This is a follow up to my previous post (https://answeringislamblog.wordpress.com/2019/10/25/a-muslim-defense-of-muhammads-marrying-a-prebuscent-minor-pt-1/) where I again republish a leading Muslim scholar’s refutation (https://www.abc.se/home/m9783/ir/d/aam1_e.pdf) to the attempts by some Muslims to deny that Muhammad had sexual relations with a 9-year-old minor.
‘Ā’isha’s Age at the Time of Her Marriage
by GF Haddad – Shawwāl 1426 / November 2005
Our Mother ‘Ā’isha was between four and five years old the year
both Abū Tālib and Khadīja died – three years before the Hijra – and the
Prophet remarried both with her and with Sawda between one and two years later,
when she was six, cohabiting with her when she was nine as explicitly reported
from her in the books of Sahīh, Sunan, and Musnads.
Al-Bukhārī narrates from ‘Ā’isha in two places of his Sahīh – the book
of Tafsīr and
the one directly after it titled Fadā’il
al-Qur’ān – that verse 46 of Sūrat al-Qamar, Nay, but the Hour (of doom) is
their appointed tryst, and the Hour will be more wretched and more bitter (than
their earthly failure) (54:46), “descended upon Muhammad
in Makka when I was still a mere little girl playing” (wa’innī lajāriyatun al‘abu).
Since the hadīth Masters, Sīra historians,
and Qur’anic commentators agree that the splitting of the moon took place about
five years before the Holy Prophet’s Hijra to Madīna, it is confirmed
that she was born between seven and eight years before the Hijra and the words
that she was a jāriya five
years before the Hijra match the fact that her age at the time Sūrat al-Qamar
was revealed was around 2.1
The Prophet recounted to ‘Ā’isha how he was first inspired to
ask her in marriage:
You were shown to me in dream for three nights. The angel
brought you wrapped in a silk cloth, saying, ‘This is your wife.’ I would lift
the veil from your face and there you were! I would say, ‘If this [sign] is
from Allāh then He shall make it take place.”2
More Wisdoms to the
Prophet’s Marriage with ‘Ā’isha
The marriage of our Mother ‘Ā’isha with the Holy Prophet at an
early age, together with her exceptional intelligence, allowed her to be an
eyewitness to the personal details of his life and carry them on to the
succeeding generations with precision, clarity, detail, abundance, and acumen
generally unsurpassed by anyone who ever related from a Prophet in the history
of mankind. Imām Ibn Shihāb al-Zuhrī said: “If the knowledge of ‘Ā’isha were
added to the knowledge of all women, the knowledge of ‘Ā’isha would still be
better.”3 No doubt, this everlasting benefit is the greatest wisdom to be
deduced from this marriage.
A second, timely wisdom, is that just as the Prophet, with his
later marriage with Zaynab following her divorce from Zayd, abolished the
pre-Islamic Arabian notion that a man could not marry the former wife of an
adoptive son, similarly, he abolished once and for all the notion that a man
could not marry the daughter of a man one had formally declared to be his
brother. The Prophet asked Abū Bakr for ‘Ā’isha’s hand in marriage. Abū Bakr
said, “But I am your brother.” The Prophet said: “You are my brother in the
Religion of Allāh. and His Book, but she is lawful for me to marry.”4
A third, timely wisdom is that the marriage did away with the
pagan superstition that it was a bad omen to marry in the month of Shawwāl, but
the Prophet and ‘Ā’isha were married in Shawwāl and they began to cohabit in
Shawwāl of the second year after the Hijra.5
Various Misconceptions over
Her Youthful Marriage
There is no dispute that ‘Ā’isha had reached puberty at the time
of the consummation of her marriage. However, a claim was made by Maulana
Muhammad ‘Alī that she was a teenager at the time:
A great misconception prevails as to the age at which ‘Ā’isha
was taken in marriage by the Prophet. Ibn Sa‘d has stated in the T.abaqāt that
when Abū Bakr was approached on behalf of the Holy Prophet, he replied that the
girl had already been betrothed to Jubayr [ibn Mut.‘im ibn ‘Adī ibn Nawfal ibn
‘Abd Manāf], and that he would have to settle the matter first with him
[actually with his father Mut‘im]. This shows that ‘Ā’isha must have been
approaching majority at the time [sic]. Again, the Isāba, speaking on the
Prophet’s daughter Fātima, says that she was born five years before the Call
and was about five years older than ‘Ā’isha. This shows that ‘Ā’isha must have
been about ten years at the time of her betrothal to the prophet, and not six
years as she is generally supposed to be. This is further borne out by the fact
that ‘Ā’isha herself is reported to have stated that when the chapter entitled
“The Moon” (54th chapter) was revealed, she was a girl playing about and
remembered certain verses then revealed. Now the 54th chapter was undoubtedly
revealed before the sixth year of the Call. All these considerations point to
but one conclusion, viz., that ‘Ā’isha could not have been less than ten years
of age at the time of her nikāh,
which was virtually only a betrothal. And there is one report in the Tabaqāt that
‘Ā’isha was nine years of age at the time of nikāh. Again it is a fact admitted on all
hands that the nikāh of
‘Ā’isha took place in the tenth year of the Call in the month of Shawwāl, while
there is also preponderance of evidence as to the consummation of her marriage
taking place in the second year of Hijra in the same month, which shows that
full five years had elapsed between the nikāh. and the consummation. Hence
there is not the least doubt that ‘Ā’isha was at least nine or ten years of age
at the time of betrothal, and 14 or 15 years at the time of marriage.6
The above conclusion is flawed due to the following facts:
• Ibn Sa‘d’s report about the betrothal to Jubayr ibn Mut‘im has
an extremely weak chain through Abū al-Mundhir Hishām ibn Muhammad ibn
al-Sā’ib, from his father Abū al-Nadr al-Kūfī, from Abū Sālih, from Ibn ‘Abbās.
Hishām and his father are both “discarded” (matrūk)
and considered liars while the latter actually admitted to Sufyān al-Thawrī,
“All I have narrated to you from Abū Sālih. is a lie.”7
• The reasoning that a betrothal to Jubayr would suggest
anything about age is also faulty and shows ignorance of the fact that betrothal
could take place from the cradle or even before birth. Further, the word
“majority” is probably being used in an unislamic sense by Maulana Muh.ammad
‘Alī.
• The Isāba does
not cite only one, but two possible dates for the birth of Fātima al-Zahrā’ (i)
The year the Ka‘ba was rebuilt, five years before Prophethood, when the Prophet
was 35. This is reported by al-Wāqidī alone who is, moreover, very weak or
discarded as a hadīth narrator. (ii) The forty-first year of the Prophet. This
is reported by al-Hākim in al-Mustadrak through
two chains (1990 ed. 3:176 and 3:178), Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr in al-Istī‘āb (4:1893),
and alMizzī in Tahdhīb
al-Kamāl (53:248). Both dates are cited in the Isāba (1992 ed.
8:54) which adds that Fātima was five years older than ‘Ā’isha. By the first
date, therefore, the age of ‘Ā’isha the year the marriage was consummated (2H)
would be 15; by the second date, 9 – the age confirmed by the totality of the
reports in the Sahīhs and Sunan.
• The Tabaqāt of
Ibn Sa‘d explicitly state (8:217) that ‘Ā’isha was six years of age at the time
of nikāh. and nine at the time of consummation.
• As for Sūra 54 being “undoubtedly revealed before the sixth
year of the Call” and the claimed “fact admitted on all hands that the nikāh.
of ‘Ā’isha took place in the tenth year of the Call,” these are statements
without basis.
Another, yet weaker claim was made that ‘Ā’isha “was not 9 but
19 at the time of her marriage” and that “the wrong age” was the “result of an
error perpetuated by copying a mistake committed by Ibn Sa‘d”! However, the
precise age of nine at the time of consummation is reported with at least
seventeen different chains in the Six Books, nine of them in the Sahīhayn, plus three
more chains in the Musnad
of Imām Ahmad and one more in al-Dārimī’s Musnad, all excluding
Ibn Sa‘d. The onset of menarche often took place at eight or nine in the
Arabian peninsula at the time. Al-Shāfi‘ī said: “I saw in Yemen many nine-year
old girls who had menses” (ra’aytu
bil-yaman banāti tis‘in yahidna kathīran). 8 Al-Tirmidhī said in
the “Book of the
Nikāh of the Prophet” in his Sunan:
Ahmad and Ishāq [ibn Rāhūyah] said: “When the orphan reaches
nine years of age and is then married upon her approval, the marriage is
permissible.” ‘Ā’isha said: “When the girl reaches nine years of age she is a
woman.”
The weakest claim of all is probably the attempt to suggest
weakness in the narration of Hishām ibn ‘Urwa in the following terms: “Most of the hadīths about a young
age for ‘Ā’isha at her marriage were transmitted by Hishām ibn ‘Urwa on the
authority of his father. All of those who narrated these hadiths from Hishām
are Iraqis. This is important because there are reports in Tahdhīb
al-Tahdhīb to the
effect that Hishām’s reports are reliable except when narrated by Iraqis [!]. There is a report from Ya‘qūb ibn
Shayba to that effect, and one from Mālik ibn Anas.” The reply
is that none among the hadīth Masters endorsed these reservations, since they
were based solely on the fact that Hishām in his last period (he was 71 at the
time of his last trip to Iraq), for the sake of brevity, would say “My father,
from ‘Ā’isha” (abī ‘an
‘Ā’isha) and no longer pronounced, “narrated to me” (haddathanī). Hence Ibn
Hajar rejects the objections as negligible in Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb (11:45), saying:
“It was clear enough to the Iraqis that he did not narrate from his father
other than what he had heard directly from him.” In Taqrīb al-Tahdhīb (#7302),
he states of Hishām, “thiqa
rubbamā dallasa – trustworthy, may have occasionally left his
narrator unnamed” but Shu‘ayb alArna’ūt and ‘Awwād Ma‘rūfsaid in their Tahrīr Taqrīb al-Tahdhīb (4:41),
a thorough review of Ibn Hajar’s findings in al-Taqrīb:
It seems the words rubbamā
dallasa are based on the sayings of Ya‘qūb ibn Shayba and
Mālik, although his [Hishām’s] narration from his father is retained in the
fundamental manuals of Islam, among them the two Sahīhs, so this
[criticism] is negligible.
Another ignorant claim states that this report comes from Hishām
ibn ‘Urwa only through the Iraqis and not through the Madinans. In reality,
al-Zuhrī also reports it from ‘Urwa, from ‘Ā’isha; so does ‘Abd Allāh ibn
Dhakwān – both major Madanīs. So is the Tābi‘ī Yah.yā al-Lakhmī who reports it
from her in the Musnad and in Ibn Sa‘d’s Tabaqāt. So is Abū Ishāq Sa‘d ibn
Ibrāhīm who reports it from Imām al-Qāsim ibn Muhammad – one of the Seven Imāms
of Madina! – from ‘Ā’isha. Also, Sufyān ibn ‘Uyayna – from Khurāsān – and ‘Abd
Allāh ibn Muhammad ibn Yahyā – from Tabarayya in Palestine – both report it from
Hishām, from ‘Urwa. Nor was this hadīth reported only by ‘Urwa but also by ‘Abd
al-Malik ibn ‘Umayr, al-Aswad, Ibn Abī Mulayka, Abū Salama ibn ‘Abd al-Rahmān
ibn ‘Awf, Yahyā ibn ‘Abd al-Rahmān ibn Hātib, Abū ‘Ubayda (‘Āmir ibn ‘Abd Allāh
ibn Mas‘ūd) and others of the Tābi‘ī Imāms directly from ‘Ā’isha. This makes the report
mass-transmitted (mutawātir) from ‘Ā’isha by over eleven
authorities among the Tābi‘īn, not counting the other major
Companions that reported the same, such as Ibn Mas‘ūd nor other major
Successors that reported it from other than ‘Ā’isha, such as Qatāda!
‘Abd al-Rahmān Squires wrote:
Part of the wisdom behind the Prophet’s marriage to ‘Ā’isha just
after she reached puberty is to firmly establish this as a point of Islamic
Law, even though it was already cultural norm in all Semitic societies
(including the one Jesus grew up in). The large majority of Islamic jurists say
that the earliest time a marriage can be consummated is on the onset of sexual
maturity (bulūgh), meaning puberty.9 Since this was the norm of all Semitic
cultures and it still is the norm of many cultures today: it is certainly not
something that Islam invented. However, widespread opposition to such a
Divinely revealed and accepted historical norm is certainly something that is
relatively new.
The criticism of [the Prophet] Muhammad’s marriage to ‘Ā’isha is
something relatively new in that it grew up out of the values of
“Post-Enlightenment” Europe. This was a Europe that had abandoned (or at least
modified) its religious morality for a new set of humanist values where people
used their own opinions to determine what was right and wrong. It is
interesting to note that Christians from a very early time criticized (again
hypocritically) the Prophet’s practice of polygamy, but not the marriage to
‘Ā’isha. Certainly, those from a Middle Eastern Semitic background would not
have found anything to criticize, since nothing abnormal or immoral took place.
It is “modern” Westernized Christians who began to criticize [the Prophet] Muh.ammad
on this point, not earlier pre-Enlightenment ones.
It is upon reaching the age of puberty that a person, man or
woman, becomes legally responsible under Islamic Law. At this point, they are
allowed to make their own decisions and are held accountable for their actions.
It should also be mentioned that in Islam, it is unlawful to force someone to
marry someone that they do not want to marry. The evidence shows that ‘Ā’isha’s
marriage to the Prophet Muhammad was one which both parties and their families
agreed upon. Based on the culture at that time, no one saw anything wrong with
it. On the contrary, they were all happy about it.
None of the Muslim sources report that anyone from the society
at that time criticized this marriage due to ‘Ā’isha’s young age. On the
contrary, the marriage of ‘Ā’isha to the Prophet was encouraged by ‘Ā’isha’s
father, Abū Bakr, and was welcomed by the community at large. It is reported
that women who wanted to help the Prophet, such as Khawla bint [Hakīm], encouraged
him to marry the young ‘Ā’isha. Due to the Semitic culture in which they lived,
they certainly saw nothing wrong with such a marriage.10
An American “women’s 19th-century history” website states the
following under the heading The Campaign to Raise the Age of Consent,
1885-1914:
In the late nineteenth century, “Age of consent” referred to the
legal age at which a girl could consent to sexual relations. Men who engaged in
sexual relations with girls who had not reached the age of consent could be
criminally prosecuted. American reformers were shocked to discover that the
laws of most states set the age of consent at the age of ten or twelve, and in
one state, Delaware, the age of consent was only seven. Women reformers and
advocates of social purity initiated a campaign in 1885 to petition legislators
to raise the legal age of consent to at least sixteen, although their ultimate
goal was to raise the age to eighteen. The campaign was eventually quite
successful; by 1920, almost all states had raised the age of consent to sixteen
or eighteen.11
1 The definition of jāriya in
the Qāmūs is fatiyyatu al-nisā’ i.e.
“the little female girl.” This appellation applies to girls from birth to
pre-pubescence.
2 Narrated from ‘Ā’isha by al-Bukhārī, Muslim, and Ahmad, and by
al-Tirmidhī and Ahmad through a different chain.
3 Narrated by al-Hākim (4:11).
4 Narrated from ‘Urwa by al-Bukhārī.
5 Narrated from ‘Ā’isha by Muslim, al-Tirmidhī, al-Nasā’ī, Ibn
Mājah, Ahmad, and al-Dārimī.
6 Maulana Muhammad ‘Alī, The
Living Thoughts of the Prophet Muhammad (p. 30, note 40, “A
Brief Sketch of the Prophet’s Life”) cf. another Subcontinent rehash: http://www.pakistanlink.com/religion/97/re11-21-97.html.
7 Cf. al-Dhahabī’s Mīzān and
Ibn al-Jawzī’s al-Du‘afā’
wal-Matrūkīn.
8 Cited by al-Dhahabī in his chapter on al-Shāfi‘ī in Syar A‘lām
al-Nubalā’ (Fikr ed. 8:418). “Those who live in cold regions
attain puberty at a much later age as compared with those living in hot regions
where both male and female attain it at a quite early age. ‘The average
temperature of the country or province,’ say the well-known authors of the
book Woman [Herman
H. Ploss, Max Bartels and Paul Bartels], ‘is considered the chief factor here,
not only with regard to menstruation but as regards the whole of sexual
development at puberty.’ (Woman,
Volume I, Lord & Bransby, 1988, page 563.) Raciborski, Jaubert, Routh and
many others have collected and collated statistics on the subject to which readers
are referred. Marie Espino has summarised some of these data as follows: (a)
The limit of age for the first appearance of menstruation is between nine and
twenty-four in the temperate-zone; (b) The average age varies widely and it may
be accepted as established that the nearer the Equator, the earlier the average
age for menstruation.” http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Polemics/aishah.html.
9 Actually, there is the additional pre-condition, before
initiating cohabitation, that both spouses must be physically fit for coitus.
10 See the URL cited in the next-to-previous note and also http://www.muslim-answers.org/aishah.htm.
11 http://womhist.binghamton.edu/teacher/aoc.htm.
IHS
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