Was the khimār worn over the face?
Nine reports say it was. The objection is then raised against itself here — the khimār is required in prayer, where face covering is not — and offers three possible resolutions without choosing between them.
The argument matters because of an inference commonly drawn: if a woman is described going out wearing only a khimār, and the khimār covers the head, then her face must have been uncovered.
That premise is contested by nine citations showing the khimār also worn over the face. Four of them:
Dhū al-Rummah (d. 117 H) describes the whiteness of a young woman's maḥjir adorning her khimār: the garment described in relation to that part of the face. Abū Ḥayyah al-Namīrī (d. 180 H) writes as if the sun itself wore a khimār when she wound hers about herself: sun, in Arabic poetic convention, stands for the face, so the line describes her face as beautiful as the sun, now given a covering of its own. A report from Ibnu Abī Khaythamah (d. 279 H) has a witness enter on ʿĀʾishah wearing a black khimār, an inner garment and a ridāʾ; drawing (adnat) the khimār over her face. Thaʿlab (d. 291 H) defines a woman as having done sufūr specifically when she removes the khimār from her face, as a man does his turban.
A self-raised objection
The argument then raises a problem against itself.
The khimār is required in prayer. Covering the face in prayer is, by agreement, not legislated. If the khimār were by definition a face covering, those two facts could not both hold.
That is a genuine difficulty, and it is not one an opponent had to point out.
Three possible resolutions
Three are offered here, and none is adopted as settled:
- The khimār in those citations may be used in the sense of jilbāb or niqab rather than in its narrower sense.
- The khimār may have been worn over the face as a common practice but not an invariable one, usual, not definitional.
- Cultural change may have occurred, the garment's ordinary use shifting over time.
What this leaves
The narrow inference — khimār mentioned, therefore face uncovered — is at least thrown into doubt. That is as far as the evidence is pushed: at minimum, this makes the assumption questionable, not that it is refuted.
But the positive claim, that the khimār was a face covering, is left qualified by the objection already raised against it. Asserting it flatly here would reproduce the evidence while discarding the reasoning that qualifies it.
Three unresolved possibilities are what this page leaves it at.
Check your understanding
What difficulty does the note raise against its own citations showing the khimār worn over the face?