3A'isha and real history! and playing with dolls!

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Mar 13, 2007 at 07:28

Our dear M&M again and again is ignorant of how one can approach history. So he provides us with Urdu sources that are late and tendentious and just a good qissa (story) by wannabe Arabs.

Now if we examine the extant literary sources between 610CE and 750CE or the end of the Umayyads in regard to 3Aisha:

1. Sources internal to the Islamic tradition (see Hoyland survey of the Islamic sources until 750CE): the sources here are silent about 3A'isha. Not a single word written about her and why is that? Yes sources can be lost but this is supposed to be the favorite wife of Abul Qasim! I do believe that the silence of the sources here is very significant.

2. Sources external to the Islamic tradition be it Greek, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Hebrew up to 750CE are also silent about 3A'isha and why is that? After all this is the favorite wife of the man whose minions invaded their lands. (see Hoyland survey).

So we do not hear about 3A'isha until Muslims start to write their own Islamic literature in the 3rd century of Islam is distant Mesopotamia and Iran and by non Arabs (just imagine that you or I are writing a biography of let us say George Washington today with no available literary sources and we happen to live in Berkina Fasso and have never been to the US ! We will for sure be writing pure fiction) and the earliest Islamic sources we have are:

1. The Sira which is a redaction of Ibn Ishaq (the grandson of a Syrian Christian slave) which is not even extant and comes to us from Ibn Hisham an Egyptian by birth and who seems to have never been to the Hijaz and Ibn Hisham makes it very clear that he is _redacting_ ibn Ishaq which means that he was changing things and was only writing what he thought was a good qissa (story) and deleting the bad. So much for real history.

Now for those of you that cannot read Arabic I suggest reading Maxime Rodison's biography of Muhammad based on the sira and on page 134 this is waht he says:

"...the faithful Abu Bakr decided it would be a good idea to strenghen his own ties with the master and bethought him of his daughter 3A'isha. She was admittedly only six years old which is too young even for Arabs....they were betrothed."

This is in the year 619-620CE and they had sex when she was about 8-9 years old. This means that she was born in 614CE and she would have been 18 years old in 632CE when Muhammad died. This also means that she was 9 years old in the year 623CE when she moved in with him.

This also means that 3A'isha cannot be an authority about the Meccan period including the funny claim that she was a witness to his first revelation in 610CE. She cannot also be an authority on the Hijra in 622CE and like I said before what does a 9 or 10 or 11 or 12 or 13 year old child would know or understand? Nothing. And this is without even examining the funny story about her playing with dolls.

So much for the bogus hadith attributed to 3A'isha.

Now if we examine Shi3a sources we find the same infromation so let us see what 3Ali Dashti (see his book "Bist o Seh Sal")says:

"3A'esha daughter of abu Bakr os-Seddiq she was 7 years old when she was betrothed and 9 years old when she was married to the prophet the gap between them was more than 40 years. Her age when he died in 11ah/632ce was 16 or 17 page 123

So you see my dear M&M you ain't Ibn Ishaq, or 3Ali Dashti for this matter, and your Urdu evidence about 3A'isha is no evidence...

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