Aisha's Age: Difference between revisions

Little then analyzes in greater depth his reconstructed matns for these common links. Based on shared words, phrases and sequencing, he concludes that they all derive from a single, simple formulation, and are not independently transmitted memories of a common event. This original formulation seems to be the widely transmitted one of Hisham, who also transmitted a few versions with additional details. Hisham attributed all of these to his father 'Urwa b. Zubayr (falsely, argues Little, though it is worth mentioning that in his thesis he does not notice that the content of 'Urwa's letter about Aisha reported by Hisham is also narrated by a Syrian partial common link who ascribed it via his uncle to 'Urwa's student, al-Zuhri, who moved from Medina to Syria.<ref>'Urwa wrote a number of letters on early Islamic history to the late Umayyad court. These letters were transmitted by his son Hisham and the traditions therein were often also transmitted by 'Urwa's Medinan student al-Zuhri. 'Urwa's letters are translated in full in Sean Anthony, ''Muhammad and the Empires of Faith: The making of the Prophet of Islam'', Oakland CA: University of California, 2020, Chapter 4. In 2012, the creators of the ICMA method, Andreas Görke, Harald Motzki and Gregor Schoeler, strongly argued that the traditions in the letters attributed to 'Urwa probably do in some way originate with him, especially when they are supported by parallel traditions going back to 'Urwa (Goerke, A, Motzki, H & Schoeler, G (2012) [https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/12692843/First_Century_Sources_for_the_Life_of_Muhammad_a_debate.pdf First-Century Sources for the Life of Muhammad?] A Debate, Der Islam, vol. 89, no. 2, pp. 2-59. https://doi.org/10.1515/islam-2012-0002).<BR />

However, Dr Little did not notice that another hadith he discusses which is ascribed to 'Urwa's Medinan student al-Zuhri contains the same core tradition as this letter, especially the distinctive sequence of elements but also much of the same or similar wording, albeit not in the form of a letter. Compare the Arabic provided in the isnad diagrams on his blog, or the transliteration of 'Urwa's reconstructed letter on pp. 310-11 of the thesis with al-Hajjaj b. Abi Mani's reconstructed transmission of the same elemental sequence (pp. 204-5, 370-72; see also 482). Al-Hajjaj who lived in Aleppo, Syria, ascribed it via his uncle to al-Zuhri, who does not himself count as a common link but did move from Medina to Damascus and later Resafa, Syria, where he tutored Hisham's sons. Part of the letter content and wording also comprise ʾAbū ʾUsāmah Ḥammād's narration from Hisham (pp. 223-4).</ref>). There is some evidence that Hisham did not originally extend the isnad of most of his versions back to Aisha herself, but rather only to his father 'Urwa, Aisha's nephew, and that they were narrated in the 3rd person, not in her own voice.<ref>Ibid. p. 305 including footnote 996</ref> It is even clearer that such isnad "raising" occured for transmissions by others back to Aisha by other routes.

Aside from the most widely transmitted version which simply states that Aisha was married to Muhammad at the age of six and their marriage was consummated when she was nine, Little's ICMA confirms that Hisham also narrated an extended simple version adding that he was informed Muhammad and Aisha were together for nine years<ref>Ibid. p. 272</ref> (possibly also another simple version adding that she played with dolls<ref>Ibid. p. 322</ref>). He also narrated a short letter about the marriage from his father 'Urwa - see the discussion about this letter in a previous footnote above.<ref>Ibid. pp. 309 ff.</ref> Finally, he also narrated Aisha's account of the women collecting her while she was playing so she could be prepared for her marital consummation.<ref>See the section of Hisham, pp. 295 ff., especially the reconstructions of Hisham's four versions of the hadith on pp. 302-317</ref> Examples of each of these can be seen in the Relevant Quotations section above.

Hisham seems to have transmitted the hadith after he moved to Kufah in Iraq. There are a few transmissions ascribed to his Medinan students, though these are each dubious for various reasons (though one is difficult to explain away<ref>Little struggles somewhat to discount Ibn ʾabī al-Zinād's transmission from Hishām as having occurred in Medina (see pp. 426-433). The Medinan, Ibn ʾabī al-Zinād, is a confirmed partial common link from Hishām, and the (generally unreliable) Medinan historian al-Wāqidī is one of those who report it from him. In order to place the transmission as having occured in Iraq, where (if biographical sources are to be trusted) Ibn ʾabī al-Zinād moved from Medina, though to a different Iraqi city than Hishām and did so only after Hishām's death, or at most shortly beforehand, and where al-Wāqidī also moved from Medina but only after Ibn ʾabī al-Zinād's death, Little requires both that al-Waqidi did not transmit directly from Ibn ʾabī al-Zinād and that the latter did not transmit directly from Hishām. Incidentally, al-Wāqidī separately reports a distinct but isolated Medinan narration about Aisha's marriage (pp. 215-6).</ref>). The hadith was most likely unknown in Medina, as it is not mentioned in the biographical works of Ibn Ishaq nor (it seems) Musa b. 'Uqbah, nor does it feature in Maliki legal texts, where Little believes it would be expected to feature had it been circulating in Medina. Some early Kufans are ascribed as transmitting the story to the Kufan common links before Hisham arrived in Iraq, but these isnads are doubtful according to Little because the marital age hadith does not occur in early Kufan legal hadith compilations, nor in early versions of Kufan hadiths narrating the virtues of Aisha. Rather, these Kufan references to Aisha's marriage too seem to have originated with Hisham's formulations.

After concluding that Hisham is responsible for the formulation of the story into the hadith from which all others ultimately derive, Little goes on to argue that Hisham concocted the story entirely, including the extended versions and 'Urwa's letter. Hisham was accused of being an unreliable transmitter after his move to Iraq, and the hadith about his great aunt would have been useful there. Aisha's virginity at the time of her marriage and her status as Muhammad's favourite wife was a basic feature of proto-Sunni polemics against the proto-Shi'i, especially in Kufah where the latter were dominant, and Hisham's hadith must have been very welcome there as it was immediately incorporated into this Kufan proto-Sunni material about the virtues of Aisha.

A different explanation for the Medinan legal silence on Aisha's age, as well as the hadith's non-use by many later scholars was alluded to by Carolyn Baugh in her 2017 book, ''Minor Marriage in Early Islamic Law''. Maliki law was based largely on Medinan community custom, though sometimes anecdotes about companions were used for making specific points. Contrary to Little, Baugh doubts how useful the Aisha hadith would actually have been for legal purposes.<ref>Baugh writes: "Although it is not impossible that Malik would have accepted the content of the report given early practice, Malik is one of many jurists who did not rely on the text, which does not in fact occur in any of the early books of jurisprudence except for that of al-Shafi'i and, shortly after him, 'Abd al Razzaq's Musannaf. Even later jurists such as Ibn Taymiya and Ibn al-Qayyim shy away from it, although it is used by Ibn Qudama before them. Presuming its authenticity (it occurs in Bukhari and Muslim), questions occur such as, was 'A'isha in fact compelled against her will? Can we assume that Abu Bakr did not consult her? Had she, at age nine, entered her majority or was she still prepubescent?"<BR />Carolyn Baugh, ''Minor Marriage in Early Islamic Law'', Leiden: Brill, 2017, p. 43 footnote 101<BR />Similarly, on p. 62 she elaborates why the legal implications of the hadith are obscure.</ref> Maliki jurists in Medina and Hanafi jurists in Kufah did not seek to prove that a father could contract his virgin minor daughter in marriage, which was taken for granted.<ref>In Chapter 4 she details the proof-texts used by Maliki jurists; see p. 79 regarding Hanafi jurists.</ref> Rather, they discussed a father's right to ''compell'' her without consultation, and whether he still had this right when she was no longer a virgin or minor, whether she had a right to rescind later and so on. Indeed, unlike various reports about companions used by Maliki scholars and highlighted by Baugh, the Aisha hadith does not seem to be of any use for the areas of juristic disagreement or the points which they felt a need to prove (see [[Child Marriage in Islamic Law]]). Shafi'i is the first legal scholar to make use of the Aisha marital age hadith (and more generally pioneered the Quran and sound hadith corpus as the decisive sources of law). He used the Aisha hadith for purposes of proving a father's right to marry off his daughter regardless of her wishes, though he had to read in his own assumptions to do so (see [[Forced Marriage]])<ref>See also the quotes in Dr Little's thesis, pp. 454-5, where Shafi'i can be seen using the hadith in an attempt to prove the right of paternal compulsion.</ref>. Subsequent scholars followed Shafi'i in this usage. However, the Aisha hadith merely states that her marriage was contracted when she was six (or seven), and it does not specify whether she was consulted or forced by her father, nor even whether she had reached puberty at nine.

Dr Little's case is nevertheless strong that Hisham formulated the Aisha marital age hadith(s) in Iraq and that others derived their versions therefrom. He also provides a plausible motivation for Hisham to have fabricated the story entirely. Nevertheless, others may point to a couple of traditions which do not depend on that hadith and which may support the possibility of a historical kernal. The hadith shown in the Relevant Quotations section above about the incident of the slander (al-Ifk) do not involve Hisham and emphasise that Aisha was then "a girl of young age", though the historicity of this too might be doubted given the polemical considerations around the event.

The majority of Islamic scholars today agree that Aisha was 9 when her marriage to Prophet Muhammad was consummated. This has been the mainstream Muslim understanding throughout Islam's 1,400 year history.<ref>Hashmi, Tariq Mahmood (2 April 2015). [http://www.al-mawrid.org/index.php/questions/view/role-importance-and-authenticity-of-the-hadith "Role, Importance And Authenticity Of The Hadith"]. ''Mawrid.org''. Retrieved 28 March 2018.</ref> The first recorded objection raised to Aisha's age was by Maulana Muhammad Ali who lived from 1874 to 1951.<ref name="Zahid Aziz" /> However, he is not considered credible to the [[Sunni]] sect since he belonged to the [[Ahmadiyya]] sect whose beliefs drastically differ from mainstream Islam. The Ahmadiyya and their writings are also heavily focused on missionary work.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8711026.stm Who are the Ahmadi? - BBC News]</ref>