Now that we have the reason to believe that Aishah couldn’t have been 6 when she got married to the Prophet, there are only two other narratives remaining (as options from the historical records) that we can choose from.
In the first article of this series on Aishah’s marriage to the Prophet, I had mentioned that there are only three opinions that can be extracted from the historical records on this issue, that is, Aishah was:
- 6 at the time of marriage, 9 at the time of consummation.
- 10-11 at the time of marriage, 13-14 at the time of consummation.
- 15-16 at the time of marriage, 18-19 at the time of consummation.
The first option, I’ve already eliminated using sheer logic, in the previous article.
Many historical evidences collectively paint the 13-14 and 16-19 pictures. Check the last section of this article for a small gist of the historical details. I have put it towards the end of the article because it’s hard to grasp and has already been covered in many places by many writers, so that is the last of my priorities. I’ve provided the links to the material available online for people who want to have a look at them, although not necessary because logic is enough to come to the conclusion without delving into much of historical details. It’s enough to know that:
There are three opinions.
Of them, the first one, that is, 6-9, is impossible.
And 16-19 is more logical due to the reasons discussed below.
16-19 is more accurate from a lingual-logical perspective
It’s a common practice to speak of 2023 as only ‘23; 2024 as ‘24; similarly in Arabic, 16 (sittata ash-a’ra) can be spoken simply as sitta or 6 (for ease on the tongue or out of negligence in reporting) by dropping the extra baggage word of ash-a’ra (although intending to mean 16).1,2
6-9 being impossible (due to the reason discussed in the previous article) and 16-19 being one of the historically recorded alternative possibilities, this dropping of ash-a’ra explains how 6-9 could have come up in the records as just a convenient style of narration that was later on mistakenly taken to be historically true. It CONNECTS THE DOTS PERFECTLY TO FIT EVERYTHING INTO A NEAT COHERENT NARRATIVE!
Another way how the 6-9 thing could have come into the reports is by mere downward exaggeration of the age of Aishah by the narrators of the reports.
As an example, take the Prophet’s first wife Khadija’s age at the time of her marriage to the Prophet. It has been exaggerated from 28 to 40. While the more authentic reports say she was 28, the more popular narrative is that of 40! And the reason why that could have happened is when people reported that she was older than the Prophet (who was 25), someone would retort ‘how much older?!!?’, the narrator would reply ‘let me tell you how much older’ and then to make the point stronger exaggerate the figure upward and eventually take it up from 28 to 40.
Likewise, when talking about Aishah that she was much younger than the Prophet, someone would ask how much younger?!!? The response would be like ‘let me tell you how much younger’ and the figure would eventually go down from 16 to 6!3 And converting 16 to 6 would have been extremely convenient by simply dropping ash-a’ra as discussed above!
And such anomalies in hadith is not a big deal as:
(i) Arabs were not a people of calendar. Even the Prophet’s exact DOB is disputed!4 Although they kept time, days, months, and years, using the positions of the Sun and the stars in the sky, they didn’t have a calendar to mark the exact dates of events on. Therefore, there’s a lot of room for errors while reporting specific numbers pertaining to events in the Mohammedan era. Thus, a lot of critical analysis is required to filter the correct from the incorrect narratives!
(ii) And the narrations (ahadith) are isolated reports hence considered uncertain (dhanni) in terms of their validity.5
The isnaad (plural of sanad) which are the chains of narrators (or the series of people who have reported from each other) in the concerned 6-9 reports are sound/authentic (sahih). But, an authentic chain (sahih sanad) doesn’t necessarily imply a flawless content (matn) as per the standard principle of the ‘ahlur rayy’ methodology of hadith criticism!6 My article on the nature of hadith throws more light upon this aspect of the hadith corpus; do give it a read!
An objection that could be raised against the 16-19 opinion is that its calculation is indirect, and through various historical reports that have unauthenticated chains (isnaad), therefore the evidences can be deemed to be weak or too ‘tenuous’ to be convincing (in the words of Jonathan AC Brown).7,8 On the contrary, the 6-9 reports in Bukhari and Muslim are direct (with the age 6-9 mentioned explicitly) and the chains (isnaad) being authentic (sahih) too.
To answer the objection it suffices to respond that just because something is direct doesn’t necessarily imply it’s correct! And in the previous article and in this article above and below, I have thereby explained why 6-9 cannot be correct. Moreover, sahih isnaad doesn’t necessarily imply sahih matn (content), as mentioned above and discussed in detail in my article on the nature of hadith.
Lastly, coming to the historical evidence for the 16-19 narrative; before we consume the evidence, some crucial timelines need to be remembered.
Muhammad was 40 years old when he attained Prophethood in what is generally called the ‘year of prophethood’.
His marriage to Aishah was contracted in the 11th year of prophethood.
In the 13th year of prophethood, he migrated from his hometown Makkah/Mecca to Madinah/Medina (then called Yathrib). This year is generally called the year of migration or hijrat.
His marriage with Aishah was consummated 3 years after marriage in the 14th year of prophethood, towards the 2nd year of the hijrat.
The basic debate is over the year of birth of Aishah. The predominant opinion is that she was born 8 years before hijrat/5th year of prophethood. This would make her 6 at the time of marriage in 11th year of prophethood, and 9 years old at the consummation of her marriage three years later in the 14th year of prophethood.
The second account says that she was born in the year of prophethood; this would make her age to be around 11 during marriage and at least 14 during consummation.
The third view is that she was born 4-5 years before prophethood, thus she would be around 16 during marriage in the 11th year of prophethood, and around 19 during consummation 3 years later.
With the above data in mind, let’s move to the evidence for 16-19.
Comparing Aishah’s age to that of her older sister Asma9,10,11
Some historians have mentioned that Asma was 10 years senior to Aishah in age. And Asma died at the age of 100 years, in the 73rd year after hijrat. Thus, during hijrat, Asma would have been 27 years old, therefore Aishah would have been 17 years old. So, when her marriage was consummated towards the end of the 1st year after hijrat, almost towards the 2nd year, Aishah would have been almost 19 years old.
Aishah’s statement pertaining to Surah Qamar12,13
The 54th chapter of the Quran, surah Qamar, was revealed in the 8th year of prophethood, 5 years before hijrat. And in Sahih Bukhari, the same hadith book wherein the 6-9 narrative is reported from Aishah, another report from Aishah herself is narrated that she said:
“The verse – But the Hour is their appointment (for due punishment), and the Hour is more disastrous and more bitter – was revealed to Muhammad while I was a young girl (jaariyah) playing. And Surah al-Baqarah and an-Nisaa were only revealed while I was with him.”
The important word in this report/hadith is ‘jaariyah’. Now, if the 6-9 reports are correct and Aishah was born in the 5th year of prophethood, then in the 8th year of prophethood she would have been only 3 years old! But a three year old would be termed in Arabic as a sibyah, not a jaariyah. The word jaariyah is used for a girl who is in her early adolescence thereby still playing around, running here and there.
This is another reason why the 6-9 reports cannot be correct, while the 16-19 narrative makes more sense here as it would entail that in the 8th year of prophethood Aishah would have been 12 years old and hence perfectly fit the status of a jaariyah.
There are several other arguments based upon records in the books of Islamic history. I am not mentioning them here in my article because I could formulate some logical counter arguments against them. The above two arguments, I couldn’t formulate any objection to them, hence I’ll suffice with only these two. To go through the remaining 6-7 arguments, please have a look at the links below.
Age of Aisha (ra)- Mufti Abu Layth
Keep reading!