5° Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam regarded her with a degree of familial intimacy. 1 1 ’ Al-Mizzi mentions that she grew blind with age, yet did not suffer any impairment of her mental faculties. In this frail, aged condition, she confronted al-Hajjaj to demand that her son be lowered from the gibbet and given a proper burial. After his body was sent to Mecca, she provided the funeral bier and offered the janaza for him. 9 She herself died a few days after her son’s death. Asma”s reports reveal that she was, in fact, deemed a reliable source of information on various topics. She is credited with fifty-five baditb, the subjects of which include ritual purity (tahara), prayer (salat), and charity (. zakat).{]' The following themes recur in more than one tradition: Muhammad’s prayer during the solar eclipse that she is said to have witnessed, his encouragement of giving generously in charity, and her own denunciation of al-Hajjaj ’s treatment of her son ‘Abd Allah. The narratives accompanying the incident of the Prophet’s prayer marking the solar eclipse ( salat kbusuf al-shams) are of varying lengths and stress different aspects of the incident. One brief tradition simply reports that Muhammad ordered slaves to be emancipated at the time of the solar eclipse. 12 Several provide lengthier narratives, describing Asma”s happening upon the congregation and joining the lengthy prayer. The emphasis in these traditions is on the unusual length of the prayer followed by a sermon in which Muhammad cautioned his followers about the Day of Judgment. Others focus on aspects of the sermon without mentioning i 114 the prayer. This cluster illustrates well how collective memory is utilized in baditb narratives. The core of the salat kbusuf al-sbams cluster has three common 107 The Prophet would be classified as among her mabram because she was ‘A’isha’s half-sister. 108 al-Mizzl, Tahdhib, 35:125. 109 Kahhala, A ‘lam al-Nisa ’, 4:42. 110 This is the number of traditions ascribed to her in al-Musnad al-Jami ‘. Al-MizzFs Tub fat al-Asbraf ascribes forty-two traditions to her (see Tuhfa, 11:5-25). The discrepancy arises primarily from the musnad works included in al-Musnad al-Jami ‘ but not in the Tub fat alAsbraf. 111 For the cluster of traditions concerning the prayer for the solar eclipse, see al-Musnad alJami ', 19:10-16, #15737-41, and for that concerning her denunciation of al-Hajjaj, see 19:51-54, #15780-88. 112 Ibn Hanbal, Musnad , 6:389, #26918, and al-Bukharl, Sahib , 1-2:471. 113 al-Bukharl, Sahib , 1-2:470; and Malik, al-Muwatta ’, 1:263. 114 al-Nasa’l, Sunan , 4:103-4. The sociocultural ramifications of the solar eclipse traditions are very interesting. As a whole, the baditb aim at situating within an Islamic framework a natural phenomenon that had various meanings in the pagan Arab culture as well as in the Zoroastrian and Byzantine traditions of the lands conquered by Muslims.