Muhammad's Marriages: Difference between revisions

{{Quote|Ali, M. M. (1924, 1993). ''Muhammad the Prophet'', pp. 192-193. Columbus, Ohio: The Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha’at Islam Lahore.|The perpetual state of war created disparity between the male and female elements of society. Husbands having fallen on the field of battle, their widows had to be provided for … This is the reason that [Muhammad] himself took so many women to be his wives during the period when war was raging. Nearly all of his wives were widows.}}

Whether these widows were “poor” depends on how one defines poverty. Is a slave poor, even though she serves in the household of the wealthy, because she has no legal rights? Is a Bedouin poor, even though she eats every day, because she has few material possessions? Is a victim of a theft considered poor if she was wealthy before the thief came? However personally poor a widow might be, does she qualify as “destitute” if she has living relatives who can guarantee that they will take care of her? When the question is whether these widows needed Muhammad to support them, we also need to know whether Muhammad had enough wealth to be ''able'' to support these women.

===Sawdah bint Zamaa===

Nothing is known about this woman except that she was a domestic maid (a slave) before she became a concubine.<ref>Ibn Al-Qayyim, ''Zaad Al-Maad'' vol. 1 p. 29, cited in Al-Mubarakpuri, S. R. (2002). ''The Sealed Nectar'', pp. 564-565. Riyadh: Darussalam.</ref> So Muhammad had to support her whether he slept with her or not. Once again, he could have equally well “saved her from poverty” if he had simply left her as a domestic maid.

Muhammad himself never claimed that he married women out of compassion for their poverty. On the contrary, he asserted that he, and men in general, chose their wives for four basic motives: for their money, for their family connections, for their beauty and for their piety. He added: “So you should marry the pious woman or you will be a loser.”<ref>{{Bukhari|7|62|27}}.</ref> The suggestion that Muhammad’s many marriages were motivated by a charitable concern for the welfare of widows is not found in the early sources. This theory seems to have been devised by a few modern historians and then uncritically accepted by others.

Nevertheless, the widely held view that “Muhammad married poor widows to provide them with a home” is not supported by the historical evidence.