The affair of the necklace
I take pride in gathering legends and fables handed down by oral tradition. I extract history from them and substantiate it through archival work. Each discovery is truly thrilling; I liken it to finding a sparkling diamond amid black coal.
As I was reading After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia and Sunni Split by Leslie Hazelton, based on the beginnings of Islam, I decided why not commemorate Eid’l Adha the Festival of Sacrifice and write about the “Legend of the Necklace,” handed down by word of mouth from centuries past?
Aisha was Muhammad’s favorite impetuous young wife who usually traveled with him in his campaigns to unite Arabia’s tribes under the banner of Islam.
In the pre-dawn light, as it was better to break up camp in the early cooler hours, Aisha made her way beyond the encampment to relieve herself behind a bush. She got back on her camel, and just as the caravan was preparing to move off, she put her fingers to her throat. Her necklace was missing. The string must have snagged on a branch and believing there was time to retrieve the beads without a word to anyone she slipped down from the howdah (the platform on the camel’s back), retraced her steps and sifted through piles of dead needles. Triumphantly, she ran back to the camp: she had found the pieces of Mohammad’s gift.
Surprisingly, she discovered the expedition had already left; her absence had gone unobserved. The travelers must have assumed Aisha was on her howdah since the top canopy was drawn.
But Aisha did not run nor walk after the caravan. Instead, in Aisha’s words, as quoted by Hazelton, “I wrapped myself in my smock and then lay down where I was, knowing that when I was missed they would come back for me.” But a detachment was not sent to find her. “The last thing anyone would expect was that she, the favorite wife of the Prophet, would run after a pack of camels like some Bedium shepherd girl. That would be just too demeaning.” The caravan, arriving in Medina, didn’t miss her either.
Meanwhile, in the desert, it was Aisha’s fortune good or bad that a young Medinan warrior Safwan was riding along to catch up with the expeditionary force and saw Aisha lying under an acacia tree. Safwan recognized her immediately, helped her up onto his camel, and then led the animal on foot the whole 20 miles to Medina. By nightfall they arrived in Medina.
“The sight was too much to resist. The Prophet’s youngest wife traveling alone with a virile young warrior. What could one expect of a childless teenager married to a man in his late 50’s?”
Aisha proclaimed her innocence amid the gossip and charges against her. Why would the favorite wife of the Prophet consort with a mere warrior, who wasn’t even from one of the best of families? Nevertheless, delicious insinuations went around and a scandal ensued. Muhammad banished Aisha from her chamber and sent her home to Abu Bakr her father to hide her face in shame. “Aisha finally did what any teenage girl would do. She cried.” Muslims clerics had admonished her. “When women refuse to stay home and instead take an active part in public life, expect the worst.” The “Affair of the Necklace” had to be resolved.
In the meantime, if there was a single person who seemed destined to be Muhammad’s successor, it was Ali, his first cousin, the 29-year age difference between the two cousins notwithstanding. Ali showed his dislike for “Aisha’s sassiness and charm.” In Ali’s eyes, Muhammad’s youngest wife must have seemed an unworthy successor to Khadija, Muhammad’s first wife. The antipathy between Aisha and Ali was mutual.
“There are many like her,” Ali said to the Prophet. “God has freed you from constraints. She is easily replaced.” But divorcing Aisha would not solve anything, for the rumors of infidelity would still persist.
After three weeks of indecision, Muhammad went to Abu Bakr’s house to question Aisha himself. There, she vowed her innocence again when suddenly the Prophet went into a prophetic trance. As Aisha tells it, “The Prophet was wrapped in his garment and a leather cushion was put under his head. He sat up and drops of water fell from him like rain on a winter day, and he began to wipe the sweat from his brow, saying, ‘Good news, Aisha! God has sent down word of your innocence.’” That same day Muhammad proclaimed in public, words that are now part of Sura 24 of the Quran: “The slanderers were a small group among you, and shall be punished. Did you the faithful not think the best and say, ‘This is a manifest lie’? If the slanderers had even produced four witness! But they produced no witness, so they are liars in the eyes of God…”
It was a glorious exoneration of Aisha. The wording of his revelation would apply not only when adultery was suspected, but also when there had been an accusation of rape. Unless a woman could produce four witnesses to her rape a virtual impossibility she would be considered guilty of slander and adultery, and punished accordingly. Aisha’s exoneration was destined to become the basis for the silencing, humiliation and even execution of countless women after her.
Aisha’s accusers were publicly flogged in punishment. “The poets who had composed the most scurrilous verses against her suddenly lavished praises upon her. She returned to her chamber in the courtyard of the mosque and resumed her role as the favorite wife.”
Nevertheless, she paid a price. The days of her freedom to join Muhammad’s campaigns were over. In due time a Quranic revelation dictated that his wives were to be protected not just by a canopy on the howdah but by a thin curtain from the prying eyes of any men not their kin. Hence, a protective veil came to be. The Revelation of the Curtain was applied only to the Prophet’s wives. In time, the veil around women indicated high status attributed to the Prophet’s family. Over the next decades a veil would be adopted by women of the new Islamic aristocracy and would eventually be enforced by Islamic fundamentalists convinced that the veil now on women’s faces should apply to all women.
