A Tradition Invented 33 precedent to permit men who wanted to hear her hadith into her company. She would ask one of her sisters to give a requisite amount of breast milk to the visitor. This practice would establish a foster bond between ‘A’isha and the visitor in question, and he would be permitted to interact with her. Umm Salama and the other wives, however, disdained allowing men to visit them by this method. One report attributes the following conversation to them: Umm Salama said to ‘A’isha, “You admit [to your presence] a young boy nearing puberty (al-ghulam al-ayfa ') whom I would not like to admit to mine.” ‘A’isha responded, “Do you not find a model [worthy of emulation] in the Prophet?” She continued, “The wife of Abu Hudhayfa [i.e., Sahla bint Suhayl] said to the Prophet, ‘O Messenger of God, Salim enters my home though he is a grown man. [I fear that] Abu Hudhayfa feels some discomfort on account of him.’ The Prophet said, ‘Give him breast milk so that he can visit you.’”49 Through this interaction, ‘A’isha is represented as upholding Muhammad’s precedent even in the face of overwhelming consensus against her. Aside from displaying ‘A’isha’s legal reasoning, the debate on rida ' al-kablr allows us to extrapolate that Muhammad’s other wives 47 The most direct statement of this is in Malik, al-Muwatta ’, 2:123, #1775. There are also other traditions in Malik’s al-Muwatta’ about ‘A’isha’s practice in this regard. She is said, for example, to have allowed those to whom her sisters and the daughters of her brother had given a requisite amount of breast milk to see her. In contrast, she did not permit those who had not established such mahram bonds to see her (Malik, al-Muwatta ’, 2:122, #1770). Another tradition in the Muwatta ’ relates a failed attempt at establishing mahram bonds. Yahya related from Malik who related from Nafi‘ that Salim b. ‘Abd Allah b. ‘Umar informed him that ‘A’isha sent him away to be given the breast milk of her sister Umm Kulthum bint Abl Bakr al-Siddlq. She said, “Give him milk ten times so that he can come in to see me.” Salim said, “Umm Kulthum gave me milk three times and then fell ill _ I could not go in to see ‘A’isha because Umm Kulthum did not finish for me the ten times” (Malik, al-Muwatta’, 2:121-22, #1768). This tradition is interesting because it portrays ‘A’isha as stringent in the application of rules regarding rida‘ al-kabir , namely that the requisite amount of milk had to be transferred. Thus, even as she is depicted as contravening consensus, she is simultaneously portrayed as doing so within guidelines set by the Prophet’s precedent. 48 Interestingly, there is one unusual tradition, cited in al-Muwatta ’, that Hafsa bint ‘Umar allowed ‘Asim b. ‘Abd Allah b. Sa‘d to go to her sister, Fatima bint ‘Umar, so that he could be given breast milk and consequently permitted in her company. While the tradition states that ‘Asim at the time was still young, it is interesting as another explicit case of a wife of Muhammad adopting this practice as a means for allowing access to males who would otherwise not be permitted to see them (Malik, al-Muwatta’ , 2:122, #1769). This underscores the point that the contentious issue was the age at which such foster bonds could be established and not whether the transfer of breast milk could be used to circumvent restrictions on male visitors who were not mahram. For the report regarding the consensus of the wives against rida ‘ al-kabir, see Malik, al-Muwatta ’, 2:123-24, #1775. 49 Muslim, Sahih , 5:2:29, and al-Nasa’I, Sunan, 6:104.