Note 502 — Chapter XXXVI · REBELLION AT BUSSORAH. A.H. XXXVI. A.D. 656.

We are treading now on specially factious ground, and have to weigh with care the bias of tradition which represents Ayesha as suddenly converted from a deadly enemy of Othmân into the champion of his memory. Thus, when, on receiving the tidings of the murder on the way back from Mecca, she declared that she would avenge his death: ‘What!’ cried her informant, startled by her zeal; ‘is this thy speech now, whilst but yesterday thou wast foremost to press the attack upon him as an apostate?’ ‘Yea,’ she replied; ‘but even now he repented him of that which they laid to his charge, and yet after that they slew him.’ In reply, her informant recited these verses: ‘Thou wast the first to foment the discontent. Thou commandedst us to slay the prince for his apostasy, and now, &c.’ How far this has been invented (possibly as a foil to Aly’s equally strange and inconsistent conduct), or whether the inconsistency in Ayesha’s conduct was really as strange as here represented, it is difficult to say. Anyhow, it must be admitted that Ayesha was a jealous, violent, intriguing woman, a character that may well account for much that would otherwise appear strange.