Aishah – A study of her age at the time of her marriage with Prophet Muhammad pdf

Aishah – A study of her age at the time of her marriage with Prophet Muhammad

Aishah – A study of her age at the time of her marriage with Prophet Muhammad

 We examine what may be the most serious piece of misinformation in Muslim history – the long-held belief that the Prophet’s third wife Aishah, the daughter of his dear friend Abu Bakr, was only six years old when she accepted nikah with him, that she married him physically when she was around nine years old, and that she was around eighteen years old when he died.

One can find these ‘facts’ quoted again and again; 

moreover, they appear to be based on the most trustworthy of authorities – the hadith collections of Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Dawud, an-Nisa’i and Ibn-e-Majah.

All of these authorities seem to have based their conclusions solely on the work of Aishah’s relative, the historian Hisham ibn Urwah, the grandson of Aishah’s sister Asma. 

One might think, therefore, that they were extremely accurate. However, Hisham’s accuracy in other matters was challenged. 

The matters pertaining to Aishah were supposedly obtained from Hisham’s father, but apparently these particular hadiths were offered only in Iraq and were unknown to the people of Madinah, and must necessarily, therefore, be regarded as not entirely trustworthy. 

These traditionists and biographers hold their views by choosing to ignore several important pieces of evidence which contradict this opinion,

 which indicate that at the time of her marriage to the Prophet, Aishah was much older, indeed, as much as ten years older than generally claimed.