The Young Marriage of 'Aa'ishah, The Mother of the Believers.

dianek

Junior Member
I gave the example of the 15 year old girl and said that I could see where in Tunisia in her situation, marriage is a viable alternative in THAT situation.....
 

ajazz

Junior Member
very interesting and informative article,but it raises one question that though aisha was a women(according to that time after puberty )at the time of consummation and was responsible as any other adult , however the marriage itself happened when she was still a six year old child.
was she capable of making a choice ?:confused: is it right to marry a child, when she does not know what she is commiting to and holding her to it when she grows up?:confused: . wouldnt it have been better to have waited till she reached puberty and then got married .


if the guardian performs the marriage of a child while he or she is still a minor, Islamic Law gives the minor the option to dissolve the marriage on attaining majority basically to protect the minor from an unscrupulous or undesirable exercise of authority by the guardian. This is known as Khiyar-al-Buloogh or the Option of Puberty and is based on a hadith in Mishkath-al-Masabih wherein Ibn Abbas reports that the Prophet gave a minor girl the option to repudiate her marriage when she informed him that her father had given her in a marriage which was not to her liking.


This provision has been included in 'Model' Nikahnamah by All-India Muslim Personal Law Board


even today the marriage of our prophet (saw) cannot be challenged to know how you may visit my post

http://www.turntoislam.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8485&page=1
 

eesa

New Member
I can understand where Diane is coming from ... it is something you grew up with and therefore you will find it difficult ... this however does not make it logical.

I have asked a fairly educated group of Westerners, why is it that marrying at 16 (For UK) is considered OK, but not earlier provided the girl is physically mature ? I had no answers ... not even weak ones. Can you asnwer this question, Diane ?

Mental maturity is a poorly defined limit. What is mental maturity any way ? What do you really need to know to be married ? It is a well recognised fact that children mature quicker when are taught to handle responsibilities earlier. Men at the age of 16 were leading armies at the time of the prophet (may peace and blessing of Allah be upon him) and women at even younger age were teaching nations (i.e. Aisha may Allah be pleased with her). Are you telling me that those people were not qualified mentally ? Well, if they were not qualified then I don't know who is.

I think that the 16 years old Western limit stems from the current social structure where people cannot be economically active until that age due to requirement of schooling ... etc. Marriage at an earlier stage would be detrimental to the progress of the individual due to clash with career/education (or presumed to be so). This situation is a fairly recent one. When did this schooling system start to exist ? With the increased materialisation of the society, this limit seems to be going up. It is now common for people not to get married until even later stages and for women to have their first child in their 30's. The irony of seeing this as "natural" and demonising early marriage (which is truely natural) is all too obvious. This is not to mention the hypocrisy of banning early marriage and tolerating (or rather glorifying) underage sex (fornication), or are you going to tell me that it does not happen ?

Just try and answer these questions for yourself. I had to go through a similar phase. Ask yourself, WHY is it so & so ? I'm sure you'll come to understand.

This was a beautiful post, may Allah bless you.
 

HaZe_B

Member
جزاک اللہ خیر یا احی
A credible scholar, historian and multi-faceted personality of Islam Hafiz ibn Abdul Bar (حافط ابن عبد البر) has put forth strong arguments to establish the fact that Hazrat Aisha (R.A.) was not aged 9 when She married Prophet ﷺ. The most important point of all that worthy discussion is that Hazrat Aisha (R.A.) had to be 5 or 6 years old, before She would mindfully convert to Islam; She being one of the earliest converts.
Prophet ﷺ married Hazrat Aisha (R.A) before The Migration (ہجرۃ المدینہ). Adding these 13 years will put Umm-e-Aisha (R.A.) at 18 or 19 years when She married Prophet ﷺ.
Following article sheds some more light on this topic.

Source

IT is said that Hazrat Aisha was six years old when her nikah was performed with Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in Makkah, and nine years old when she moved in to live with her husband in Madina after Hijra.
This piece of misinformation has led to the wrong view that child marriage has the sanction of Islam. It must be noted that establishing the authenticity of hadiths, the narrators’ circumstances and the conditions at that time have to be correlated with historical facts. There is only one hadith by Hisham which suggests the age of Hazrat Aisha as being nine when she came to live with her husband.
Many authentic hadiths also show that Hisham’s narration is incongruous with several historical facts about the Prophet’s life, on which there is consensus. With reference to scholars such as Umar Ahmed Usmani, Hakim Niaz Ahmed and Habibur Rehman Kandhulvi, I would like to present some arguments in favour of the fact that Hazrat Aisha was at least 18 years old when her nikah was performed and at least 21 when she moved into the Prophet’s house to live with him.
According to Umar Ahmed Usmani, in Surah Al-Nisa, it is said that the guardian of the orphans should keep testing them, until they reach the age of marriage, before returning their property (4:6). From this scholars have concluded that the Quran sets a minimum age of marriage which is at least puberty. Since the approval of the girl has a legal standing, she cannot be a minor.
Hisham bin Urwah is the main narrator of this hadith. His life is divided into two periods: in 131A.H. the Madani period ended, and the Iraqi period started, when Hisham was 71 years old. Hafiz Zehbi has spoken about Hisham’s loss of memory in his later period. His students in Madina, Imam Malik and Imam Abu Hanifah, do not mention this hadith. Imam Malik and the people of Madina criticised him for his Iraqi hadiths.
All the narrators of this hadith are Iraqis who had heard it from Hisham. Allama Kandhulvi says that the words spoken in connection with Hazrat Aisha’s age were tissa ashara, meaning 19, when Hisham only heard (or remembered), tissa, meaning nine. Maulana Usmani thinks this change was purposely and maliciously made later.
Historian Ibn Ishaq in his Sirat Rasul Allah has given a list of the people who accepted Islam in the first year of the proclamation of Islam, in which Hazrat Aisha’s name is mentioned as Abu Bakr’s “little daughter Aisha”. If we accept Hisham’s calculations, she was not even born at that time.
Some time after the death of the Prophet’s first wife, Hazrat Khadija, Khawla suggested to the Prophet that he get married again, to a bikrun, referring to Hazrat Aisha (Musnad Ahmed). In Arabic bikrun is used for an unmarried girl who has crossed the age of puberty and is of marriageable age. The word cannot be used for a six-year-old girl.
Some scholars think that Hazrat Aisha was married off so early because in Arabia girls mature at an early age. But this was not a common custom of the Arabs at that time. According to Allama Kandhulvi, there is no such case on record either before or after Islam. Neither has this ever been promoted as a Sunnah of the Prophet. The Prophet married off his daughters Fatima at 21 and Ruquiyya at 23. Besides, Hazrat Abu Bakr, Aisha’s father, married off his eldest daughter Asma at the age of 26.
Hazrat Aisha narrates that she was present on the battlefield at the Battle of Badar (Muslim). This leads one to conclude that Hazrat Aisha moved into the Prophet’s house in 1 A.H. But a nine-year-old could not have been taken on a rough and risky military mission.
In 2 A.H, the Prophet refused to take boys of less than 15 years of age to the battle of Uhud. Would he have allowed a 10-year-old girl to accompany him? But Anas reported that he saw Aisha and Umme Sulaim carrying goatskins full of water and serving it to the soldiers (Bukhari). Umme Sulaim and Umme Ammara, the other women present at Uhud, were both strong, mature women whose duties were the lifting of the dead and injured, treating their wounds, carrying water in heavy goatskins, supplying ammunition and even taking up the sword.
Hazrat Aisha used the kunniat, the title derived from the name of a child, of Umme Abdullah after her nephew and adopted son. If she was six when her nikah was performed, she would have been only eight years his senior, hardly making him eligible for adoption. Also, a little girl could not have given up on ever having her own child and used an adopted child’s name for her kunniat.
Hazrat Aisha’s nephew Urwah once remarked that he was not surprised about her amazing knowledge of Islamic law, poetry and history because she was the wife of the Prophet and the daughter of Abu Bakr. If she was eight when her father migrated, when did she learn poetry and history from him?
There is consensus that Hazrat Aisha was 10 years younger than her elder sister Asma, whose age at the time of the hijrah, or migration to Madina, was about 28. It can be concluded that Hazrat Aisha was about 18 years old at migration. On her moving to the Prophet’s house, she was a young woman at 21. Hisham is the single narrator of the hadith whose authenticity is challenged, for it does not correlate with the many historical facts of the time.
 

Abu Loren

Defender of Islam!
جزاک اللہ خیر یا اح
There is consensus that Hazrat Aisha was 10 years younger than her elder sister Asma, whose age at the time of the hijrah, or migration to Madina, was about 28. It can be concluded that Hazrat Aisha was about 18 years old at migration. On her moving to the Prophet’s house, she was a young woman at 21. Hisham is the single narrator of the hadith whose authenticity is challenged, for it does not correlate with the many historical facts of the time.

I like your article however I think that the reason that Muslims protect the die hard stance that Aisha (RA) was 6 and 9 is the fact that there are Hadiths such as the one below which further imply that Aisha was a child when she was living with Prophet Muhammad (SalAllahu Alayhi Wa Sallam).

'A'isha reported that she used to play with dolls in the presence of Allah's Messenger () and when her playmates came to her they left (the house) because they felt shy of Allah's Messenger (), whereas Allah's Messenger () sent them to her.


USC-MSA web (English) reference
: Book 31, Hadith 5981
Arabic reference
: Book 45, Hadith 6440

So this evidence further points to Aisha (RA) as being very young. If we try to 'bring in' evidences such as you have provided then we could also second guess about all of the other Hadiths. Uniformity would be lost and we will give more ammunition to the doubters and haters who nit pick from the Holy Qur'an and the Hadiths.

As a conspiracy theory, I would like to say that all of this happened because after the fight between Hasan (RA) and Muawiya (RA) then later between Hussein (RA) the newly found sect of the Shi'a tried to discredit Aisha (RA) with false information.

Sorry for delving into fantasy and fiction.

Allhu Alum.
 

abou_elkacem

Junior Member
all the story about the age of Aicha is false, because of those contradictory hadiths , they are totally false . For all of you Brothers looking for the truth , read this study written by a muslim american:
http://www.ilaam.net/Articles/Ayesha.html
Was Ayesha A Six-Year-Old Bride?

The Ancient Myth Exposed

by T.O. Shanavas
 
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