A Tradition Invented 2-5 the days of pagan ignorance (jdhiliyya).”19 Other verses mandated a physical separation ( bijab ) between Muhammad’s wives and men who did not fall into one of the following categories: their fathers, sons, brothers, brothers’ sons, sisters’ sons, and their own slaves. The Qur’anic vision can be construed as limiting the extent to which the wives could have participated in the process of direct, face-to-face, oral transmission of baditb. However, not all the wives understood the verses as mandating strict seclusion and restricting contact between themselves and seekers of religious knowledge. In particular, the sheer quantity of baditb ascribed to ‘A’isha and Umm Salama (d. ca. 59/679) and their extensive narration networks composed of kin and non-kin men and women reveal that these two women were regularly consulted on a host of legal and ritual matters. Compilers have enumerated between 1,500 and 2,400 baditb for which ‘A’isha is the first authority. Umm Salama, though a distant second, contributed between 175 and 375 reports. The other seven wives trail behind but are nonetheless counted among trustworthy conveyors of Muhammad’s practice. The analysis that follows accordingly focuses foremost on ‘A’isha and her role and then turns to Umm Salama. The other co-wives will be discussed together because of their comparatively limited roles. 19 Qur’an, 33:33. 20 Qur’an, 33:53, 33:55. There is general agreement among exegetes of the Qur’an that the verses mandating seclusion of Muhammad’s wives were revealed soon after his marriage to Zaynab bint Jahsh in 5 AH. This was due to the excessive lingering of some of the male wedding guests in Zaynab’s quarters; see, for example, Muhammad b. Jarir al-Tabari (d. 310/923), al-Jami‘ al-Bayan (Beirut: Dar al-Shamiyya, 1997), 6:220-22; and Mahmud b. ‘Umar al-Zamakhshari (d. 538/1144), al-Kashshaf (Cairo: Maktabat Mustafa al-Babl alHalabl, 1966), 3:271-72. It is open to interpretation whether or not these restrictions regarding the mobility of the wives were in force only while Muhammad was living. As I discuss in greater detail later in the chapter, ‘A’isha ’s active participation in the life of the community after Muhammad’s death suggests that her own understanding was that the strictures were loosened after his death. 21 The discrepancies in the counts are generally a result of differences in how compilers distinguish between the numerous isnads and textual variants in different traditions. AlMizzI, collecting isnads from the six authoritative collections as well as some other minor works, attributes 2,093 hadith to her in Tuhfa , 11:130-896. Al-Musnad al-Jami‘ provides 1,357 hadith collated from a range of canonical and noncanonical collections as described in the introduction (for the musnad of ‘A’isha ’s traditions in this compilation, see alMusnad al-]ami \ 19:241-852 and 20:5^-34). 22 The remaining seven wives are Zaynab bint Jahsh (d. 20/641), Ramla bint Abl Sufyan (d. 44/664), Hafsa bint ‘Umar (d. 45/665), Safiyya bint Huyayy (d. 52/672), Sawda bint Zam‘a (d. 54/674), Juwayriya bint al-Harith (d. 56/676), and Maymuna bint al-Harith (d. 61/681). A breakdown of the numbers of their traditions is provided in the section on their contributions.