Ḥijāb
In the language of the Qurʼān and the sīra, ḥijāb signifies a screen or partition, and it refers in the first place to the institution introduced by the “verse of the screen” (āyat al-ḥijāb) in Sūrat al-Aḥzāb, by which the wives of the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ were to be addressed from behind a curtain. Revealed in the year 5 AH, the verse marked a distinctive ordering of the life of the Prophet’s ﷺ household, setting his wives apart in a particular dignity and seclusion. The term is to be distinguished from the more general injunctions of modest dress addressed to the believing women, though in the later tradition the word came to be applied broadly to the covering and seclusion of women.
The occasion of the revelation, as preserved in the collections, relates to the marriage of the Prophet ﷺ to Zaynab bint Jaḥsh in the year 5 AH. On the day of the wedding feast (walīma), several guests lingered in conversation in the house after the meal, remaining beyond what was seemly, to the discomfort of the Prophet ﷺ, who desired to be alone with his bride. It was upon this occasion, the reports relate, that the verse was revealed instructing the believers not to enter the houses of the Prophet ﷺ save when invited, and not to linger; and continuing that when they asked anything of his wives, they should ask it from behind a screen, that being purer for their hearts and the hearts of the women.
The companion Anas ibn Mālik, who was present, relates that it was he who saw the guests overstay and informed the Prophet ﷺ, and that the verse of the screen was revealed that same day; and ʻUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb is reported to have said that he had hoped for such a revelation, having suggested to the Prophet ﷺ that he screen his wives. From this time the wives of the Prophet ﷺ, addressed by the Qurʼān as the “Mothers of the Believers” (ummahāt al-muʼminīn), were spoken to from behind a curtain, and a particular seclusion attached to them in keeping with their unique station, for they were not as other women and might not remarry after the Prophet ﷺ.
The verse of the screen was understood to belong to a cluster of revelations in Sūrat al-Aḥzāb that ordered the conduct of the Prophet’s ﷺ household and the believers’ relations with it. Among these was the verse instructing the Prophet ﷺ to direct his wives, his daughters, and the women of the believers to draw their outer garments (jalābīb) about them when they went abroad, that they might be known and not molested; and the verse in Sūrat al-Nūr enjoining the believing women to draw their head-coverings (khumur) over their bosoms and to guard their modesty. The tradition treated these together as the foundation of the law concerning the dress and seclusion of women, though they were revealed on distinct occasions and addressed somewhat different matters.
In its primary sense, the ḥijāb of the verse was a physical screen within the house, a curtain behind which the wives of the Prophet ﷺ were addressed, and the sources describe the companions speaking to them from behind it. The institution underscored the special honor and the special restriction that belonged to the Mothers of the Believers, whose houses adjoined the mosque and who stood in the closest relation to the Prophet ﷺ. The seclusion thus enjoined upon them was bound up with their distinctive status in the community and with the reverence due to the household of the Prophet ﷺ.
From this specific institution the term ḥijāb came in time to be extended, in the usage of the jurists and the wider tradition, to the covering and the modest comportment of women generally, and so to denote the veil and the practices of seclusion associated with it. The exegetes and the scholars of law discussed at length the application of the verses of the screen, the jilāb and the khimār to the believing women at large, and a considerable literature grew up around the question; but the sīra itself preserves the ḥijāb first of all as an event in the life of the Prophet’s ﷺ household, dated to the marriage of Zaynab and the revelation that attended it.
The revelation of the verse of the screen is reckoned among the notable events of the year 5 AH, and it is frequently mentioned in the biographical literature alongside the other ordinances of Sūrat al-Aḥzāb. The reports of ʻĀʼisha and of other Companions concerning the manner in which the wives of the Prophet ﷺ observed the screen, and the occasions on which it was revealed and applied, were gathered in the collections of ḥadīth and the works of tafsīr, where they formed the basis of the discussion of the subject in the law.
In the sīra tradition, the ḥijāb is remembered as the screen ordained for the wives of the Prophet ﷺ, revealed on the day of his marriage to Zaynab bint Jaḥsh and recorded in Sūrat al-Aḥzāb, by which the Mothers of the Believers were set apart in a seclusion befitting their station. From this beginning the word passed into the general vocabulary of the tradition as a term for the covering and seclusion of women; but in its origin and in the narrative of the Prophet’s ﷺ life it denotes a particular ordinance for his household, one of the distinctive marks of the honour in which the Qurʼān held the family of the Prophet ﷺ.
## References
1 J. Chelhod, “Ḥidjāb,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., ed. P. Bearman et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1971), 3:359–61.2 Abū ʻAbd Allāh al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, “Kitāb al-tafsīr,” bāb āyat al-ḥijāb, nos. 4790–93. 3 Abū al-Ḥusayn Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, “Kitāb al-nikāḥ,” bāb zawāj Zaynab wa-nuzūl al-ḥijāb, no. 1428. 4 Muhammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʻ al-bayān ʻan taʼwīl āy al-Qurʼān (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1984), 22:39–45. 5 Abū Bakr al-Jāṣṣāṣ, Aḥkām al-Qurʼān (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʼ al-Turāth al-ʻArabī, 1985), 3:469–75. 6 Barbara Freyer Stowasser, Women in the Qurʼān, Traditions, and Interpretation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 90–104. 7 Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 53–55. 8 Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī, Sunan Abī Dāwūd, “Kitāb al-libās,” bāb fī qawlihi taʻālá yudnīna ʻalayhinna min jalābībihinna, nos. 4100–4102.