Aisha's Age: Difference between revisions

Khadija died three years before the Prophet (ﷺ) 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 consumed that marriage when she was nine years old.<br>{{Bukhari|5|58|236}}</ref><ref>Narrated 'Aisha: that 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).<br>{{Bukhari|7|62|64}}</ref><ref>'A'isha (Allah be pleased with her) reported: 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.<br>{{Muslim|8|3310}}</ref><ref>Aisha said, "The Apostle of Allah married me when I was seven years old." (The narrator Sulaiman said: "Or six years.")<br>{{Abudawud||2116|hasan}}</ref><ref>Almost all sources suggest age at consummation as nine, though a few late versions say that it may have been age 10; See: Denise Spellberg (1996), ''Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of 'A'isha Bint Abi Bakr'', Columbia University Press, <nowiki>ISBN 978-0231079990</nowiki>, pp. 39–40;</ref> Due to concerns about [[:Category:Child Marriage|child marriage]] this topic is of heavy interest in the [[Apologists|apologetic]] literature and public discourse.       

In the Quran, a rule which apparently concerns marriage to those who have not yet reached menstruation appears in Chapter 65 "Al Talaq" verse 4.<ref>And those who no longer expect menstruation among your women - if you doubt, then their period is three months, and [also for] those who have not menstruated. And for those who are pregnant, their term is until they give birth. And whoever fears Allah - He will make for him of his matter ease.<br>{{Quran|65|4}}</ref> [[tafsir|Tafsir]] al-Jalalayn is one of the most respected commentaries on the Quran.<ref>Tafsir al-Jalalayn is one of the most significant tafsirs for the study of the Qur’an. Composed by the two “Jalals” -- Jalal al-Din al-Mahalli (d. 864 ah / 1459 ce) and his pupil Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (d. 911 ah / 1505 ce), Tafsir al-Jalalayn is generally regarded as one of the most easily accessible works of Qur’anic exegesis because of its simple style and one volume length. For the first time ever Tafsir al-Jalalayn is competently translated into an unabridged highly accurate and readable annotated English translation by Doctor. Feras Hamza.

[https://www.altafsir.com/Al-Jalalayn.asp altafsir.com]</ref> The exegesis for this verse in Tafsir al-Jalalayn gives the traditional interpretation, clarifying "those who have not menstruated" as "those who have not yet menstruated, because of their young age, their [waiting] period shall [also] be three months."<ref>And as for those of your women who read allā’ī or allā’i in both instances no longer expect to menstruate if you have any doubts about their waiting period their prescribed waiting period shall be three months and also for those who have not yet menstruated because of their young age their period shall also be three months — both cases apply to other than those whose spouses have died; for these latter their period is prescribed in the verse they shall wait by themselves for four months and ten days Q. 2234. And those who are pregnant their term the conclusion of their prescribed waiting period if divorced or if their spouses be dead shall be when they deliver. And whoever fears God He will make matters ease for him in this world and in the Hereafter.

In the modern era, Aisha's age at marriage has been a source of controversy and debate. Some Muslims have attempted to revise the previously-accepted timeline of her life (see the Apologetic History section below).<ref name=":3">Ali, Kecia. ''Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur'an, Hadith and Jurisprudence''. OneWorld. p. 173-186. <nowiki>ISBN 978-1780743813</nowiki>.</ref> The hadith corpus provide records of early Islam through allegedly "unbroken chain of witnesses". Numerous variations on the hadith stating that Aisha was six at the time of her marriage and nine at the time of consummation come from collections with sahih status, meaning they are regarded as authentic by the majority of Muslims. They are defended, despite the modern controversy surrounding the issue, primarily because to question such a widely transmitted hadith would undermine Islamic hadith science in general. The hadith tradition about Aisha's age at marriage and consummation was also added by Ibn Hisham to his recension of the ''sira'' of [[Ibn Ishaq]]. The historians Ibn Sa'd and al-Tabari also include numerous reports of this tradition.<ref>When the Prophet married Aisha she very young and not yet ready for consummation.[https://wikiislam.net/wiki/The_History_of_al-Tabari Al-Tabari, Vol. 9, p. 128]</ref><ref name=":2">According to Abd al-Hamid b. Bayan al-Sukkari - Muhammad b. Yazid - Ismai'il (that is Ibn Abi Khalid) - Abd al-Rahman b. Abi al- Dahhak - a man from Quraysh - Abd al-Rahman b. Muhammad: "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,'''no other man having shared me with him; inspiration came to him when he and I were in a single blanket; I was one of the dearest people to him, a verse of the Qur’an was revealed concerning me when the community was almost destroyed; I saw Gabriel when none of his other wives saw him; and he was taken (that is, died) in his house when there was nobody with him but the angel and myself."

Islamic modernist scholars generally question the reliability of traditionally authentic hadiths and biographical material. Modern academic research indicates that the hadiths which specify Aisha's age at the time of her marriage and consummation trace back to formulations circulated by her great nephew, Hisham b. 'Urwa, after he moved to Iraq where it found a receptive audience probably for proto-sectarian reasons (see the discussion of modern academic views below).

Shafi'i used the example of Aisha's marriage in support of his view that a father had a right to enter his virgin minor daughter into a marriage contract regardless of her wishes, and Ibn Hanbal used the age of nine for some related rulings (see [[Forced Marriage]] and [[Child Marriage in Islamic Law]]).

{{Quote|{{Bukhari|7|62|65}}| Narrated `Aisha: that the Prophet (ﷺ) '''married her when she was six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old.''' Hisham said: I have been informed that `Aisha remained with the Prophet (ﷺ) for nine years (i.e. till his death).}}

 

The Prophet (ﷺ) 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.}}

 

Aisha's nephew, 'Urwa b. al-Zubayr (d. 94 AH), reportedly wrote a number of histographic letters to the late Umayyad court, which modern historians such as Professor Sean Anthony regard as an important source on early Islamic history. In one of these 'Urwa discusses the marriage of his aunt:

 

{{Quote|Letter from 'Urwa recorded in volume 9 of al-Tabari's History, quoted in ''Muhammad and the Empires of Faith'' by Sean Anthony<ref>Sean Anthony, Muhammad and the Empires of Faith: The making of the Prophet of Islam, Oakland CA: University of California, 2020, pp. 114-15</ref>|§1. ʿAlī ibn Naṣr related to us, saying: ʿAbd al-Ṣamad ibn ʿAbd al-Wārith related to us, and ʿAbd al-Wārith ibn ʿabd al-Ṣamad also related to me, saying: my father related to me, saying: Abān al-ʿAṭṭār related to us, saying: Hishām ibn ʿUrwah related to us from ʿUrwah that he wrote to ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān:<BR />

§2. You have written to me regarding Khadījah bint Khuwaylid and you ask, "When did she pass away?" She passed away before the departure of God's Messenger from Mecca by three years, or thereabouts. He married ʿĀʾishah once Khadījah had passed away. The Messenger of God saw ʿĀʾishah twice [before that] and was told, "She will be your wife." On that day ʿĀʾishah was six years old. Then the Messenger of God consumated his marriage with ʿĀʾishah after he had gone to Medina, and the day he consummated his marriage with her she was nine years old.}}

 

 

The most comprehensive academic treatment of the hadith about Aisha's marital age was produced by Dr Joshua Little for his PhD thesis in 2022.<ref>Joshua Little (2022) ''The Hadith of ʿAʾishah's Marital Age: A Study in the Evolution of Early Islamic Historical Memory'', PhD thesis, Oxford University<BR />It is available on his blog together with very useful diagrams of the reported isnads and matns: [https://islamicorigins.com/the-unabridged-version-of-my-phd-thesis/ The Unabridged Version of My PhD Thesis]  by Joshua Little - Islamicorigins.com - 7 March 2023<BR />See alternatively: [https://islamicorigins.com/a-summary-of-my-phd-research/ A Summary of my PhD Research] by Joshua Little - Islamicorigins.com - 25 February 2023</ref><ref>See also this lecture by Dr. Joshua Little entitled [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr6mBlEPxW8&t=2s The Hadith of ʿAʾishah's Marital Age: A Study in the Evolution of Early Islamic Historical Memory] - youtube.com, 26 February 2023</ref> An important tool in the modern academic analysis of widely transmitted hadiths is isnad-cum-matn Analysis (ICMA). The isnad is the transmission chain attributed to a particular narration and the matn is its wording. In ICMA, converging isnad bundles of a widely transmitted hadith are compared with clusters of variation in the matns to see how well they correlate with each another. Often, this leads to the identification of one or more ''common links''  i.e. the person from whom transmissions of a matn first start to branch out, even if the chain may continue back by a single strand before that person.<ref>See Chapter 1 of Dr Little's thesis for a detailed explanation.</ref> The technique is helpful for dating when a hadith started to circulate and to identify who might have first formulated it in such a way, though not necessarily whether there is any historical kernal to the events reported therein. Dr Little has outlined 21 reasons why hadiths are known to be very unreliable in a historical sense by modern academic scholarship.<ref>This is useful preparatory viewing for Dr Little's Aisha lecture: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz4vMUUxhag Oxford Scholar Dr. Joshua Little Gives 21 REASONS Why Historians are SKEPTICAL of Hadith] - youtube.com February 2023</ref>

Aside from Hisham b. 'Urwa (d. 146 AH), who was Aisha's great nephew and whose simple narration is the most widely transmitted, Muhammad b. 'Amr (d. 144 AH) is the other reconstructable Medinan common link, though like Hisham, he moved to Iraq and merely seems to append one of Hisham's versions of the hadith to another narration. The other early common links are three Kufans (in Iraq) who died 146-160 AH. Though it is possible that one or more other narrations go back to Aisha herself, this cannot be demonstrated on an ICMA basis.<ref>pp. 397-99 of Dr Little's thesis</ref>

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's 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 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 wording. 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 transmission of the same elemental sequence (pp. 204-5, 370-72; see also 482). Al-Hajjaj who lived in Aleppo, Syria, ascribed it 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 simple version which just states that Aisha was married to Muhammad at the age of six and their marriage was consummated when she was nine, Hisham 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 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 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 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 'Urwah'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 a 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 and Hanafi jurists did not seek to prove that a father could contract his virgin minor daughter in marriage, which was taken for granted.<ref>Ibid. p. 79, see also Chapter 4 regarding Hanafi jurists.</ref> Rather, they discussed a father's right to ''compell'' her without consultation, 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.

 

 

More significant may be an independent tradition which Little says can provisionally be traced back to the Medinan historian Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri (d. 124 AH). Al-Zuhri's hadith, which must have been transmitted while he was in Medina, states that the Messenger of God married Aisha bint Abu Bakr in Shawwal in the tenth year after the prophethood, three years before the migration, and he arranged the marriage feast in Medina (i.e. for consummation) in Shawwal, at the beginning of eight months after his emigration to Medina. Little speculates that Hisham picked a consummation age of nine and used this report of a three year gap between Aisha's marriage and consumation to derive six or seven as the age of her marriage.<ref>See 1 hour 38 minutes in Dr. Joshua Little's lecture entitled [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr6mBlEPxW8&t=2s The Hadith of ʿAʾishah's Marital Age: A Study in the Evolution of Early Islamic Historical Memory] - youtube.com, 26 February 2023<BR />For detailed discussion see pp. 373-74, 378-82, 460-61 of Dr Little's thesis.</ref> Others may notice another significance to this apparently earlier al-Zuhri tradition. The three year gap between marriage and consummation mentioned therein, without any obvious polemical function (no age is mentioned), probably and independently implies that Aisha was a child at the time.

While Little's ICMA "reveals a vast amount of accretion, error, contamination, interpolation, borrowing, and false ascription", the "overwhelming majority of the putative [partial common links] and [common links] within the marital-age hadith turned out to be genuine sources whose distinctive redactions were identifiable and (to some degree) reconstructable. Such positive results only held as far back as the middle of the 8th Century CE, however: from thereon backwards, the evidence was either insufficient or outright inconsistent with genuine, early transmission."<ref>pp. 400-401 of Dr Little's thesis</ref>

In a section on the implications of his thesis for the academic study of hadith and history, Little observes, "whilst it is true that most hadiths can be presumed to derive from sources operating in the middle of the 8th Century CE (i.e., the early 2nd Century AH), many can be shown to be later borrowings or dives, and almost all can be shown to have undergone reworking or alteration in the course of transmission, at least from the middle of the 8th Century CE to the middle the 9th." From a historical perspective, Little also argues that he has "shown, in fairly minute detail, how a false hadith could arise, spread, diversify, and attain universal acceptance within early Sunnī Hadith scholarship."<ref>pp. 507-9 of Dr Little's thesis</ref>