What do you think the significance is of Muhammad having a child bride?

__________________
InterfaithForums.com-Where your ideas and beliefs count.

The marriage was contracted between her father Abu Bakr and the Prophet... Abu Bakr was from one side of the Quraish clan while Muhammad was from the Hashimite side...thus it was hoped to cement a bond between Abu Bakr and the Prophet.

Later when Ali who was also a Hashimite became Caliph, Ayesha raised up in rebellion against him..and this was largely in my view part of a struggle between the Umayya and Hashimate parts of the clan with the Umayya eventually becoming the temporal administrators of Islam for many years.

There's been quite a lot of discussion on this on some other forums and you will see various opinions expressed.

My own view is that these Hadiths were collected two hundred years from verbal traditions passed down and are ergo historically suspect..They also were sometimes fabricated by various parties who had something to gain by citing them so I'm a skeptic on this.

I've also found that chronological ages during the period of early Islam are very suspect.

The age of Khadijih for instance was supposed to be forty when she married Muhammad and they had six children togather during their marriage. Even with today's medical science, this would be a very major accomplishment I believe...

Three ages are given for the Prophet's grandson Husayn when he was martyred at Karbilah...one has him at fifty three, another at fifty five and a third at fifty eight.

It's also unsure actually when Muhammad Himslef was born...most say it was in "the year of the Elephant" which was supposed to be when an Ethiopian army invaded to destroy the Kaaba. They had at least one elephant and probably more but this one white elephant who was totally uncooperative...


Anyway I always take these hadiths with a hefty "grain of salt".

- Art

__________________
"it benefits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God."
- Johannes Kepler

Well, the fact that she was six when the marriage was performed and it was not consumated until later shows what the tradition was. In tribes such as the Arabs of the Saudi lands even today, maturity for men and women is pegged at the first nocturnal emission and the first menses. This was the measure in the tribes of the Hebrew a milennia before, and it was obviously the case in Arabia at the time of the Prophet.

Marriages were arranged in advance to cement ties between various clans and septs within the tribes/ Marriage was not a romantic consideration at the time, it was a statement of treaties alliances and bloodlines.

Regards,
Scott