Qaadi Shurayh (a student of Umar bin al-Khattab and others) sucked his wife’s finger in worry after a scorpion stung her.
Abū al-Faraj al-Muʿāfā ibn Zakariyyāʾ ibn Yaḥyā ibn Ḥumayd al-Nahrawānī al-Jarīrī (305 – 390 AH) said that he advised his student Sho‘abi to marry women of Banu Tamim, as they are truly intelligent women. He said:
فأقمت معها عشرين سنة ما غضبت عليها يوما ولا ليلة ، إلا يوما وكنت لها ظالما …
I lived with her (Zainab) for twenty years. I never became angry with her for a day or a night, except on one day when I was unjust to her. That was when I performed the two rak‘ahs of Fajr and saw a scorpion. I hurried to kill it, so I overturned a vessel over it and rushed to prayer. I said: “O Zaynab, beware of the vessel!” She hurried to it and moved it, and the scorpion stung her. If you had seen me, O Sha‘bi, sucking her finger and reciting the Mu‘awwidhatayn over it!
I had a neighbor named Qays ibn Jarir who would constantly beat his wife. At that time, I would say:
“I have seen men beating their wives,
So my right hand became useless on the day I would strike Zaynab.”
And I am the one who says:
“When Zaynab’s family visits her,
She gathers and honors her guests.
And if she visits them, I visit them,
And if I have no desire for her home, it is because her home is mine.”
O Sha‘bi, marry women from Banu Tamim, for they are truly the women.
Abū al-Faraj al-Muʿāfā ibn Zakariyyāʾ commented:
We have narrated the report of Shurayh concerning his marriage to Zaynab through more than one chain. We came across this one and recorded it, and it is sufficient even without others.
In some narrations, there is a verse following his statement:
“I have seen men beating their wives,
So my right hand became useless on the day I would strike Zaynab.”
And it continues:
“And Zaynab is a sun, and the women are stars;
When she rises, she leaves no star among them.”
“Al-Jalis al-Salih” by Al-Mu‘afi ibn Zakariya – Al-Mu‘afi ibn Zakariya ibn Yahya al-Jariri al-Nahrawani, Vol. 1, page 568 onward.