Talk:Aisha's age at marriage

message: I object to merging Book 008, Number 3310 and Book 008, Number 3311 of Sahih Muslim. The verses are:
Book 008, Number 3310:
*    'A'isha (Allah be pleased with her) reported: Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him) married me when I was six years old, and I was admitted to his house when I was nine years old.
and
Book 008, Number 3311:
*    'A'isha (Allah be pleased with her) reported that Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him) married her when she was seven years old, and he was taken to his house as a bride when she was nine, and her dolls were with her; and when he (the Holy Prophet) died she was eighteen years old.
Verse 3311 contains the additional information: "and her dolls were with her; and when he (the Holy Prophet) died she was eighteen years old.". So it contains extra information about Aisha's age at the death of Mohammed and talks about Aisha's dolls. The dolls are important since in 8:73:151 (a verse that is being displayed on the front page) it says:
* "(The playing with the dolls and similar images is forbidden, but it was allowed for 'Aisha at that time, as she was a little girl, not yet reached the age of puberty.) (Fateh-al-Bari page 143, Vol.13)"
Furthermore, 3310 says Aisha was SIX years old while 3311 says she was SEVEN years old. This means that there is substantial difference of one years reported by the two Hadiths and these three facts warrent their separation.  self 16:21, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have updated the main article self 22:18, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: another sidenote, the quote from ibn hajar is not relevant to the focus of the article of what her exact age was. to my knowledge, there exists no published english translation of fath al-baari... who exactly translated it like that? i have good reason to think the last part of that passage is a distortion (i.e. ibn hajar didn't say it but it is present in the translation due to what the author believes is implied by the arabic phrase used for "young girl" by ibn hajar, due to the inference taken from the muhsin khan translation of saheeh bukhaari in his parenthesis. however, the exact definition of what is meant by this arabic phrase is differed upon, there is no indication that ibn hajar's interpretation of the word matches that of muhsin khan's), however i could be completely wrong so i will check the actual arabic to make sure. ITAQALLAH 03:53, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Union of Book 008, Number 3310 and Book 008, Number 3311 

message: I object to merging Volume 7, Book 62, Number 64,  Volume 7, Book 62, Number 65 and Volume 7, Book 62, Number 88 since Volume 7, Book 62, Number 88 has a different different narrator from the other two. Volume 7, Book 62, Number 88 is narrated by Ursa while Volume 7, Book 62, Number 64,  Volume 7, Book 62, Number 65 are narrated by Aiahs. So it is not correct to put Volume 7, Book 62, Number 88 under the hadith
* Narrated 'Aisha: that the Prophet married her when she was six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old, and then she remained with him for nine years (i.e., till his death).   
since Volume 7, Book 62, Number 88 wasn't narrated by Aisha  self 16:05, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have updated the main article self 22:18, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Union of Volume 7, Book 62, Number 64,  Volume 7, Book 62, Number 65 and Volume 7, Book 62, Number 88 

message: Truthspreader merged the hadiths
* Tabari IX:131 “My mother came to me while I was being swung on a swing between two branches and got me down. My nurse took over and wiped my face with some water and started leading me. When I was at the door she stopped so I could catch my breath. I was brought in while Muhammad was sitting on a bed in our house. My mother made me sit on his lap. The other men and women got up and left. The Prophet consummated his marriage with me in my house when I was nine years old. Neither a camel nor a sheep was slaughtered on behalf of me.”Tabari, volume 9, page 131
*(The Prophet) married her three years before the Emigration, when she was seven years old and consummated the marriage when she was nine years old, after he had emigrated to Medina in Shawwal. She was eighteen years old when he died.Tabari, Volume 9, p. 131, in the SUNY edition
into
* "(The Prophet) married her three years before the Emigration, when she was seven years old and consummated the marriage when she was nine years old, after he had emigrated to Medina in Shawwal. She was eighteen years old when he died"..."My mother came to me while I was being swung on a swing between two branches and got me down. My nurse took over and wiped my face with some water and started leading me. When I was at the door she stopped so I could catch my breath. I was brought in while Muhammad was sitting on a bed in our house. My mother made me sit on his lap. The other men and women got up and left. The Prophet consummated his marriage with me in my house when I was nine years old. Neither a camel nor a sheep was slaughtered on behalf of me."Tabari, volume 9, page 131
But I object to this since this does not make any sense. In the first part, the narrator is not Aisha since he refers to Aisha as "she", but in the second part it is Aisha narrating since the narrator refers to "My mother", "I", "on behalf of me"
You merged the two quotes with ... Please show what was replaced by these dots.self 09:10, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hadiths that were merged 

message: Truthspreader removed the following hadith saying that it was unrelated:
Sahih Bukhari Volume 3, Book 48, Number 805: "Narrated Urwa bin Al-Musayyab, Alqama bin Waqqas and Ubaidullah bin Abdullah: About the story of 'Aisha and their narrations were similar attesting each other, when the liars said what they invented about 'Aisha, and the Divine Inspiration was delayed, Allah's Apostle sent for 'Ali and Usama to consult them in divorcing his wife (i.e. 'Aisha). Usama said, "Keep your wife, as we know nothing about her except good." Buraira said, "I cannot accuse her of any defect except that she is still a young girl who sleeps, neglecting her family's dough which the domestic goats come to eat (i.e. she was too simpleminded to deceive her husband)." Allah's Apostle said, "Who can help me to take revenge over the man who has harmed me by defaming the reputation of my family? By Allah, I have not known about my family-anything except good, and they mentioned (i.e. accused) a man about whom I did not know anything except good."" Sahih Bukhari 
I feel that this is a related Hadith since it talks about Aisha being a "young girl who sleeps, neglecting her family's dough which the domestic goats come to eat". Why do you feel that this is unrelated?
:By the way, you forgot to sign your comment. This hadith is unrelated because young girl can be interpreted by many people in different way. As in english, she can be a child or teenager or even sometime, a woman in early twenties. TruthSpreaderTalk 08:57, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hadith that was removed 

message: could the lead give a range of possible ages ? I don't want to read all the article to know the aswer to the question: How old was Aisha ? Zeq 17:26, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[WP:Lead]] 

message: It is very difficult to tell that who researched in the first place to prove that Aisha was much older than what many hadith says, but it seems like Hakim Niaz Ahmad's book in Urdu, Research on the age of Aisha and the booklet by Habib ur Rahman Kandhalwi in (urdu) might be the precursors and then Moiz Amjad, who is also Associate Fellow at Al-Mawrid Institute of Islamic research, refined the results and published on the website  and . These conclusions have also been published and are available from . These publications can be used in Wikipedia as reliable sources as can be seen on . The other publication written by our Shia brother, I am not sure that what claims it makes and if are different to the one's which are currently available on the article. I think most websites are simply copying the work done by Moiz Amjad unless specified. TruthSpreaderTalk 13:26, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I found this booklet by Habib ur Rahman Kandhalwi. It seems to be in Malay language, if someone can read it, it'll be great.. TruthSpreaderTalk 13:44, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Publications, which are written and published with association to Al-Mawrid are also accepted as reliable secondary source. Kindly see here . TruthSpreaderTalk 05:17, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Does anybody disputes quoting from "understanding-islam.com" for articles signed by notable scholars (such as the founder of the website)? The quote can be attributed to the scholar himself. "Scholar X states Y"? It seems fine to me. --Aminz 05:25, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

text: That's great! I'll be waiting for it. --Aminz 05:41, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Solution to Aisha's age 

message: The final paragraph of principal arguments was a defence of historical 'child marriages' when the article is about the issues regarding Aisha's age, not the actual marriage.Crwpulsar 22:22, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Principal arguments 

message: How old was Muhammad when they were married? Someone just changed it.--Cúchullain t/c 21:27, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Muhammad's age

message: Here is some anit-Islamic guy that bother to colect some hadith. Do we have all of them? --Striver 02:31, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This hadith proves nothing because, as the article says that even Aisha was born before advent of Islam, she might be only two years old when Prophet Muhammad were prophecised, which would make her age much more than 9 at marriage. And secondly, to put these hadith, we need secondary sources, otherwise it is useless without any conclusion. TruthSpreaderTalk 09:01, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: hadith

message: Considering that this is a hadith article, can we rename it to Hadith of Aisha's age at marriage, so we can list it on List of hadith? --Striver 03:03, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No objections? --Striver 23:15, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: But the counter arguments are not based totally on hadith, rather sometimes rationalized on logic. TruthSpreaderTalk 03:52, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Yes, scholarly quotes. Otherwise it would'nt be an encyclopedic article about hadith related to a special subject, it just be a hadith dump and that would go to wikisource.--Striver 23:33, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

text: I even think that these new templates for hadith are taking too much space and the article seems to be funky. TruthSpreaderTalk 05:48, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I moved the sources, i hope it will slim it down a bit. --Striver 23:33, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

text: annexing? That implies ownership. Whos stuff i am supposed to be annexing? Yours? I am trying to improve Wikipedia, as i am sure you also are.  --Striver 23:33, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Rename

message: Arguments given in defence of Aisha's late marriage are definitely taken from Moiz Amjad's work, but I dont' think so that this is all his work. I had a quick look into Habib ur Rahman Kandhalwi's work and he also mentioned these points plus many others. I didn't have a time to go through and see which one I can put on wikipedia. Well! I think it is already written very clearly on the article that what most and traditionally Muslims think and this opinion is hold by minority, so in that case, it definitely is a POV. But does this section deserve a POV tag? TruthSpreaderTalk 02:48, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: i think i have mentioned this before, but here are the guidelines of what undue weight consists of. if a view is a minority then it should be given space in relative proportion, the current section dedicates a lot of text to eludicating all of the arguments precisely when they could just be summarized. giving one viewpoint a substantial elaboration gives the impression that the view is more adopted than even claimed by the article. you don't say "A is a minority view" and then dedicate a few sections to give present all or most of the arguments, when it can easily be summarized.  similarly, in any article you don't give dozens of paragraphs to outrageous theories just because it will take that much for every argument within the theory to be sufficiently covered. ideally if it was a minority view then you would give it a paragraph or two (but it depends on article size), and this is what the undue weight clause is about: maintaining article balance by propotionalizing the views on that subject, irrespective of what is considered "true" or "false". furthermore, for the "was 9" section, there are almost no arguments provided and it seems to be more of a compilation of primary source narrations. ITAQALLAH 16:16, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Aisha being older than nine may be a minority view among the Muslim community in general but among many Islamic historians, this view is quite popular. The guidelines mainly refer to tiny-minority views and this view is not a tiny-minority view by any means. It may not deserve equal weight as the former argument but it does deserve the weight it has been given. I think a better idea would be to expand the former section on Aisha's age being nine (perhaps with some more quotes), rather than reducing the latter section on her age being older than nine. This would be equivalent to giving the former argument more weight than the latter. Jagged 18:20, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: could you substantiate your earlier statement "...but among many Islamic historians, this view is quite popular". from what i know, such a view had not been prevelant or even known until recent apologetic responses to orientalist scrutiny. the only actual sources for this argument that i know of are indeed those that have already been mentioned in the article. consideration should also be given to the fact that the "was nine" section is currently a collection of primary sources while "was older than nine" is an 'analysis' and evaluation of these and other sources which i think gives the impression of stronger weightage of this view as no actual arguments or analysis are provided for the opposing view. ITAQALLAH 20:14, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was referring to recent Islamic historians, such as those mentioned in the article. Reducing the length of the older than nine argument won't help the article in any way, since this article is primarily based on the debate surrounding Aisha's age. What I was suggesting is that we add more weight to the was nine argument, rather than cutting down the size of the other section, which will only make the article less informative. On the other hand, adding more quotes, arguments or an analysis to the was nine argument would make the article more informative. Jagged 22:09, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

text: The main problem with the hadith related to Aisha's (ra) marriage age is that Muslims have been accepting it, but as a Ummah, we never acted upon it. Ummah is void of such practices at large in which children are married with much older persons. And the reason behind is that Sunnah and Quran teaches us strong morality in sexual relations and human nature just cannot assimilate such events in general. I can also see the argument in Spellburgs writing that Sunnis might reduced the age of Aisha and Sabaites reduced the age of Fatima by ten years (her birth:instread of 5 years before prophecy, they count 5 years after prophecy) for their own benefits, this clearly shows a pattern of political benefits in later Islamic eras. Interestingly, all other women related to the prophet were married at very reasonable ages. Muslims have been ignoring these hadith for a long time, but when you have cynical commentators on Islam, this is a definite loop hole for them. My point is that consensus of the practice of Ummah does not see such practices at large scale, because of some problems with it. And this practice at large deserves this much space on wikipedia, or even more. TruthSpreaderTalk 22:20, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I concur. In my opinion, neither side of the argument is more factual than the other, and Muslim historians are clearly divided on this issue, with strong arguments coming from both sides of the debate. Just because the Sunni community in general regards her to have been nine at marriage, that doesn't necessarily mean that we should give this argument more weight. I believe Wikipedia should be as neutral and unbiased as possible, and give both sides of the debate equal weight. However, I don't mind giving the was nine section slightly more weight, as long as we don't cut down on the older than nine section. Jagged 23:21, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original Research 

message: I think it was Striver who introduced special "hadith quote" markup that surrounded hadith quotes with a box and colored them green. I removed it all. He did this without consulting anyone and it's POV as all heck. Why should quotes from a certain body of Islamic texts get special treatment, and who gets to decide whether or not a particular collection gets the special treatment? Different scholars, and sects, accept different collections. 
If hadith get special treatment, why not quotes from other books? Or people? Do all Torah quotes get to be red? New Testament quotes purple? What about the Apocrypha? What about Buddhist scriptures? Mormon scriptures? Quotes from USA presidents given an American flag background? This was a very very very bad idea. Zora 02:18, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: i agree. though it was undoubtedly well intended, in my view it's a little bit needless, and i do think there should have been a gauging of opinion regarding this beforehand. ITAQALLAH 03:08, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The template is vote for on here: Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 October 21 --Striver 13:44, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hadith markup 

message: One editor removed the note re early marriages in Europe with the comment that it didn't apply to Arabia. Having spent many years reading widely in history and anthropology, I know darn well that in many societies, girls were routinely married off as soon as they were pubescent. However, the problem is coming up with a citation. 
WP has lists of contemporary average marriage ages in various countries, ditto lists of minimum marriage ages. But nothing about history. Googling on historical demography, age at marriage, child bride, etc. brings up many books and papers about early marriage at specific places and times, but no global surveys. 
I have tenuous memories of reading demographic theories about medieval and Renaissance Europe being anomalous in that they favored late marriage rather than early. But I can't for the life of me remember the authors or titles -- and in any case, that's from twenty years ago. 
Is there anyone here at a university with a good demographics department or concentration? Anyone else can find references? 
We could, I suppose, start adding references to the various regional/historical studies, but they would soon swamp the article. Zora 22:37, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  History of age at marriage 

message: regarding these changes: 
The website design at Sunnipath.com has changed and I believe the referenced material that was removed still exists at this new URL:  http://qa.sunnipath.com/issue_view.asp?HD=7&ID=4604&CATE=1&redirect=yes
I didn't see the original material, so someone who did should probably make the call on reverting the changes & fixing the references. --Versageek 21:02, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is the link (in the now restored material) that returns a 404 error: 
http://www.sunnipath.com/resources/Questions/qa00004861.aspx   --Versageek 10:35, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, the reference link is working, it is the external link that is not working. Someone need to change that! TruthSpreaderreply 12:59, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  recent removal by User:Xtremeownage 

message: Please do not use Spencer and other non-scholar critics outside the criticism related articles --Aminz 23:49, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: All of the apologetics are also sourced to partisan websites. This article needs a major rewrite. Arrow740 17:27, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Probably.--Cúchullain t/c 20:10, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  WP:RS 

message: This is a textbook example of one kind of article which would not be found in a serious encyclopedia. "Aisha's age at marriage" is a pithy title for a thread in a discussion forum, but isn't really an independent subject to describe. Nor is the article really about any debate: rather, it aims to be the debate. Nearly all the sources were either partisan and unreliable or are primary sources arrayed in a quote farm. Then we have the by-now-classic and entirely useless criticism vs. apologism section, an approach which virtually ensures that W. Montgomery Watt will have the very final word in any Islam-related article.Proabivouac 20:46, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: i don't see the need for a separate article on this topic, i am sure the reporting of any dispute concerning her age can be mentioned in a succinct paragraph in the Aisha article (which is pretty much already the case). ITAQALLAH 21:56, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Deletion