Aisha was the daughter of Abu Bakr, the first caliph, and a wife of the Prophet, born in Mecca before the Hijra, around 614 CE 1 2 3. Sunni tradition honours her as Mother of the Believers and one of the most important narrators of hadith, and the editor of Ahmad ibn Hanbal's Fada'il al-Sahaba calls her the most learned in law among Muslim women, to whom the Companion jurists referred difficult questions 4 1. In his chapter on her merits Ahmad relates the hadith "Aisha's excellence over women is like that of tharid over food" 5.
The Encyclopaedia of Islam article says she was left behind by the caravan returning from the Banu al-Mustaliq expedition in 627 CE, and that gossip spread until a revelation implied her innocence, the episode of the slander 2 3. The editor of the Fada'il counts the verses revealed to clear her among her merits 1. The article says she nursed the Prophet ﷺ in her chamber, where he was buried, and was widowed at about eighteen 3. After the killing of Uthman, it says, she went to Basra with Talha and al-Zubayr, professing to seek vengeance for him, and at the Battle of the Camel in 656 CE Ali was victorious and Aisha was treated with respect 3. It says she then lived in Medina for over twenty years and became reconciled to Ali 3. More than a thousand hadiths, it says, were related on her authority 3. It dates her death to Ramadan 58 AH; the editor of the Fada'il gives 57 AH, or 58 3 1.
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