The question, Mufti Abu Layth's thesis and premise one: dating in an oral culture

background to my credential just to give you an idea if it helps in taking my words a bit more seriously then um I believe it should be highlighted so right moving on to the actual question the discourse what was the age of when the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam married her now this is very important because it's led to um a lot of uh attacks if you like uh insults to hold at Islam and the messenger of Allah

sallu alaihi wasallam somebody who we believe uh to be the the Pinnacle and the at the heights of perfected character so how do we reconcile this and many Muslims are also confused uh at this kind of question so that's what I want to shed some light on today what was her age and what is transmitted in bukari the what the question that has been asked that it states that she got married contractually at the age of six and moved in with the messenger of Allah Sall alaihi wasallam at the age of nine I do believe that to be absolutely

inaccurate and incorrect married the messenger of Allah s alaihi wasallam in her late teens and I will demonstrate that during uh this this this discussion I will highlight that so that's some of the important things but just before getting into that I have to highlight two premises because this question did marry the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam at that age rests upon two premises which we have to understand one one is to do with the historicity the the date logs the kind of date logging culture

that used to exist or did not with the with the Arabs and into early Islam and the second rests on our understanding of Hadith so to understand these two things as as a as a premise to engage this dialogue so first of all the first premise we have to grasp the historicity and Le that documenting whether it was dates ages logs any events basically that took place we have to understand that the Arabs um what the Arabs of the time of the

messenger of Allah s alaihi wasallam especially prior to prophethood they did not they were not a people of documentation they generally had what we would call an oral culture that they uh they kind of transmitted reports they did not used to they were not a people of scripture or of writing in general that's not what they were they also did not even generally refer to an annual calendar they did not have an annual kind of calculation and they would base their

events on um they would base their kind of events on major kind a major event that may have occurred so as an example they would say the messenger of Allah s alaihi wasallam was born in the year that the Kaa was attacked so now this becomes a major event and now people will say so and so did this 3 years after the Kaa was attacked or so and so did this in the year of famine or so and so did this uh in the year that the Kaa was being renewed and things like so key uh situational events became the kind of anchor points around which dates were

logged that's the that's very important for us to grasp we have to also remember that logging dates or ages and things like this the this led to a huge disparity not having not being such a strict tradition not having a a kind of very strict tradition on logging dates led to disparity so so you have huge differences the age of AA is relatively a minor uh recording compared to major events so let's just see some major events like when was the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam actually

born Muslims disagreed on the date when did he pass away I mean you would think that that they would have that there would be and although there is a lot more uh of a if you want to call it a consensus or an agreement on when he passed away but there is still a difference of opinion if you want to look at how long did the messenger of Allah spend in mekah before migrating to Medina they disagree in years some say it was popularly they would say 13 years some people transmitted it was actually 10 years a difference of opinion how old was the messenger of Allah when he became a prophet when he received

prophethood some people have popularly we we hear 40 people have said 43 highlights there has been a difference of opinion why because they did not have this culture of being of of meticulous Precision when it came to logging dates speaking of marriage we can take as an example something which is relevant here the marriage of khad which is much more popular I mean you can ask you can ask people today uh okay now today this has become a bit of a popular topic but generally you can ask Muslims

how old was when she married the prophet they may say oh she she was young but they don't have an idea of the exact generally the general public perhaps won't have an idea of exact kind of dates or age but when you ask about Khadijah the first wife of the messenger of Allah everybody seems to know that was a much more kind well-known event and what is popularly taught what would you think is the was the age of Khadijah people will say 40 and yes that was transmitted by W but the more accurate transmission through Abbas and through is and others was actually she

was 28 now look at that massive disparity she was actually 28 years old not 40 and that is the age of Khadijah you have events of and and when we're logging events when the prophet married maymon and and that's something uh and that's a report in sah Muslim yet it says he married her whilst in many of the clearly stated that that was inaccurate an inaccurate description because he did not but that's something we'll discuss shortly but just to show that when it came to transmitting

dates and logs and events the the early Muslim culture the first community were not of a a background that was of calculations and it's in this light that the messenger of Allah says in theith we are an unlettered kind of nation referring to the early community that we do not write we are not people of scripture and neither and some people here say counting no it was not counting we are not people of

maintaining calculation that was what uh and records that was what the messenger of Allah was saying and another good example here is you can think look these are events that don't even concern everybody as in a marriage is taking place or that is happening everybody is not involved in that they're not really so maybe concerned about oh I wonder how old you are or not but let's take an example of um a battle or the uh the incident of the trenches the siege of Medina okay now which occurs in fifth

hij in the in the fifth year of Hy now this was a major event coalition to a coalition took place between major tribes of Arabia to lay Siege to Medina and to completely annihilate the Muslim uh so Muslim civilization the Muslims of Medina were all involved this impacted every everybody that was present it lasted a while and the Muslims were not capable I mean there was some tragedies minor casualties as well but the Muslims were not capable of of actually uh of Turning

Away these armies and these forces it was because of uh just the natural kind of sandstorms and things that took place they had to dissipate but this was such a tragic and traumatizing event for all Muslims that were present and yet they differ on when it occurred when they came to report it some people said it happened in the fourth year some people say in the fifth year so this is to give you an indication of when we're talking about date logs or years or events there was never this meticulous