Aisha bint Abi Bakr

The largest part of what is recorded about Aisha concerns the sixty years she lived after the Prophet's death, in Medina, as an authority to be consulted. The Sunni collections attribute a very large number of reports to her, traditionally counted in the low thousands, and they are of a distinctive kind: what he did in the house, how he prayed at night, what he did when he was ill, questions of ritual purity, ablution and fasting that arose where nobody else was present. Because she was young when he died and lived long, her chain of transmission is short, which is a technical advantage in the science that grew up around these reports.

Her material also has a characteristic manner. A recurring form is the correction: a report from another Companion is put to her and she qualifies it, supplies a context that changes its force, or contradicts it outright, and later collectors preserved those exchanges rather than smoothing them away. Scholars of the period cite her as a jurist as well as a transmitter, and pupils of both sexes are named.

One matter is genuinely disputed and the atlas states it as such rather than settling it. The age at which she was married is given differently in different early reports, and modern scholars have argued at length about how those figures should be read against other dated events in the sources. The atlas records that the reports disagree and that the question is argued, and takes no position.

After the caliph Uthman was killed in his house in 656 and Ali was acclaimed in Medina, Aisha joined Talha and Zubayr, two senior Companions, in going to Basra to demand that those responsible be pursued. The two armies met outside the city, negotiations were under way, and fighting broke out. Aisha was present in a litter on a camel, from which the battle takes its name. Talha and Zubayr were both killed, Ali's side prevailed, and the accounts agree that Ali afterwards had her escorted back to Medina with an honour guard and that she withdrew from political affairs.

The event is the first occasion on which Muslims fought Muslims in open battle, and the assessment of it divides the tradition.

Sunni tradition holds her among the Mothers of the Believers and as one of the foremost scholars of the first generation, and generally treats the Camel as an error of judgement made in good faith, with many reports describing her later grief over it; the wider Sunni principle of declining to condemn the Companions governs how it is discussed. Shia tradition assesses her role critically, primarily because of the opposition to Ali, whose right to lead is the central claim of that tradition, and reads the episode as bearing on her standing more broadly.

The atlas records both positions, names them as the positions of identifiable communities, and does not adjudicate between them. The one point on which the sources are not divided is the incident of the necklace, in which she was accused of misconduct while travelling and the accusation was rejected; the passage of the Quran addressing it is read across the traditions as clearing her.