Did Prophet Muhammad Marry Hazrat Ayesha When She Was A Child? New Research Casts Doubt About This Islamic Narration
By
Arshad Alam, New Age Islam
29 October
2022
Many
Reformist Muslims Develop Cold Feet When They Are Asked To Evaluate Islamic
Scriptures From A Source Critical Perspective
Main
Points
1. Hadis
narrations say that Prophet Muhammad married Ayesha when she was six and
consummated the marriage when she was nine
2. According to
the findings of Joshua Little, an Oxford University researcher, this Hadis was
fabricated in Iraq during the 8th century
3. The earliest
Muslim sources do not mention the age of Ayesha at all
4. The reason
for this fabricated Hadis was purely political and should be located within the
sectarian fight between Shias and Sunnis at that time
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According
to many narrations within the corpus of Hadis, the Prophet Muhmmad is said to
have married his wife Ayesha when she was of six years and consummated the
marriage when she turned nine. There are other narrations, which give different
years for the consummation but it must be said that there is orthodox consensus
over the figures of six and nine years. For the detractors of Islam, this has
become a weapon that they wield against the Islamic Prophet, and raise
questions about his character and morality. This criticism is largely
a-historical as the attempt is to project the current morality onto the
cultural landscape of seventh century Arabia. Notions of age at marriage etc
were very different back then and this was not specific to Arabia but such
practices existed on many other parts of the world too. In any case, talking
about the past is rarely to understand it; rather the attempt is to denigrate
present day Muslims by invoking the personal life of the Prophet. We recently
saw how it was deployed by the former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma and what
happened subsequently.
But the
Muslims also haven’t helped the situation. The mainstream Islamic theology
regards the life of Muhammad as an ideal; one which should be emulated by
Muslims for all times to come. It is this idealistic construction of the
Prophet and their refusal to contextualize the life and times in which he
operated which has made them defenceless in the face of such an assault. After
all, what Nupur Sharma said was not her imagination; it is all written down in
our own collection of Hadis! And the Hadis within the Muslim theology is
considered only second in importance to the Quran. In fact, in many cases it is
the Hadis which sheds light on the Quran rather than vice versa. Although the
Prophet, on his part, reminds followers that he is just a man, Muslims have
exalted him to such a level that it has become a religious merit in following
whatever he did. Since we do not get much knowledge about the character and
personality of Muhammad from the Quran, the Hadis came into the picture wherein
we get minute details of who the Prophet was and what he did. Idealizing the
prophet therefore is basically contingent on the belief that the Hadis
narrations are all true. Once you start doubting the authenticity of the Hadis,
questions about who the Prophet really was and how we know about him, will
emerge as a natural corollary.
A new
research by Joshua Little (Oxford University) shows how that the oft-cited
Hadis regarding the age of marriage and consummation of Ayesha to the Prophet
may not be true. Sifting through various reports, Little concludes that this
Hadis was fabricated by a narrator called Hisham ibn Urwa. Little argues that
this narrator-Ibn Urwa- was considered unreliable even according to
traditionalist criterion. He was accused of ‘senility’ and of tadlis, which
means that he deliberately did not mention a weak link in the transmission of
the Hadis. Moreover, he lived in the 8th century which is almost 150 years
after the death of the Prophet. What is more interesting is that he recalled
this Hadis after he had relocated to Iraq from Medina.
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Little
argues that the reason for such fabrication lies in the sectarian milieu of
Iraq which was torn between Shia and Sunni epistemologies. Both these sects,
according to him, were trying to show their authenticity by parading their
proximity and closeness to the Prophet. For the Shia, it was Ali not simply
because he was the cousin and son in law of the Prophet but also because he was
in contact with the Prophet since childhood as he practically lived in the same
house. The Sunnis, on the other hand traced this closeness through Abu Bakar,
whom they constructed as one of the closest companions of the Prophet. By
placing his daughter Ayesha, still a minor, within the household of the
Prophet, they were simply trying to advertise the Sunni claim to be the true
followers of Muhammad, and consequently, the true inheritors of the caliphal
mantle.
More
importantly, Little shows that the earliest legal texts, composed in Medina,
like Malik’s al- Muwatta, does not cite this Hadis, although the narrator Ibn
Urwa is cited in other contexts. This does not mean that Imam Malik rejected
the Hadis; but simply that it was not in circulation in Medina at that time. If
it was in circulation, it must have been cited giving its legal importance and
ramification for the early Muslim society. Even Ibn Ishaq, the first biographer
of the Prophet does not mention the age of Ayesha. But this detail gets added
later by Ibn Hisham, in the 9th century. This absence of age of Ayesha in the
very early Islamic texts leads Little to conclude that this particular Hadis is
clearly an 8th century fabrication; invented in the specific political context
of Iraq and back projected onto the story of Muhammad.
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Reformist
Muslims have already been arguing that there must be some mistake in Hadis
which puts the age of marriage of Ayesha at 6. More recently, the famous Alim
Javed Ahmad Ghamdi, has also cast doubt about the authenticity of this Hadis.
So, is this a vindication of what reformist Muslims have been arguing all
through? It might look like that but then many reformist Muslims themselves
develop cold feet when they are asked to evaluate Islamic scriptures from a
source critical perspective. If the Hadis collections are scrutinized using the
modern methods of inquiry, a majority of them would have to be discarded.
Memory is a tricky ground. It is simply too much of a miracle that narrations
could be traced to the Prophet and his companions after they were first
recorded a century after this death. But more importantly, we need to think not
just about the Prophet’s marriage to Ayesha but his entire personality and how
we know about him. It is not the Quran which tells us about the Prophet; it is
the Hadis. If we start considering it as unreliable, how do we even begin to
appreciate the basics of Islam?
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A
regular contributor to NewAgeIslam.com, Arshad Alam is a writer and researcher
on Islam and Muslims in South Asia.
New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic
Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism