A Tradition Invented 21 unless God and His Prophet rule in our case.” He jumped on me, and I defended myself and overpowered him the way a woman can overpower a weak, old man. I went to one of my neighbors and borrowed some of her clothes. Then I made my way to the Prophet and sat in front of him and told him about what had happened to me and lodged my complaints about what I had to deal with of Aws’s ill nature. The Prophet said, ‘‘Khawla, your cousin is an old man; fear God in your dealings with him.” I said, “By God, I will not be reassured till I get a Qur’anic revelation about this matter.” That which used to overcome the Prophet overcame him, and then it was lifted from him. And he said to me, “Khuwayla, God has revealed [verses] concerning you and your husband.” He recited to me, “Indeed God has heard the statement of the woman who disputes with you concerning her husband and who complains to God. And God hears the argument between you both. Verily, God is All-Hearer, All-Seer.” [He recited] until the verse, “And for the disbelievers, there is a painful doom.” Then the Prophet of God said to me, “Ask him [Aws] to free a slave.” I said, “By God, O Prophet, he doesn’t have one to free.” Then he said, “Let him fast two consecutive months.” I said, “By God, O Prophet, he’s an old man; he doesn’t have it in him to fast.” Then he said, “Let him feed sixty poor people with a camel-load ( wasq ) of dates.” I said, “He doesn't have that either.” The Prophet said, “We’ll help him out with a measure of dates.” And I said, “And I, O Prophet, will help him with the other one.”4 5 He said, “You’ve spoken well, and you’ve done the right thing. Go and give charity on his behalf, and I entrust you to be good to your cousin.” And I did [what the Prophet had advised] . . . ,”6 7 According to mainstream Muslim tradition, the didactic core of a hadith preserves the pronouncement of Muhammad. Yet as the second example illustrates, a report can contain much more than just Muhammad’s words. The narrating Companion is viewed as supplying the details that contextualize the report and enliven its message. Storytelling is necessarily implicated in such an act, and in this regard, the Companions are unlike the narrators of subsequent generations, who are primarily charged with faithfully reproducing the traditions. To fully comprehend the role of 4 Qur’an, 58:1-4 (Surat al-Mujadila). 5 The term used for this measure is ‘araq defined variously as fifteen or thirty times as much as the measure sa which itself was defined differently across various regional centers of the Muslim world. 6 Ibn Hanbal, Musnad, 6:459, #27309. 7 This is notwithstanding the instances in which narrators in post-Companion generations supply their own commentary. Such instances are uncommon and do not compromise the general rule that the Companions are seen as the primary composers of the hadith narratives. For more detailed analyses of how storytelling functions in hadith texts, see Sebastian Gunther, “Fictional Narration and Imagination within an Authoritative Framework, Towards a New Understanding of Hadith ,” in Story-Telling in the Framework of Non-Fictional Arabic Literature, ed. Stefan Leder, 43 3-71 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998), and Suhair Calamawy, “Narrative Element in Hadith Literature,”