Talk:Khadijah bint Khuwaylid

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William Muir’s foot note

William Muir’s foot note on LIFE OF MAHOMET. Volume II. Chapter 2,WIlliam Muir, [Smith, Elder, & Co., London, 1861], pg. 24 (regarding the controversial marriage):

It is not without much hesitation that I have followed Sprenger and Weil in adopting this version of the marriage. It has a strongly improbable air; but its very improbability gives ground for believing that it has not been fabricated. it is also highly disparaging to the position of Mahomet at a period of his life when it is the object of his followers to show that he was respected and honoured. Its credibility is therefore sustained by the Canon III. C laid down in chap. i. of the Introduction. There was no object in vilifying Khuweilid or the Bani Asad; and, even if it is possible to suppose the story fabricated by Mahomet's enemies before the conquest of Mecca, it would (if resting on no better foundation) have fallen out of currency afterwards. We seem therefore to have no option but to receive it as a fact, which later traditionists have endeavoured to discredit, under the impression that it was a foul spot on their Prophet's character that Khadija, the pattern of wives, should have brought about her marriage with Mahomet by making her father drunk. See Canon 11. L


Wackidi gives the narrative twice in a differing form, and from different traditions, (the variety of source thus giving it a wider and less doubtful foundation); but he adds that the whole story is a mistake, as Khuweilid, the father of Khadija, had died previously, and even before the sacrilegious war. Katib al Wackidi, p.25. Yet we have seen above that his name is given as one of the Commanders in that war. Tabari quotes the tradition from Wackidi, word for word, together with his refutation, (p.67). Both add that not her father, but her uncle, Amr ibn Asad, betrothed her. Yet other traditions, containing no allusion to his drunkenness, speak of her father as having given her away (Tabari, p 65); and Hishami's account, which is fused from a variety of traditions by Ibn Ishac, while containing no reference to the drunken fray, states clearly that Khuweilid was the party who betrothed her. We are therefore driven to the conclusion that the tradition of Khuweilid's previous death has been invented, to throw discredit on the story of his drunkenness. Wine shops were common in Mecca before Islam; but drunkenness, though occasionally mentioned, does not seem to have been a general or common failing. Hishami adds to his statement that Mahomet gave his wife a marriage present of twenty young she-camels.
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