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