Perhaps more than any other feature of the prophet Muhammad's life, his marriages have
proved controversial whether it be the marriage to Aisha at a very young age, or his polygamy,
he married so many wives or his marriage to Zainab um this had caused well quite some scandal in some
western particularly the last marriage to zainab has caused scandal almost from the very beginning
so i just wanted to um look at some expert opinion on this from the west from western scholarship and
i'm just wanted to read from this book called 'Muhammed A Very Short Introduction, by Jonathan A
C Brown, and this Very Short Introduction is part of a series of books for anyone wanting
stimulating introductions to a new subject they're all written by experts chosen by Oxford University
Press and they published in more than 25 languages, and they cover everything from advertising,
african history, animal rights, anti-semitism, ethics, Galileo, galaxies - you name it they
cover it! Sociology, socialism, theology, United Nations, paganism, cancer,
the Vikings, witchcraft, you name it it's covered. So they picked a top expert to write this
uh little book on Muhammad, and I do recommend it it's superb and and Jonathan A
C Brown has written a section called 'Muhammad'S marriages in context', there's a very short section
i just wanted to share with you. Who is Jonathan AC Brown? He's a professor of Islamic studies
at Georgetown University in Washington DC. He's an American and he has
published in the fields of hadith (his PhD was in hadith), Islamic law, Sufism, Arabic lexical theory,
and pre-Islamic poetry. On the back it's got some rave reviews: John L. Esposito, who's a professor
at Georgetown University, an expert on Islam, says "This is a masterful treatment informed by
first-rate scholarship yet engaging, accessible, and distinctively different from previous books
on Muhammad." So what does Jonathan AC Brown have to tell us about Muhammad's marriages in
context? Well I think he shares, there's some quite interesting information to help really
contextualize this whole subject in a very helpful way so more than any other feature of Muhammad's
life his many marriages have consistently struck and bewildered western readers since the rise of
islam the prophet's polygamy and the chronic ruling that muslim men can marry up to four women
at a time the prophet was allowed more because it was believed that he would never mistreat
any of his wives created early on in medieval christendom an image of muhammad as lustful
prior to christianity however the near east from pharonic egypt to ancient mesopotamia
was a world in which political polygamy was not foreign at all for most men it would have been
too expensive but for rulers or men of great import it was an expectable tool of politics
and propagation perhaps the most famous example exemplar for harem politics that's not haram
but harem politics was king solomon whom the bible says had 700 wives and 300 concubines you can read
all about that in one kings chapter 11. among them was the daughter of the pharaoh of egypt
whom he had married to cement an alliance indeed looked at through a political lens muhammad's
marriages worked towards clear political goals his marriage to khadijah of course had predated
his prophethood and she remained his only wife until she died let
us look at whom the prophet married after that and to whom he married his daughters
muhammad married the daughters of abu bakr and umar and married his own daughters to uthman and
ali these four men were the first four rulers of the muslim state after the prophet's death
muhammad also married the daughter of abu sufyan as well as the sister of abbas's wife maymunna
who was also the aunt of khalid bin al-walid the great general abu sufyan's son muawiwa founded the
umayyad caliphate after ali's death in 660 ce and khalid was a leading general of the muslim
armies the prophet's marriages and those of his family thus helped to create the network
that provided the leadership of the muslim community in the century after muhammad's death
the prophet also entered into other politically potent marriages he were the daughter of the
jewish chief of khabar as well as numerous women from leading arab tribes the fact that we know
nothing more than the tribal identities of two of these women further demonstrate that
it was the political relationship that muhammad was fostering that mattered
there is nothing more controversial to the modern reader than muhammad's marriage to aisha who is
believed to have been between nine and ten years old when the marriage was consummated the most
reliable historical sources on this marriage are the sahih hadith collections of al-bukhari
and muslim interestingly no critic of muhammad from his fiercest opponents in the quraish
to medivh to medieval christian clerics objected to his marriage to see younger wife until
the modern period this is noteworthy since there has certainly never been a shortage of detractors
seeking chinks in the armor of muhammad's character to exploit his marriage to zainab
his adopted son's former wife which attracted criticism even during muhammad's own lifetime
the fact that zayd is one of only two contemporaries of muhammad ever mentioned
in the quran the other is abu lahab as well as the book's sizable passage on the zainab episode
testifies to the controversies surrounding muhammad's marriage to her
one of the earliest christian polemicists against islam john of damascus he died in 749
accused muhammad of tailoring the quranic laws on marriage and adoption to legitimize his desire
for zainab this accusation has been repeated endlessly throughout christian writings
on islam and certainly on youtube and other places christians are still milking this
story for all they can get in their desire to discredit the prophet of islam the 13th century
english historian matthew paris for example wrote in his great chronicle that muhammad had
pronounced polygamy permissible to cover up an affair with a servant presumably zade's wife
the reason that no pre-modern critics paid attention to the prophet marriage prophet's
marriage to a ten-year-old was because marrying girls considered underage today was commonplace
in the pre-modern world it was a common reality then under roman law the earliest permitted age
for marriage was 12. in the heyday of the roman empire that's the second century a.d by 14 a girl
was considered an adult whose primary purpose was marriage in many pre-modern law codes such
as the hebrew biblical law and the salic frankish law marriage age was not a question at all it was
assumed that when a girl reached puberty and was able to bear children she was ready for marriage
so basically the the biblical norm uh for marriage age of marriage was puberty whenever that might be
as a result we find that average marriage ages in the pre-modern world
were remarkably young surviving evidence from several centuries of imperial roman history
suggests that as many as eight percent married at ten or eleven that's one in ten in italy in
the thirteen hundreds and fourteen hundreds the average age for women was sixteen to seventeen
even in the 1861 census in england over 350 women married under the age of 15
in just two counties that year according to both christian and muslim teachings
the virgin mary was not the mature maternal figure seen in artwork about the bible she was at most in
her mid-teens having only just begun menstruating and is reported to have been as young as 10 years
old muhammad's decision to consummate his marriage to a ten-year-old would have been based on the
same criteria as most pre-modern societies aisha's sexual maturity and readiness to bear a child
consummation of the marriage would have occurred when she had menstruated and started puberty as
the great muslim historian al tabari died 923 reported at the time of her marriage contract
aisha was young and not capable of intercourse three or four years later however she was able
aisha herself would later remark that a girl can menstruate as young as nine and thus become
a woman so i think i'll end the quote there so that's absolutely fascinating i think when you
have a scholarly objective analysis of muhammad's marriages in their historical and cultural context
things look very very different than our local very recent historical obsession with uh related
issues like this so i think it's very very uh interesting and also the biblical norm as well uh
marriage at puberty uh which would have mohammed's own marriages would have fitted in quite neatly
with that paradigm as well so as i was saying i do uh recommend uh this book it is very short but
it's packed full of useful scholarly and uh first first-rate scholarship as it says on the back here
published by oxford university press it's quite cheap and have a look at the other items uh in
their series as well i've learnt a great deal on many other subjects uh from experts in the field
who produce these little booklets so there we go i hope you found that interesting until next time