Recordings › The Story of Safiyya: the Prophet's Jewish wife -Mufti Abu Layth al-Maliki · 21 Feb 2018 › Segment 4 of 11
Why do the hadith about Safiyya's marriage contradict each other?
hadeeth ahadith ahaadeeth hadis hadees ahaadith sahih saheeh sahih hadith saheeh hadith sound hadith al-bukhari imam bukhari sahih al-bukhari sahih bukhari saheeh al-bukhari saheeh bukhari imam al-bukhari muftis jahannam jahanam jahannum sahabah sahaba sahabi sahabiyyah sahabiyat madina al-madinah madeenah yathrib ulama ulema ulamaa nikah nikkah nikaah nikah nama nikahnamaAll through Anas: the mass of conflicting narrations about Safiyya and transmission by meaning
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This segment11:37 to 19:29 · 7 min 52 sGeneral teaching
What this part covers
machinesummary, machine-writtenNearly all the reports come through one companion, Anas ibn Malik, who was a teenager at Khaybar and died decades later, and they contradict each other on almost every detail, so none can be taken as it stands. Only two facts are certain: Safiyya left with the Muslims and later became the Prophet's wife.
In more detail
Mufti Abu Layth says almost all the narrations about this marriage, several of them in Bukhari and others in Ibn Ishaq, the tabaqat and the history books, come through a single companion, Anas ibn Malik, and conflict with each other so massively that, by the hadith scholars' own rule on conflicting reports, none is reliable as it stands. He believes they contain truths that were distorted over time by mistakes, forgetfulness and transmission by meaning. Anas was perhaps sixteen at Khaybar and died in 93 AH aged over a hundred, so his stories passed through many hands down to Bukhari, who himself transmitted by meaning and admitted writing in Egypt hadith he had heard in Basra. He lists the conflicts: she stayed a slave, or was freed, or married; she was given to Dihya and taken back, or bought with seven head of cattle; the marriage was at al-Rawha [?] or Sadd al-Sahba [?] or only in Madinah; they returned directly or by another route; consummation was that night, nights later, or in Madinah; she was taken in the fortress or found in the street; she had admired the Prophet before Islam or hated him; she embraced Islam at once or later; she grieved for her husband, or he had beaten her black and blue. He says this noise has to be filtered, and that two things are certain: Safiyya left Khaybar with the Muslims, and at some stage she became the Prophet's wife.
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Position stated
Mufti Abu Layth holds that the narrations about Safiyya's marriage, almost all transmitted through Anas ibn Malik, conflict so heavily that none is reliable as it stands, though they contain truths distorted over a long chain of transmission by meaning.
“there is so much conflict and if there are what the hadith in call it there are is when narrations conflict so massively none of them are reliable”
Category: method
Kind: general teachingTranscript
machine11:37 to 19:29 · click a time to seek · dotted terms open the glossary
says okay I'll marry you and then the Prophet in some narrations consummates that marriage is intimate with going to some people that night night after or whatever few nights later these are the kind of stories being pushed around and also she is hateful of the Prophet in the beginning in some she says oh I detest you and stuff like these in some narrations now all of these things are nonsense people these
are all rubbish right now let me get to the true narrative the truth is that we have a lot of narrations a lot and we've got several in Buhari we've got several in other books almost all of these narrations to do with this marriage of Sofia come predominant almost all of them I mean there may be one or two other ones otherwise generally they all come through just honest or they Allah on only anise is transmitting this story
okay there is so much conflict and if there are what the hadith in call it there are is when narrations conflict so massively none of them are reliable okay now there's so much it they're up in this story from anise they all from anise and they all the conflicting narrations are in bihari they conflict with each other they rainbow hari there in the books of ignites half they're in the books of the topic art in the tarif books and other things they they they all they make all conflict so let's take a look at the kind of calm we're gonna take a look at the kind of conflicts
that we're dealing with now what i believe is that in these narrations there are some truths lying some way that have over time being distorted okay because they can't all be true they're all conflicting they're all kind of making they don't add up so there may be some truths but somewhere along the line some people have distorted this they've made mistakes some people have been forgetful some people are in rewire Billman I interpreted things are going to meaning an estradiol ah one was the long one of the longest the one
of the oldest companion one of the companions to reach such an old age so when this incident is happening he is around maybe he's a teenager maybe 16 years old something like that okay when this incident is happening he is the one transmitting all these stories he dies in 93 Hickory okay which means he dies Oh having lived over a hundred years of age so he's one of the most one of the Companions with the most kind of longest lived lives if you
like like a wood that died with such seniority an age that he lived over a hundred years now so along the way you can imagine whether it comes from him that people taking it from him over old age or they transmitting with meaning or people are pulling their own kind of interpretations into this and people are transmitting the story and they're transmitting it on from them and they're transmitting it on from them right down to Buhari himself who's hearing this and transmitting and Buhari himself by the way transmits with meaning he is one of the scholars that transmits with meaning so when he is asked Buhari himself says
that oh the Haditha is to listen to in Basra I would write them in birth death and the ones I heard in but that I would write in missile in Egypt and the person asks him become Ali he what the whole of it and says from a circuit he just went quiet because it's impossible to write the whole thing so it's important to understand these now let's take a look so this tougher route first of all that with anise anise is the key person to transmit all these rewired now these rewired here are some of the conflicts some of them say she was a slave girl stayed a slave some of them say no she
was a free purse so the Prophet took her as a slave girl some of them say the Prophet married okay some of them say that no she was given today he alkyl be who the Prophet took her from some of these rewired say that oh the hell can be said I want to take a different slave girl with her another narration says no he never said that he said oh I want you oh you can buy her using certain cattle and things like this seven Sbarro's he took in place then and these are also narrations coming like from places like Buhari and stuff like the all conflicting some of
them say well okay the Prophet then married her in a place called the said the Roja some of them say no you married her in a place called subdue Sabah in a different place altogether right okay some of them say no he didn't marry her until he got to Medina some of these narrations say they kept the prophet and these people came back from labor directly without any delay they came to Medina other narrations say no they came from a different place called a span they'd gone to a span instead and they came back from her spawn okay
some of them these narrations say oh the Prophet consummated his marriage from that night some of them say no a few nights later some of them say no until he didn't get back to Medina okay now some of these narrations say how was she how did she come to the Prophet some people say they caught her in in in the fortress other people say no in generations no they caught her in she was in the street and she came herself I'm just trying to show you contradictions in what our authentic narrations those of you just tuning in if you can click like click share get
this out there then I'm gonna explain what is the true narrative and how these things got got messed up some of these narrations say she used to actually fancy the Prophet that this is before she even became Muslim some of them say no she hated him on the day and said I don't want to be married to you some of them say she didn't embrace Islam some of them straight away some of them say she didn't embrace Islam straight away some of them say that oh she may have been upset let's say if you want to accept those narrations by
Ignace hark about her husband being killed some of them say she was beaten black and blue by her husband and the Prophet actually asks her about that and I'll explain a bit about that now so I'm just trying to take a look at some of these things okay now you can see the kind of confusion going on and these are all all narrated by the same person that they're coming from this place no they come from that place no they came straight away no they took pay time no they didn't get married till they got back there no they did get married when they were there no she became Muslim no
she didn't become Muslim too later on no she was still a slave girl no she wasn't a slave girl she was a wife straightaway oh no she did used to fancy the Prophet and she was like this this story no no she didn't like the Prophet at the day she no she was held as the captive from inside the fortress and brought no she was actually already standing there no she was right so we've got a lot of nonsense a lot of noise now people have to filter through now let me tell you what actually happened people okay
I'd like you to click like click share first of all what is very clear is Sofia leaves with the Muslims this is clear fact Sofia at some stage in her life does become the wife of the Prophet that is a fact we accept that these two are facts it's the things in between that have been mixed up now let me clarify this to you people first of all it is impossible
Paragraphs overlapping 11:37 to 19:29. Full text on the recording page.
Cite this segment
Stable id, transcript version and tier are part of the citation. Every change to a transcript is logged.Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2018-02-21b-S04, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/dper6y4mgwa/s/4/ (accessed 1 November 2026)
- APA 7
Mufti Abu Layth. (2018, February 21). Why do the hadith about Safiyya's marriage contradict each other? [Video, segment 2018-02-21b-S04, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/dper6y4mgwa/s/4/
- Chicago author-date
Mufti Abu Layth. 2018. "Why do the hadith about Safiyya's marriage contradict each other?" Video, segment 2018-02-21b-S04, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded February 21, 2018. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/dper6y4mgwa/s/4/
- BibTeX
@misc{abulayth-2018-02-21b-S04, author = {Mufti Abu Layth}, title = {{Why do the hadith about Safiyya's marriage contradict each other?}}, year = {2018}, month = {2}, date = {2018-02-21}, howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/dper6y4mgwa/s/4/}}, url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/dper6y4mgwa/s/4/}, organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive}, urldate = {2026-11-01}, note = {Segment 2018-02-21b-S04, auto-transcribed, may contain errors} }
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