L'age d'Aicha: Difference between revisions

This apologetic argument aims to make the claim that Aisha was at the Battles of Badr and Uhud, and that since standard practice at the time disallowed anyone under 15 from joining the battlefield, she could not have been younger than this.  

However, there are no sources that can be found mentioning Aisha's participation in the Battle of Badr. A few hadiths highlight Aisha's involvement in the Battle of Uhud, but only to the extent that she was not involved in the battlefield and merely carrying water skins to the combatants.<ref>Narrated Anas: On the day (of the battle) of Uhad when (some) people retreated and left the Prophet, I saw 'Aisha bint Abu Bakr and Um Sulaim, with their robes tucked up so that the bangles around their ankles were visible hurrying with their water skins (in another narration it is said, "carrying the water skins on their backs"). Then they would pour the water in the mouths of the people, and return to fill the water skins again and came back again to pour water in the mouths of the people.<br>{{Bukhari|4|52|131}}</ref> Women and young children were allowed to perform such functions during battles.<ref>The women and young children went on the battlefield after the battle and gave water to the wounded Muslims and finished off the enemy wounded.  

Shaykh Haddad responds to this apologetic argument:

{{Quote|<ref name="Haddad" />|First, the prohibition applied to combatants. It applied neither to non-combatant boys nor to non-combatant girls and women. Second, `A'isha did not participate in Badr at all but bade farewell to the combatants as they were leaving Madina, as narrated by Muslim in his Sahih. On the day of Uhud (year 3), Anas, at the time only twelve or thirteen years old, reports seeing an eleven-year old `A'isha and his mother Umm Sulaym having tied up their dresses and carrying water skins back and forth to the combatants, as narrated by al-Bukhari and Muslim.}}

===Age of Asma===

One [[Sahih#Da'if|da'if]] (weak) hadith narrated from al-Zinad and recorded in the works of some medieval scholars, including al-Dhahabi,<ref>al-Dhahabi. "Siyar a`lam al-nubala'". IslamWeb. Retrieved 3 September 2018. <q>قال عبد الرحمن بن أبي الزناد : كانت أسماء أكبر من عائشة بعشر" (Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi al-Zunad said: Asma was older than Aisha by ten years.)</q></ref> states that Aisha's older sister Asma was ten years older than her. This has been combined with improbable information about Asma being 100 years old at the time of her death in 73 AH to calculate that Aisha was eighteen or nineteen at the time of her marriage consummation (1 AH or 2 AH - (73 - 100) - 10).

Shaykh Haddad and the IslamQA website both independently criticise this approach as relying on a single narrator, who most scholars regard as weak, and note that a hadith by a more reliable chain from the same narrator gives a broader range for the age difference between the sisters.<ref name="Haddad" /><ref>Fatwa 124483 - [https://islamqa.info/en/answers/124483/ IslamQA.info]</ref> Both also note that al-Dhahabi too gave the vaguer opinion that Asma was "ten or more" years older than Aisha.

===Tabari's account of Abu Bakr's children and wives===

This account uses [[Tabari|al-Tabari's]] exegesis to argue that Aisha was born in the pre-islamic period, and thus could not have been less than 14 tears old.<ref>All four of his [i.e. Abu Bakr's] children were born of his two wives - the names of whom we have already mentioned - during the pre-Islamic period.  

Tarikh al-umam wa al-mamloo'k, Al-Tabari, Vol. 4, Pg. 50, Arabic, Dar al-fikr, Beirut, 1979</ref>

However, al-Tabari's own account reports at least five times that Aisha was around 6-7 years old during marriage and the marriage was consummated 3 years later.<ref>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, no other man having shared me with him

[[The History of al-Tabari|Al-Tabari,]] [[The History of al-Tabari#Volume VII: The Foundation of the Community|Vol. 7, p. 7]]</ref><ref>I was then brought [in] while the Messenger of God was sitting on a bed in our house. [My mother] made me sit on his lap... Then the men and women got up and left. The Messenger of God 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 History of al-Tabari|Al-Tabari,]] [[The History of al-Tabari#Volume IX: The Last Years of the Prophet|Vol. 9, p. 131]]</ref><ref>The Messenger of God saw 'A'ishah twice-[first when] it was said to him that she was his wife (she was six years old at that time), and later [when] he consummated his marriage with her after coming to Medina when she was nine years old.

[[The History of al-Tabari|Al-Tabari,]] [[The History of al-Tabari#Volume IX: The Last Years of the Prophet|Vol. 9, p. 131]]</ref><ref>[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 Shawwil. She was eighteen years old when he died.

[[The History of al-Tabari|Al-Tabari,]] [[The History of al-Tabari#Volume IX: The Last Years of the Prophet|Vol. 9, p. 131]]</ref><ref>The Prophet married Aishah in Shawwal in the tenth year after the [beginning of his] prophethood, three years before Emigration. He consummated the marriage in Shawwal, eight months after Emigration. On the day he consummated the marriage with her she was nine years old.