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Written by Muhammad Imran Khan
http://www.fiqhuddeen.wordpress.com
There is a lot of hue and cry these days, about the age (6 years) of Aisha Razi Allahu Anha at the time of
her marriage with the Prophet Sallallaaho Alaihi Wasallam. Orientalist writers as well as certain Muslim
scholars criticize this event of Islamic history. Orientalists present this event to malign the image of the
Prophet Sallallaaho Alaihi Wasallam. While those Muslim scholars, unable to mitigate the effect of this
criticism, begin to attack the very foundation of the event and claim it to be untrue, so as to ‘disinfect’
the character of the Prophet Sallallaaho Alaihi Wasallam. Their inability is due primarily to their
application of contemporary ideas about morality to a society fourteen hundred years away from theirs.
This is called Presentism (which is a mode of historical analysis in which present‐day ideas, such as moral
standards, are projected into the past.). The practice of ‘Presentism’ is regarded as a common fallacy in
historical writing.1
This phenomenon of accusing the Prophet Sallallaaho Alaihi Wasallam marrying a minor is rather new if
we compare different allegations raised against him throughout the history of Islam. His detractors used
every possible slur to belittle him and his mission but did not even consider this to be a sign of moral
‘degradation’ as some would have us now believe; otherwise they must have raised the heavens about
this behavior. This allegation surfaced only in the beginning of Twentieth Century in the writings of
certain Orientalists.
“The first condemnatory note comes in Mohammad and the Rise of Islam (1905)
by the British orientalist David Margoliouth. He calls Muhammad’s marriage to
Aisha an ‘ill‐assorted union… for as such we must characterise the marriage of a
man of fifty‐three to a child of nine.’”2.
This was, perhaps because their moral values were also undergoing a sort of Renaissance regarding the
age of consent; the age of consent for girls was 13 years before it was raised to 16 in 1885.3 But before
the Twentieth century there is not a single instance of this accusation, which proves beyond doubt that
marriage with a minor had never been a sign of moral turpitude across the cultures.
In the beginning the western authors who wrote about the Prophet’s Sallallaaho Alaihi Wasallam life
“tended to adopt either condescending or condemnatory tones; the latter increase in the frequency and
stridency as the twentieth century wore to a close….. These authors were writing before hysteria about
child sexual abuse had taken hold in the American imagination. By the last decade of the twentieth
1
Historian’s Fallacies by David H Fischer, 1970, p. 137
2
Misquoting Muhammad by Jonathan A. C. Brown, p. 384
3
Politics of Sexuality ‐ Identity, Gender and Citizenship by Terrell Carver, Veronique Mottier, p. 24
century and especially the first decade of the twenty‐first, Aisha’s age had become a favorite argument
of anti‐Islam polemicists, especially but not exclusively online.”4
Also the interpreters of Hadith, who have left no stone unturned in explaining the Ahadith in such a
manner that is befitting to the immaculate character of the Holy Prophet Sallallaaho Alaihi Wasallam,
have done nothing to explain away the Hadith of Marriage of Aisha, rather they report scholarly
consensus about marriage at early age5; had marrying a minor an ugly prospect in the society and a sign
of depravity, they must have done everything to discredit or explain away such Ahadith.
I would like to address one observation of the deniers of any tradition/Hadith about early marriage of
Aisha Razi Allahu Anha that if marriages of minors were a cultural norm and tradition, why we don’t see
many examples of such marriages. I say they are ignorant or oblivious of Islamic History, and they are
arguing from their ignorance. If one doesn’t know something, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. Here
below I mention several instances of early marriages from the Islamic History.
1. Amr bin Al Aas became father of Abdullah bin al Amr in the age of eleven years.6
2. Abdullah bin Aamir bin Kuraiz became father at the age of thirteen years.7
3. Hazrat Muawiya bin Abi Sufyan married his daughter Hind with the same Abdullah bin Aamir bin
Kuraiz when she was nine years old.8
4. Hisham bin Urwa bin Zubair married his cousin Fatima bint Munzir bin Zubair when she was nine
years old.9 Hisham is one of the main narrators10 of the Hadith of age of Aisha, so his acting
upon this Hadith is a clear sign of the authentication of the Hadith.
5. Imam Laith bin Sa’ad narrates that Abu Saalih told him that a person told him that his daughter
is pregnant at the age of ten.11
6. Abu ‘Aasim Zahhaak bin Makhlad said, “My mother was born in 110 AH and I was born in 122
AH”.12 Which means his mother was twelve years old when he was born.
7. Imam Laith bin Sa’ad narrates that Abu Saalih told him that a woman became pregnant in his
neighborhood at the age of nine.13
8. Umar bin Al Khattaab married Umm Kulsoom bint Ali bin Abi Taalib while she was a minor.14
9. Abu Bakar Jassaas Razi narrates that the Prophet Sallallaaho Alaihi Wasallam married Salamah
the son of Umm e Salamah with the daughter of Hamza while both were minors.15
4
The Lives of Muhammad by Kecia Ali, pp. 115,116
5
Fathul Baari by Ibn Hajar, v. 9, p. 96
6
Siyar A’laam un Nubala by Zahabi, v. 3, p. 79
7
Siyar, v. 3, p. 19
8
Tareekh Al Dimashq Al Kabeer by Ibn ‘Asaakir, v. 74, p. 138
9
Al Kaamil fi Zu’afaa ir Rijaal by Ibn ‘Adi, v. 7, p. 256
10
Mutoon e Hadith Per Jadeed Zehan Kay Ashkalat by Dr Muhammad Akram Virk, p. 324, Eighteen different chains
of this narration have been enumerated by the writer, one of them contains Hisham bin Urwa.
11
Al Kaamil, v 5, p 343
12
Siyar, v. 9, p. 482
13
Al Kaamil, v. 5, p. 343
14
Tabaqaat by Ibn Sa’ad, v. 10, p. 429
15
Ahkaam ul Qur’an by Jassaas Raazi, v. 2, p. 344
10. Ali bin Abi Taalib married Umama bint Abi Al ‘Aas [grand‐daughter of the Prophet Sallallaaho
Alaihi Wasallam] when she was around twelve years of age, give or take two years. As the
Prophet Sallallaaho Alaihi Wasallam once prayed while she was sitting on his shoulders; she was
a toddler,16 and this happened after Hijra in Madinah. Ali married her right after the death of his
wife Fatimah17 who died in Ramazan 11 AH.18
First six instances were taken from an article by Mufti Muhammad Saeed Khan from his magazine Al
Hamid printed in 2011 [Jamadi us Saani, 1432 AH].19 These instances, as they have been recorded
without any scruple or qualm on the behalf of the concerned writers, are a testimony beyond any doubt
that marriage of minors was a norm in the Arab culture.
Not only in Arab but it was a norm across cultures, which have been practiced by some cultures up until
very recently. “Whether in India, China or Eastern Europe, in the pre‐industrial period (and in many
areas, even today) marriage age for women tended to be in the mid‐teens, immediately after puberty.
Shah Wali Allah married at fourteen, and when a scholar in fifteenth‐century Damascus raised eyebrows
by becoming a father at eleven it was because folk at the time were impressed, not outraged. In some
US states, such as Georgia, the legal age of consent for women was as low as ten well into the twentieth
century.”20
16
Tabaqaat, v. 10, p. 39
17
Tabaqaat, v. 10, p. 221
18
Tabaqaat, v. 10, p. 29
19
Kamsin Bachon ki Shaadiyan
20
Misquoting Muhammad, p. 392