Aisha's age at marriage

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A'isha bint Abu Bakr, one of the wives of Muhammad, is traditionally believed to have been married young. The age of Aisha at marriage is an unsettled issue, and the subject of increasing attention in recent years. There are several hadiths (said to have been narrated by Aisha herself) which state she was six or seven years old when she was married and nine years old when the marriage was consummated, but according to some authors there exists evidence implying that Aisha may have been anywhere from twelve to twenty-three years old when she married.

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[edit] Principal arguments

A significant majority of Muslims respect the authority of the hadith, the source of much Islamic law (sharia) and therefore accept the hadith collected by Bukhari which quote Aisha as saying that she was nine years old when her marriage was consummated. However, they believe Aisha had already undergone puberty before the marriage was consummated, arguing that early marriages were not abnormal until relatively recent times but the standard practice was to wait until the bride had become adolescent before consummating the marriage.[1]

Some Muslims believe the hadith regarding age of Aisha are "weak", misquoted, or misinterpreted, they estimate her age at marriage as between fourteen and twenty [2][3][4] while other dispute Aisha's year of marriage.[5][6][7]

[edit] Evidence that Aisha was nine

The hadith collections of Bukhari (d. 870) and Muslim b. al-Hajjaj (d. 875) are in general regarded as the most authentic by Sunni Muslims. Both quote Aisha herself claiming she was six or seven at the time of her marriage and nine when the marriage was consummated.

[edit] Sahih Bukhari

According to Aisha:

The Prophet engaged me when I was a girl of six (years). We went to Medina and stayed at the home of Bani-al-Harith bin Khazraj. Then I got ill and my hair fell down. Later on my hair grew (again) and my mother, Um Ruman, came to me while I was playing in a swing with some of my girl friends. She called me, and I went to her, not knowing what she wanted to do to me. She caught me by the hand and made me stand at the door of the house. I was breathless then, and when my breathing became Allright, she took some water and rubbed my face and head with it. Then she took me into the house. There in the house I saw some Ansari women who said, "Best wishes and Allah's Blessing and a good luck." Then she entrusted me to them and they prepared me (for the marriage). Unexpectedly Allah's Apostle came to me in the forenoon and my mother handed me over to him, and at that time I was a girl of nine years of age. [8]

According to Urwah ibn al-Zubayr:

Khadija died three years before the Prophet departed to Medina. He stayed there for two years or so and then he married 'Aisha when she was a girl of six years of age, and he consummated that marriage when she was nine years old.[9]

According to Aisha:

the Prophet married her when she was six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old, and then she remained with him for nine years (i.e., till his death).[10]

According to Ursa ibn al-Zubayr:

The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with 'Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death).[11]

[edit] Sahih Muslim

According to Aisha:

Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) married me when I was six years old, and I was admitted to his house at the age of nine. She further said: We went to Medina and I had an attack of fever for a month, and my hair had come down to the earlobes. Umm Ruman (my mother) came to me and I was at that time on a swing along with my playmates. She called me loudly and I went to her and I did not know what she had wanted of me. She took hold of my hand and took me to the door, and I was saying: Ha, ha (as if I was gasping), until the agitation of my heart was over. She took me to a house, where had gathered the women of the Ansar. They all blessed me and wished me good luck and said: May you have share in good. She (my mother) entrusted me to them. They washed my head and embellished me and nothing frightened me. Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) came there in the morning, and I was entrusted to him. [12]

According to Aisha:

Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him) married me when I was six years old, and I was admitted to his house when I was nine years old [13]

According to Aisha:

Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him) married her when she was seven years old, and he was taken to his house as a bride when she was nine, and her dolls were with her; and when he (the Holy Prophet) died she was eighteen years old. [14]

[edit] Sunan Abu Dawud

According to Aisha:

"The Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him) married me when I was seven or six. When we came to Medina, some women came. according to Bishr's version: Umm Ruman came to me when I was swinging. They took me, made me prepared and decorated me. I was then brought to the Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him), and he took up cohabitation with me when I was nine. She halted me at the door, and I burst into laughter." [15]

According to Aisha:

When we came to Medina, the women came to me when I was playing on the swing, and my hair was up to my ears. They brought me, prepared me, and decorated me. Then they brought me to the Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him) and he took up cohabitation with me, when I was nine. [16]

[edit] Tarikh al-Tabari

According to Aisha:

My mother came to me while I was being swung on a swing between two branches and got me down. My nurse took over and wiped my face with some water and started leading me. When I was at the door she stopped so I could catch my breath. I was brought in while Muhammad was sitting on a bed in our house. My mother made me sit on his lap. The other men and women got up and left. The Prophet consummated his marriage with me in my house when I was nine years old. Neither a camel nor a sheep was slaughtered on behalf of me." ... "(The Prophet) married her three years before the Emigration, when she was seven years old and consummated the marriage when she was nine years old, after he had emigrated to Medina in Shawwal. She was eighteen years old when he died". [17]

According to Abd al-Hamid b. Bayan al-Sukkari:

Abd Allah b. Safwan together with another person came to Aishah and Aishah said (to the latter), "O so and so, have you heard what Hafsah has been saying?" He said, "Yes, o Mother of the Faithful." Abd Allah b. Safwan asked her, "What is that?" She replied, "There are nine special features in me that have not been in any woman, except for what God bestowed on Maryam bt. Imran. By God, I do not say this to exalt myself over any of my companions." "What are these?" he asked. She replied, "The angel brought down my likeness; the Messenger of God married me when I was seven; my marriage was consummated when I was nine; he married me when I was a virgin...." [18]

[edit] Evidence that Aisha was older than nine

Muqtedar Khan argues that there are different reports within the Islamic sources about the age of Aisha at the time of marriage,[6] Maulana Muhammad Ali makes a detailed historical argument that Aisha was betrothed at nine or ten, but was fifteen at marriage,[5] while Moiz Amjad agrees with Hafiz Niaz Ahmad and Habib ur Rahman Kandhalwi and argues on the authenticity of hadith regarding Aisha's age and shows that it contradicts with other Islamic literature and puts her age at marriage as late as twenty.[2][3][4] The following arguments are given to support this conclusion.

Wikisource has a book written by Habib ur Rahman Kandhalwi:

[edit] Authenticity of hadith regarding Aisha's age

  • Reports regarding Aisha's age were recorded during the Abbasid caliphate when Aisha's youth might be deliberately emphasized by scholars to reject Shi'a claims for the descendants of Ali ibn Abi Talib.[19]
  • Most of the narratives regarding Aisha's age are reported only by Hisham ibn Urwa reporting on the authority of his father. All the narratives of this event have been reported through narrators from Iraq, where Hisham ibn Urwa is reported to have shifted after living in Madinah for seventy-one years. It is reported in one of the most well known books on the life and reliability of the narrators of the traditions ascribed to Muhammad that Yaqub ibn Shaibah said, "narratives reported by Hisham are reliable except those that are reported through the people of Iraq". It further states that Malik ibn Anas objected on those narratives of Hisham, which were reported through people of Iraq.[20] Another book on the narrators of the traditions of Muhammad reports that when he was old, Hisham's memory suffered quite badly.[21]
  • Muhammad is attributed to say, "A woman must be consulted and get her permission to make the marriage valid".[22] According to another report, Aisha at the age of nine was rather more interested to play with toy-horses than to take up the responsible task of a wife.[23] The permission of an immature girl cannot be a valid authorization for marriage.
  • Comparison of hadith of Aisha's age with hadith of Laylat al-Qadr, in which 1 was used for 21, 3 for 23, 5 for 25 and so on, suggest that maybe Aisha's reports were transmitted literally and 16 became 6 and 19 became 9, as it is a way of talking in Arabic language when base is already known.[3]

[edit] Evidences from Islamic literature

  • According to hadith in Bukhari and Muslim, Aisha is said to have joined Muhammad on the raid that culminated in the Battle of Badr, in 624 CE[24] and then in 625 CE in the Battle of Uhud.[25] As no one below the age of fifteen was allowed to accompany raiding parties,[26][27] Aisha should have been at least fifteen in 624 CE and thus at least thirteen when she was married following the Hijra in 622 CE.
  • Ibn Hisham's recension of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rashul Allah, the earliest surviving biography of Muhammad, records Aisha as having converted to Islam before Umar ibn al-Khattab, during the first few years of Islam around 610 CE. In order to accept Islam she must have been walking and talking, hence at least three years of age, which would make her at least fifteen in 622 CE.[28]
  • Tabari reports that Abu Bakr wished to spare Aisha the discomforts of a journey to Ethiopia soon after 615 CE, and tried to bring forward her marriage to Mut`im ibn `Uday's son. Mut`am refused because Abu Bakr had converted to Islam, but if Aisha was already of marriageable age in 615 CE, she must have been older than nine in 622 CE.[29][4](p.91)
  • Tabari also reports that Abu Bakr's four children were all born during the Jahiliyyah,[30] the pre Islamic period, which is said to have ended in 610 CE, making Aisha at least twelve in 622 CE when Aisha started living with Muhammad.
  • Aisha is reported to have said that at the time Surah Al-Qamar, the 54th chapter of the Qur'an , was revealed, "I was a young girl".[31] The 54th Surah of the Qur'an was revealed nine years before Hijrah.[32] According to this tradition, Aisha had not only been born before the revelation of the referred Surah, but was actually a young girl, not even only an infant at that time. So if this age is assumed to be 7 to 14 years then her age at the time of marriage would be 16 to 23.
  • According to almost all the historians, Asma bint Abu Bakr, the elder sister of Aisha, was ten years older than Aisha.[33][34] Asma is reported to die in the 73 AH, when she was 100 years old.[35][36] Now, obviously if Asma was 100 years old in the 73 AH, she should have been 27 or 28 years old at the time of Migration to Medina (1 AH). If Asma was 27 or 28 years old at that time, Aisha should have been 17 or 18 years old at the same time. Thus, Aisha - if she got married in 1 AH or 2 AH - was between 18 to 20 years old at the time of her marriage.

[edit] Criticism of this analysis

There have been some Sunni scholars[37] who have asserted the existence of inconsistencies or inaccuracies in the arguments presented by those suggesting Aisha was more than nine years old at consummation. They argue that the narratives related to Aisha have reached a level of mass-transmission, and respond to the arguments presented above, claiming them to have been misrepresentations or factually inaccurate.[38]

[edit] Criticism

See also: Criticism of Muhammad

Critics of Islam typically[citation needed] accept the hadith stating that Aisha was nine, but reject the idea that she could have been pubescent, suggesting Muhammad's sexual relationship with Aisha necessarily renders him, as ex-Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali puts it, a "pervert".[39] Additionally, Ibn Warraq argues in Why I Am Not a Muslim that "child marriages continue to be practiced, and the fact that the Prophet himself married Aisha when she was only nine and he was fifty-three encourages Muslim society to continue with this iniquitous custom."[40] Historian William Montgomery Watt, however, argues that these are presentist critiques and should not be applied to the actions of a man who lived hundreds of years ago. According to Watt, "… those of Muhammad's actions which are disapproved by the modern West were not the object of the moral criticism of his contemporaries". He suggests "old prejudices linger on" from the time when Islam was portrayed in Europe "as the great enemy of Christendom", feeding modern criticism of Muhammad. [41]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Jamal Badawi, Marriages of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)
  2. ^ a b Moiz Amjad, What was Ayesha's (ra) Age at the Time of Her Marriage to the Prophet (pbuh)?, understanding-islam.com, Al-Mawrid Institute of Islamic research.
  3. ^ a b c Hakim Niaz Ahmad, تحقیق عمرعا،شہ صدیقہ (Research on the age of Ayesha), Mashkoor Academy, Karachi.
  4. ^ a b c Habib ur Rahman Kandhalwi, Age of Aisha, Al-Rahman Publishing Trust, Karachi
  5. ^ a b Maulana Muhammad Ali, The Living Thoughts of the Prophet Muhammad, p. 30, 1992, Ahmadiyya Anjuman Ishaat, ISBN 0-913321-19-2
  6. ^ a b Muqtedar Khan, The Legacy of Prophet Muhammad And the Issues of Pedophilia and Polygamy
  7. ^ Tabaqat ibn Sa'd, 8:58; Ansab al-Ashraf, 1:410. Opinions are in disagreement concerning her marriage with Muhammad. Their marriage seems to have taken place either two of five years after the Migration (Usd al-ghaba, 5:501).[1][2]
  8. ^ Sahih Bukhari 5:58:234
  9. ^ Sahih Bukhari 5:58:236
  10. ^ Sahih Bukhari 7:62:64 7:62:65
  11. ^ Sahih Bukhari 7:62:88
  12. ^ Sahih Muslim 8:3309
  13. ^ Sahih Muslim 8:3310
  14. ^ Sahih Muslim 8:3311
  15. ^ Sunnan Abu Dawud 41:4915 41:4917
  16. ^ Sunnan Abu Dawud 41:4917
  17. ^ Tabari, Volume 9, Page 131
  18. ^ Tabari, Volume 7, Page 7
  19. ^ D. A. Spellberg, Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: the Legacy of A'isha bint Abi Bakr, Columbia University Press, 1994
  20. ^ Ibn Hajar Asqalani, Tahdhib al-Tahdhib, Dar Ihya al-turath al-Islami, 15th century. Vol 11, p. 50
  21. ^ Al-Dhahabi, Mizanu’l-ai`tidal, Al-Maktabatu’l-athriyyah, Sheikhupura, Pakistan, Vol. 4, p. 301
  22. ^ Mishkat al-Masabih, translation by James Robson, Vol. I, p.665
  23. ^ Musnad Ahmad ibn Hanbal, vol.6, p. 33 and 99
  24. ^ Sahih Muslim, 19:4472
  25. ^ Sahih Bukhari, 4:52:131
  26. ^ Sahih Bukhari 5:59:423
  27. ^ Sahih Muslim 19:4466
  28. ^ Ibn Hisham, Al-Sirah al-Nabawiyyah, Vol. 1, p.227 - 234, Arabic, Maktabah al-Riyadh al-hadithah, Al-Riyadh
  29. ^ Tabari, Vol. 1, pg. 493
  30. ^ Al-Tabari, Tarikhu’l-umam wa’l-mamlu’k, Vol. 4, p. 50, Arabic, Dara’l-fikr, Beirut, 1979
  31. ^ Sahih Bukhari 6:60:399
  32. ^ M. M. Khatib, The Bounteous Koran, 1989 ISBN 0-333-34738-2
  33. ^ Al-Dhahabi, Siyar A`la’ma’l-nubala’, Vol. 2, p. 289, Arabic, Mu’assasatu’l-risalah, Beirut, 1992
  34. ^ Ibn Kathir, Al-Bidayah wa’l-nihayah, Vol. 8, p. 371, Dar al-fikr al-`arabi, Al-jizah, 1933
  35. ^ Ibn Kathir, Al-Bidayah wa’l-nihayah, Vol. 8, p. 372, Dar al-fikr al-`arabi, Al-jizah, 1933
  36. ^ Ibn Hajar Asqalani, Tahdhib al-Tahdhib, p. 654, Arabic, Bab fi’l-nisa’, al-harfu’l-alif, Lucknow
  37. ^ Such as Gibril Haddad of SunniPath.com
  38. ^ Gibril Haddad; "Aisha at the time of her marriage" Part 1 and Part 2
  39. ^ Anthony Browne, Film-maker is murdered for his art, Times Online, November 3, 2004
  40. ^ Ibn Warraq, Why I Am Not a Muslim, p. 320, Prometheus Books, 1995, 0879759844
  41. ^ Watt, W. Montgomery (1961). Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman. Oxford University Press, 229. ISBN 0-19-881078-4. 

[edit] External links

Sites criticizing Muhammad for the alleged early marriage:

Sites responding to criticism of Muhammad for the alleged early marriage:

Sites questioning the hadith used to prove an early marriage:

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