Madam Aishah, a Study of her age at the time of her marriage with Prophet Muhammad

Historical Fact 5. Some background details of the marriage:

The Prophet became very sad after the demise of his beloved first wife, Khadijah. In view of this, plus the fact that he had four young daughters to bring up, his aunt Khawlah bint Hakim offered to search out a new wife for him, either a virgin or a widow, according to his choice.¹¹

She suggested two possibilities, Aishah the daughter of his closest friend, and the other being one of the earliest Muslims – Sawdah bint Zamah, the widow of Sakran ibn Amr, brother of the tribal leader Suhayl.

Neither the Prophet nor Abu Bakr nor Khawlah raised the issue of Aishah’s minor age. Had she been only six, Abu Bakr might have raised this as an objection, even though he would have obviously been pleased to consider the match. The one objection he did raise was that of his own relationship of brotherhood with the Prophet; he had thought that Aishah could not be married to the Prophet as she was regarded as his niece.

In reply to this, the Prophet made it crystal clear that a person who was not an actual blood relative could never count in law as if he was one, no matter how close they were, unless they had shared the breast milk of the same woman. He sent a message to the effect that Abu Bakr was his brother-in-Islam not a brother by blood, and this could never be a hurdle to settling a marriage.

The much more serious hurdle was that Aishah had long been engaged to Jubayr ibn Mut ‘im ibn Adi, a young man who had not embraced Islam – an engagement which was an embarrassment to both parties. Jubayr’s parents were concerned that their son would be co-erced into accepting Islam once he was married to Aishah. They were happy to end the engagement and release Aishah to marry the Prophet.

Therefore, it is not out of the question that Khawlah could have advised the Prophet to marry a minor; after all, Aishah had already been engaged to Jubayr in the pre-Islamic period.

What it does indicate, though, is that this prior engagement could surely not have taken place after the advent of Islam, as the very fact that Aishah was a Muslim was used as the excuse for breaking it off.

So, if Aishah had been engaged to Jubayr before the advent of Islam, she cannot have been born four years after the advent of Islam, and must have been much older than six when she was subsequently engaged to the Prophet in 619.

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11. ‘Tabaqat’ of Ibn Sa’d (9 vols. Leiden); ‘Musnad’ of Ibn Hanbal (6 vols, Cairo) Vi.409.