Prophet Mohamed's Wife Aisha

Submitted by The Scholar (United States), Nov 26, 2005 at 13:02

You guys seem to use the example of Prophet Mohamed (PBUH) marrying a 6 years old girl as a point against him whenever possible. I guess you should have said at least that there is enough evidence out there to prove that she was much older than this when they got married. Historically, nobody exactly knows how old was she when she got married to the prophet because there is conflicting evidence, but some of the evidence I am providing is quite compelling:

• According to Ibn Hisham's recension of Ibn Ishaq's (d. 768) biography of Prophet Muhammad, the Sirat Rashul Allah, the earliest surviving biography of Muhammad, Aisha accepted Islam before Umar ibn al-Khattab. If true, then Aisha accepted Islam during the first few years of Islam. She could not have been less than 14 years in 1 AH - the time she got married.
• Tabari reports that when Abu Bakr planned on migrating to Ethiopia (8 years before Hijrah), he went to Mut'am - with whose son Aisha was engaged at that time - and asked him to take Aisha as his son's wife. Mut'am refused because Abu Bakr had converted to Islam. If Aisha was only six years old at the time of her betrothal to Muhammad, she could not have been born at the time Abu Bakr decided on migrating to Ethiopia. Tehqiq e umar e Siddiqah e Ka'inat, Habib ur Rahman Kandhalwi, p. 38.
• Tabari in his treatise on Islamic history reports that Abu Bakr had four children and all four were born during the Jahiliyyah - the pre Islamic period. If Aisha was born in the period of jahiliyyah, she could not have been less than 14 years in 1 AH. Tarikh al-umam wa al-mamloo'k, Al-Tabari, Vol. 4, p. 50.
• According to Ibn Hajar, Fatima was five years older than Aisha. Fatima is reported to have been born when Muhammad was 35 years old. Muhammad migrated to Medina when he was 52, making Aisha 14 years old in 1 AH. Tamyeez al-Sahaabah, Ibn Hajar al-Asqalaniy, Vol. 4, p. 377.

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