'A'isha bt. Abi Bakr and Quranic Interpretation

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This paper was written when I was still a grad student, and reflects where my thinking was at that time on the issues that it raises. In the years between then and now (2017), the fields of Tafsir Studies and Hadith Studies have moved forward, and I have also rethought a number of my presumptions. A number of this paper's provisional observations and conclusions have been superseded by my book, _Gender and Muslim Constructions of Exegetical Authority: A Rereading of the Classical Genre of Qur'an Commentary_ (Brill, 2015), especially Chapter Four. Still, this paper broke new ground when it was published--and its insistence that hadiths ascribed to an early Muslim woman could be an aspect of Muslim intellectual history that is worthy of serious academic study is not yet mainstream in some quarters. Three of the hadiths discussed in this article are dealt with in more detail in another article of mine, "Portrayal of the Hajj as a Context for Women's Exegesis: Textual Evidence in al-Bukhari's (d. 870) 'al-Sahih'), in _Ideas, Images, and Methods of Portrayal: Insights into Classical Arabic Literature and Islam_, ed. Sebastian Guenther (Brill, 2005), 153-179. This article has been reprinted in: Mustafa Shah, _The Hadith (Routledge, 2010), vol. 3. [see links to these books under "Resources"]

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