Teacher of the Ummah

For nearly fifty years after the Prophet ﷺ, 'A'ishah's room in Madinah was a school. She narrated over two thousand hadiths, more than any other woman, and much of what we know of his prayer at night, his fasting, his ghusl and his life at home comes through her. Abu Musa al-Ash'ari said that whenever a hadith puzzled the Companions and they asked 'A'ishah, they found she had knowledge of it.

She did not only transmit; she corrected with evidence. When she heard it reported that the dead are punished for their family's weeping, she said the Prophet ﷺ had said it of a particular unbeliever, and recited, ﴿وَلَا تَزِرُ وَازِرَةٌ وِزْرَ أُخْرَى﴾ (“No bearer of burdens bears the burden of another”) (6:164; Sahih al-Bukhari 1288). Scholars later gathered her corrections of other Companions into whole books.

Her nephew 'Urwah ibn al-Zubayr, who studied under her, said he never saw anyone more learned in the Qur'an, the obligations, the lawful and unlawful, poetry, Arab history or lineage. And she gave as freely as she taught: it is reported that she once distributed a large gift of money in a single day while fasting, keeping nothing back for her own meal.