# Are there other narrations of Aisha's age besides Bukhari's?

*Mufti Abu Layth on the age-of-Aisha chains and Hisham ibn Urwa*

- URL: https://muftiabulayth.org/r/w6tqwuuumcg/s/14/
- Date: 2020-10-27 · Kind: question · Transcript tier: machine · Recording: Monday Nights with Mufti #188 | Q&A Unscripted & Unrestricted! 😉 | Mufti Abu Layth (1:27:50–1:33:46)
- Status: general teaching
- Watch from the start of the segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6TqWuUumCg&t=5270s
- Recording page: https://muftiabulayth.org/r/w6tqwuuumcg/

**Topics:** The age of Aisha; Narrator criticism

**Question as asked:** You made a great video on Bukhari and the famous topic of Aisha's age. Muslim and other books also narrate it; does that mean there are more?

**Summary (not a quotation; machine-made, unchecked):** Mufti Abu Layth says every chain on Aisha's age was engineered, with Hisham as the common link and Iraqi narrators throughout.

**Checked position (checked by two independent reviews, not by the channel):** Mufti Abu Layth says every single chain of narration about the age of Aisha was fabricated, which he rephrases as engineered.

**Evidence, his words at 1:27:50:** “Every single chain of narration to do with the age of Aisha was fabricated.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6TqWuUumCg&t=5270s)

## Longer summary

A viewer asks whether, beyond Bukhari, other books carry more narrations on Aisha's age. Mufti Abu Layth says every single chain on Aisha's age was fabricated, or engineered, with Hisham as the common link, perhaps for righteous reasons, and that every narrator at the lower level is from Iraq. He says Hisham sought to salvage the honour of Aisha, his great-aunt, against Shia slurs, and to reinforce the Zubayrid narrative that suited the Abbasids, who could lean neither on the Umayyad nor the Shia version of history. Mufti says the ages six and nine echo a temple practice among some Zoroastrians, in which a girl was devoted to a temple at six and received by her husband at nine, and that the story grew over time from 'she was young' to fixed ages.

## Sources and names cited

- Aisha
- Hisham ibn Urwa
- report: the prophet married aisha at six and consummated the marriage at nine
- Sahih al-Bukhari
- Abbasids
- Umayyads
- Shia
- Zoroastrianism

## Transcript (machine tier, 1:27:50–1:33:46)

[1:27:50] Sure, I'm happy to get him on. I mean, reach out to him. Reach out to me. Famous topic Mui, you made a great video, Bkari Gay and lead and leaning on the famous topic Aisha regarding the ages Muslim other books. Does that mean that they are there are more? Every single chain of narration to do with the age of Aisha was fabricated. It was either some may have innocently been fabricated.

[1:28:16] They were engineered. Let me put it like that. They were doctorred. Um and the core culprit was Hisham. Um you know he he may have done it for righteous reasons but the you know it doesn't justify the goal. Like he I'm not saying his reasons were nasty. They weren't he every single chain if you look at them you know I I did this uh analysis of this chart where you can see how they the formation of these hadith how they develop along the way and you can see

[1:28:53] the common link really is Hisham and some of them are fabricated. Every single person who narrates this hadith, every single person lower down in the level when it starts getting transmitted in the books is from Iraq. Every single person. [laughter] If that doesn't ring alarm bells, what does you know? Have the rest of the world died?

[1:29:19] Are there no Muslims in any other part of the world? What happened to Medina? What happened to Mecca? What happened to Egypt? What happened to every single person was from Iraq. This is at the the lower level once it's recorded, you know, before it's recorded that the last level. Every single person that is enough to tell you that this hadith is going to be problematic.

[1:29:45] And it was really just Hashem trying to one salvage the honor of Aisha because that was his great aunt. But also to reinforce um the political narrative because it was important that Aisha is a very powerful figure. Why? Because um you see politically the Abbisids wanted to lean in on a neutral narrative of history cuz you had the Umeyad version which they were anti and the Umyad version was different and then you had the Shia version who they

[1:30:25] came from but then split off and became Sunni. Right? So the Abbisids, they couldn't lean on the Shia version because then the masses would be against you and also it might give the actual Shia greater claim to the seat and they couldn't lean on the omead narrative of history. So they needed a middle ground and there was another narrative, the Zuberid narrative because they also ruled.

[1:30:50] So the Zuberid thing is reinforced by Aisha who as it happened was already a point of contention with the Shia. So the Shia were kind of cursing her and saying things about her and the Shia had started this thing about Aisha um had already was lentious and she was lustful with her first husband before she married the prophet.

[1:31:13] And this is a reaction to that that Hisham says that you know well she married so and so told me where she says she married when she was only six or seven. This is a reaction to that six and nine. And this why six and nine. Six and nine because this was a a um a kind of peripheral narrative that existed in the Zerastrian culture of the Middle East.

[1:31:43] So one of the marriages that the Zerastrians had was where so it wasn't a popular but it existed. So the Zarastrians had I think four or five popular marriages like their marriages were of certain types. They had one which was of incest and marry their own sister or marry their mother or marry their daughter. Uh one obviously they had normal marriages as well and one was that they would um the proper term but they would kind of uh not nominitate they would allocate a

[1:32:18] daughter let's say a girl to uh devote herself in a temple and what would happen is the husband would come she would be around six uh six years old the husband would so who's thinking on marrying this girl, he would uh uh propose to the family. When they accept, they would place this six-year-old in a temple to devote herself for 3 years for this kind of spiritual enhancement and purity.

[1:32:51] At the age of nine, the husband would come and receive her from the temple and he would take her and she would be his wife. Now, this existed in the um in what would be like modern day Iran and the Middle East, that part of the world. This culture already existed with some of the Zarastrians. I'm not saying it was the dominate, it wasn't the dominating thing, but it did exist as part of the culture just as uh the incestuous relationships existed.

[1:33:22] It wasn't strange to them. Now because this narrative already existed, Hisham leans in on it and he employs that eventually. But this is a development. He doesn't initially go with this. Initially he just says he married her and she was young and then he gives it an age. He says she was nine and then it develops.

[1:33:45] The story starts having more. actually he proposed when she was six uh and then went with her when she's nine and and the story develops. So yeah, I hope that helps. Salam again, Muy Ryan, you're doing it Christ. Have you ever looked into the notion that the jin are actually Yungian archetypes residing in our collective unconscious?

## Cite

Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment w6TqWuUumCg/s/14. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/w6tqwuuumcg/s/14/

Not a fatwa: these answers were given to specific people at specific times. Ask a qualified scholar about your own situation.