Aisha's Age: Difference between revisions

Little then analyzes in greater depth his reconstructed matns for these common links. Based on shared words, phrases and sequencing, he concludes that they all derive from a single, simple formulation, and are not independently transmitted memories of a common event. This original formulation seems to be the widely transmitted one of Hisham, who also transmitted a few versions with additional details. Hisham attributed all of these to his father 'Urwa b. al-Zubayr (falsely, argues Little, though it is worth mentioning that in his thesis he does not notice that the content of 'Urwa's letter about Aisha reported by Hisham is also narrated by a Syrian partial common link who ascribed it via his uncle to 'Urwa's student, al-Zuhri, who moved from Medina to Syria.<ref>'Urwa wrote a number of letters on early Islamic history to the late Umayyad court. These letters were transmitted by his son Hisham and the traditions therein were often also transmitted by 'Urwa's Medinan student al-Zuhri. 'Urwa's letters are translated in full in Sean Anthony, ''Muhammad and the Empires of Faith: The making of the Prophet of Islam'', Oakland CA: University of California, 2020, Chapter 4. In 2012, the creators of the ICMA method, Andreas Görke, Harald Motzki and Gregor Schoeler, strongly argued that the traditions in the letters attributed to 'Urwa probably do in some way originate with him, especially when they are supported by parallel traditions going back to 'Urwa (Goerke, A, Motzki, H & Schoeler, G (2012) [https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/12692843/First_Century_Sources_for_the_Life_of_Muhammad_a_debate.pdf First-Century Sources for the Life of Muhammad?] A Debate, Der Islam, vol. 89, no. 2, pp. 2-59. https://doi.org/10.1515/islam-2012-0002).<BR />

However, Dr Little did not notice that another hadith he discusses which is ascribed to 'Urwa's Medinan student al-Zuhri contains the same core tradition as this letter, especially the distinctive sequence of elements but also much of the same or similar wording, albeit not in the form of a letter. Compare the Arabic provided in the isnad diagrams on his blog, or the transliteration of 'Urwa's reconstructed letter on pp. 310-11 of the thesis with al-Hajjaj b. Abi Mani's reconstructed transmission of the same elemental sequence (pp. 204-5, 370-72; see also 482). Al-Hajjaj who lived in Aleppo, Syria, ascribed it via his uncle to al-Zuhri, who does not himself count as a common link but did move from Medina to Damascus and later Resafa, Syria, where he tutored the Caliph's sons. Part of the letter content and wording also comprise ʾAbū ʾUsāmah Ḥammād's narration from Hisham (pp. 223-4).</ref>). There is some evidence that Hisham did not originally extend the isnad of most of his versions back to Aisha herself, but rather only to his father 'Urwa, Aisha's nephew, and that they were narrated in the 3rd person, not in her own voice.<ref>Ibid. p. 305 including footnote 996</ref> It is even clearer that such isnad "raising" occured for transmissions by others back to Aisha by other routes.