She is Aisha bint Talha ibn Abdallah — her mother was Umm Kulthum bint Abi Bakr — and she was of all women the one who most resembled her aunt Aisha, wife of the Prophet. She was among the most beautiful of God's creation, and yet, such was the firmness of her character and her confidence in herself, she would not veil her face from anyone. Her husband Mus'ab ibn al-Zubayr (who married her after the death of her first husband, just as he also married Sukayna) reproached her for it, and she said:
"God Most High has marked me with the stamp of beauty, and I wished that people should see it and know His favor upon them; I was not one to conceal it. By God, there is no blemish in me that anyone could reproach me with." This Aisha was famed for boldness, steadiness of nerve, and breadth of learning. Like Sukayna bint al-Husayn, she would sit with men and discuss with them literature, poetry, and the other branches of knowledge; she would attend the archers' competitions and contend among them; and she possessed an awesome presence and authority, and many stories are told of her.
"Aisha — like Sukayna — held a position of the first rank; she and her companion Sukayna preserved the standing of the Arab woman in that age, and the two of them raised her station and her reach." Whoever consults the Aghani and the other ancient texts will be left in no doubt of it.
She likewise resembled Sukayna in her passion for poetry, her forwardness, and her transmission of verse without concern for composing it. In most of the well-known sources I have found no lines attributed to her except the following: when Yahya ibn Sa'id came asking for Aisha's hand on behalf of his brother Yahya, she said to him, write to your brother:
You have settled where the lizard settles: you are not lean for the chase, nor is any watering-pool of use where you are.
It is related in the Aghani: Abu Amr said, this ode was recited before Aisha bint Talha ibn Ubaydallah (that is, the ode of Qays ibn al-Hadadiyya whose opening is "Is it so — that because Nu'm has gone far, you despair?"), and she admired it; and in her presence was a company of poets, and she said: "Whichever of you can add to it a single verse that resembles it and enters into its meaning shall have this robe of mine." And not one of them was able to do it.
Her admiration for the poetry of Ibn Abi Rabi'a, and her knowledge of it by heart
Muhammad ibn Sallam related to us: "There passed words between Aisha bint Talha and her husband Umar ibn Abdallah ibn Ma'mar, and she lay awake one night, and said: Ibn Abi Rabi'a knows nothing of this night of mine, where he says:
With one in charge whose hand spares her everything that troubles her, she does not lie awake at the end of the night over anything."
Al-Isfahani likewise records the account of her meeting with Umar ibn Abi Rabi'a at Mecca, as she rode along on a mule: how he stopped her and asked her to
hear what he had said about her, and she stopped, and he recited to her. Then, after she hears the verses and ponders their meanings, she says: "No, by the Lord of this edifice, he never meant me for so much as the glance of an eye..." And Aisha kept humoring him and treating him gently, for fear that he should molest her, until she had completed her pilgrimage and departed for Medina; and on that he said...
She is the daughter of Ali ibn Abdallah ibn al-Harith ibn Umayya the Younger, son of Abd Manaf; and it was she who raised al-Gharid and taught him to wail the elegies over those of her people whom Yazid ibn Mu'awiya slew on the day of al-Harra.
Al-Thurayya was among the women dearest to Umar ibn Abi Rabi'a, so that she became known as "al-Thurayya, Umar's lady"; and she was famed for splendid beauty and lofty station, like Sukayna and Aisha.
I do not suppose anyone is ignorant of these famous verses which Umar ibn Abi Rabi'a spoke about her when he heard of her marriage to Suhayl:
O you who wed al-Thurayya to Suhayl — God keep you, how shall the two ever meet? She is Syrian when she rises, and Suhayl, when he rises, is of Yemen.
Her forwardness and her understanding of poetry — Al-Thurayya, like other women, took pleasure in Umar's poetry about her:
Ramla bint Abdallah al-Khuza'iyya made the pilgrimage, and Umar said of her:
The heart became hostage to beauty — stricken, the day it parted from the departing riders.
When al-Thurayya heard it she said: "He is an impudent fellow, clever with his tongue; if I am spared I shall surely check his course and make him know himself." And when she reached his words:
I said, Who are you? She turned away and said: must you put your question to all mankind?
she said: "What a persistent asker — shame upon him! And she gave him his answer, fine-drawn though it was." And when she reached his words:
We are of the dwellers of Iraq, and before that we dwelt a while in Mecca,
she said: "The grim creature has tipped him a wink." And when she reached his words:
We answered you truly when you asked — so who are you? Perhaps one affair may draw others in its train,
she said: "The witless woman has thrown at him the last she had, all in one sitting." And she forsook Umar. And when there also reached her his words about Ramla:
Her mantle, drawn back, disclosed the light of a full moon shining for the beholders,
she said: "Fie on him — what a liar! Could any beauty be exalted by his describing her, after Ramla?"
Her correspondence with Umar — When a letter came to her from Umar and the messenger begged her to be reconciled to him... after much insistence he persuaded her to write him a letter of reconciliation, and she did.