous, one can hear it, should one we choose to listen, pronouncing on Islamic traditions on matters from prayer to trade to sex. That we know so much more about Aisha than Khadija comes down to timing: most of Khadija’s life predated Islam, so it was not chronicled with the same care as Aisha’s. Born four years after Muhammad’s first revelation, Aisha grew up while the verses of the Quran were descending on
...more
