Aisha’s Marriage and her Historic Role

place at the age of six and her formal departure at the age of nine, the word nikah, according to the custom of Arab society, means the settlement of the marriage proposal, or engagement, while the formal departure refers to the actual marriage. (Ghulam Ahmad Parwez, Letters to Tahirah, “The Age of Aisha,” pp. 1-2) This explanation, too, is not correct. When the word nikah appears in Hadith, it must be understood in its recognized meaning of marriage contract. To take the word nikah in any other sense, evidence must be found within the text of the Hadith itself, and no such evidence exists. Moreover, this explanation does not remove the real objection. Whether the age of marriage is taken as six or nine, in either case it remains a marriage at a young age. What, then, is gained by this explanation? Similarly, some people put forward another argument. They say that Aisha al-Siddiqah criticized certain narrations of the Companions and said: “I do not say that these people lie, but ears sometimes make mistakes in hearing.” Several such criticisms are found in Bukhari and Muslim. This shows that a narrator may sometimes be highly reliable, yet the narration he reports may contain an error. Sometimes this happens because the narrator has heard only part of a statement. Sometimes he misunderstands the meaning, and sometimes he forgets. Regarding the