Ages of Muhammads Wives at Marriage: Difference between revisions

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There is some discrepancy in the sources about Hafsah’s exact age but there they agree concerning her approximate age.

This was the year from 30 January 605 to 19 January 606, so the median birthdate for Hafsah is 26 July 605 according to the traditional sources. Muhammad’s daughter Fatima was born in the same year.<ref>{{Tabari|39|p. 166}}.</ref>

An approximate birth year that emerges from the sources 605; but it should be borne in mind that she might have been two years younger than this.

It can thus be surmised from the sources that Hafsah was between 17 and 19 years old, an adult but very young woman.  

Zaynab’s life is not well documented, which has led to conjecture about her age.

Tabari and S'ad both report similar ages for her though:

According to the above sources Zaynab was therefore married on or soon after 18 February 625. She died on or just before 11 October 625. If she was “about 30” in 4 AH, she was born in October 596, plus or minus a few years.

Zaynab married five times.<ref>Ibn Hisham note 918; Bewley/Saad 8:82; {{Tabari|9|p. 138}}; {{Tabari|39|pp. 163-614}}.</ref> Her fifth choice, it seems, fell on a high-status and already-married man old enough to be her father when she was in her late 20's.  

Thirty-five years before 5 AH brings us to a birth-year of 31 BH (20 June 592 - 8 June 593), a discrepancy of three years. Probably Umar ibn Uthman was giving a round number when he said she was married at 35; to be conservative, for the sake of calculation an earlier fate can be assumed. However, we must bear in mind that Zaynab might have been some three years younger than this.

Modern commentaries claiming that Zaynab was “in late middle age”<ref>[http://www.ispi-usa.org/muhammad/appendix2.html/ Akhter, J. (2001). “The Prophet's Marriages and Wives”] in ''The Seven Phases of Prophet Muhammad's Life''. Chicago: ISPI.</ref> thus seem to be off the mark. While her contemporary community might not have considered her “a young woman,” this is relative. She was still young enough to have been Muhammad’s daughter.

Juwayriyah’s age is only mildly disputed.

This makes it very clear that Muhammad was already married to Zaynab during this controversy, which arose before the warriors had even arrived home from the al-Muraysi expedition. He married Zaynab in late 5 AH, so Ibn Ishaq’s date of 6 AH for the raid seems to be the correct one. It does seem odd that Aisha would give the wrong sequence for two such dramatic events as the raid at al-Muraysi and the Prophet’s marriage to Zaynab. However, it is more likely that, when asked for a date, she accidentally named the wrong expedition than that, recalling what could be considered 'the crisis of her life', she could not remember whether she had been veiled or who had been spreading gossip about her; either that, or the traditions related here may have been fabricated by someone other than she.  

Nevertheless, for the sake of calculation, a two-year range for Juwayriyah’s birthdate, between 9 January 607 and 17 December 608, will be used. The median is 28 December 607. She was married in Shabaan 6 AH, a median date of 2 January 628.

So another one of Muhammad's wives, Juwayriyah, was young enough to be his granddaughter when she married him at just around 20.  

[[Safiyah]] is given with unusual precision, down to the month:

The Muslims therefore began the march to Khaybar in late May or early June 628 and were back in Medina before the end of July according to ibn Ishaq. So Muhammad married Safiyah early in Rabi-Awwal 7 AH (mid-July 628). Safiyah apparently knew that she had been born in Rabi'-Awwal 17 years earlier, though she did not know whether it had been late or early in the month and therefore did not know whether she had reached 17 full years on the particular night when she married Muhammad. The Rabi'-Awwal of 17 years earlier fell between 14 January and 12 February 612, giving Safiyah a birthdate of 28 January 612, plus or minus a fortnight.

Safiyah was yet another bride who was young enough to be Muhammad’s granddaughter, most likely still being in her teens while Muhammad was in his 50's.  

Ibn Kathir makes Muhammad 25 years older than Ramlah. This is not a serious contradiction. If Muhammad was 53 in 1 AH, then he was only 59 and not 60 in 7 AH; so calling Ramlah’s age 35 rather than 36 may also be an approximation, much like Tabari’s “thirty-odd”. Since Ibn Kathir is a source far removed in time from the life of the prophet, for calculation it will be assumed that “thirty-odd” means 36 and that Ramlah was born in 30 BH.

Ramlah was young enough to be Muhammad’s daughter. although older than many of Muhammad's other wives.  

The traditions about Maymunah are hard to reconcile:

But in fact the death-date of 61 AH might have been a mistake. Other sources indicate that she could not have been the last survivor of Muhammad’s widows, for Aisha outlived her, and Hind, of course, outlived Aisha.

This doesn't seem to be correct, as not one, but four or five of Muhammad’s widows were still alive in 51 AH (Hind, Aisha, Sawdah, Safiyah and perhaps Juwayriyah) according to other sources. Ibn Kathir, writing 700 years after the event, was either trying to harmonize the conflict without considering all the facts or merely restating the words of someone else who likewise failed to consider the facts. If Ibn Kathir (or his source) guessed at which part of his original text was the error, he might also have been guessing at the year of Maymunah’s death. Thusly neither 51 n''or'' 61 AH can be confidently taken as her death date. The only consistency amongst the reports is that Maymunah lived to be about 80.

While we do not really know Maymunah’s death-date, and therefore her birth-date, for the purposes of calculation Ibn Kathir’s more conservative tradition will be accepted here. According to this, she was born in 30 BH, i.e., between 9 June 593 and 28 May 594 (median = 2 December 593). This would make her about 35 when she married Muhammad in February 629, although she mind that might have been many years younger.

Sir William Muir’s unsourced comment that “Maymunah is said to have been at this time 51 years of age”<ref>[http://www.answering-islam.org/Books/Muir/Life4/chap22.htm/ Muir, W. (1861). ''The Life of Mahomet'' vol. 4 p. 89. London: Smith, Elder & Co.]</ref> is thus shown to be extremely doubtful. Muhammad was around 20 years older than he when they married.  

This makes sense in the light of the fact that Mulaykah found a new fiancé within days of her divorce from Muhammad, before she had completed her three-month waiting-period<ref>Bewley/Saad 8:106; {{Tabari|39|p. 165}}.</ref>, indicating that the marriage was likely not consummated. It looks as if this man had already been a suitor before it became politically necessary for Mulaykah to marry Muhammad. If she had been courted but not married, this also suggests that she was very young.

The year 8 AH did not end until 22 April 630 CE. But in fact Muhammad must have married Mulaykah earlier than this. Her tribe lived near Mecca; they had resisted him at Mecca on 14 January; and Muhammad left Mecca on 28 January to fight the Hawazinites and Thaqifites.<ref>{{Tabari|9|pp. 2-3}}.</ref> It seems that he married Mulaykah during his fortnight of residence in the city, i.e. in the second half of January 630.

While this is only an estimation, we were also only guessing about Sawdah. By the time Muhammad married Mulaykah, Aisha had become 16. Although Mulaykah was an older bride, she was almost certainly younger than Aisha.

Asma’s age is unknown but her age-range is clearly implied in the sources.

Amrah’s age is not extant in any sources surveyed for this study. However, the age of her first husband is, however, recorded. He was Muhammad’s cousin, Al-Fadl ibn Abbas.<ref>Ibn Ishaq, cited in Guillaume, A. (1960). ''New Light on the Life of Muhammad'', p. 55. Manchester: Manchester University Press.</ref> Al-Fadl’s brother Abdullah recalled: “We reached Allah’s Apostle five years after he had made ''Hijra'' and were with the Quraysh when they marched during the year in which the Battle of ''Ahzab'' [Trench] was fought [627]. I was with my brother Fadl … I was then eight years old while my brother was 13.”<ref>Tabrani/Haythami vol. 6 p. 64 reported on the chain of narrators for this hadith. Cited in Khandhlawi, M. M. Y. (1959). ''Hayatus Sahaba''. Translated by Elias, A. H. (2008). ''The Lives of the Sahabah'', vol. 1, p. 373. Farid Book Depot (Pvt.) Ltd.</ref>

It is a little strange that such a young man would so soon afterwards take on a second wife, but it is seems that he did so willingly, for Amrah was of no political importance. There is no obvious reason for this marriage beyond the documented fact that Al-Fadl was susceptible to pretty girls.<ref>See {{Bukhari|74|247}}.</ref> He was also said to be the eldest son of a very wealthy man,<ref>Guillaume/Ishaq 113, 114, 309-310.</ref> so if he wanted a second wife, there was nothing to stop him taking one. It is therefore highly unlikely that Amrah was plain or that she was older than Al-Fadl. She would have been the same age as her bridegroom or a little younger.

*Amrah’s Probable Age = about 15 years, give or take 5 years.

*Age Difference = around 45 years and 5 months.

There is alot of guesswork that went into this estimation, but it is an estimate based on real data about Amrah’s life. No data remains extant for the remainder of Muhammad's wives.  

Muhammad had other marriage contracts with several other women, but most of these unions were dissolved before consummation and thus were not true marriages according to Islamic law. The other women with whom he is known to have had a sexual relationship are the five listed below, four of whom were technically concubines (sex [[Slavery|slaves]]) rather than legal wives. The ages of these five women are unknown.

Mariyah’s age is not stated anywhere. The only certain fact is that, since she bore Muhammad a son in 630, she must have been of childbearing age.<ref>{{Tabari|9|pp. 39, 137}}.</ref> Various guesses that she was 20<ref>[http://www.a2youth.com/ebooks/the_wives_of_the_prophet/Maymunah_bint_al-harith/ Thomson, H. A. (1993). “Maymunah bint Al-Harith”] in ''The Wives of the Prophet Muhammad''. London: Ta-Ha Publishers Ltd.</ref> or 17<ref>[http://www.themodernreligion.com/prophet/prophet_aisha.htm/ Ahmed, S. “Prophet Muhammad and Aisha Siddiqa.”]</ref> betray the assumptions of the secondary historians that if she attracted Muhammad, she must have been young. Given the other evidence this is likely correct, but there is no data to support this conclusion.

The only objective clue to Fatima’s age is that she lived another 50 years after Muhammad divorced her.<ref>Bewley/Saad 8:100</ref> Subjectively, her behaviour seems immature and suited to a child aged 15 or 16.<ref>{{Tabari|39|pp. 187-188}}; Bewley/Saad 8:101.</ref> There is not any concrete data for calculation of her age though.

These two concubines were presumably selected for their looks and were presumably young. But presumption is not fact. There ages are unknown and there is not available data for calculation.

Based on the above sources the calculations of the ages of Muhammad's wives at marriage (including the various estimations above) are as follows:

The mean age of Muhammad’s brides was about ''24½ years''. To call such a woman middle-aged, even in Arabia at the time, seems uncalled for. Rather it appears that (like most rules of his stature) Muhammad preferred younger women.  

Based on the above data, it is also possible to calculate Muhammad's age as a bridgegroom in each other cases mentioned above. Here is his age when he consummated each of these marriages.

Muhammad’s first marriage to Khadijah skews the the mean. According to the traditional sources, she was the ''only'' wife whom Muhammad married as a young man. She was the ''only'' wife who was close to his own age, as opposed to being significantly younger. Some statisticians would exclude her as an outlier before they began the calculation.

Muhammad acquired these five women in the last five years of his life, so his mean age as bridegroom has to be raised. While we don’t know all of his wedding dates or the dates where he first sexually assaulted his slaves, the new figure would probably come to about 55 years – making the age difference between Muhammad and his “average wife” a grand mean of 33 years.

It should thus be kept in mind that the calculation that Muhammad’s average wife was 29 years younger than himself and that she became his bride when she was 24½ should be seen as conservative, and under representing both the age gap and the youth of Muhammad's female lover in each case.