Why do people get married? I was asked recently by a young woman after my lecture on the age of Lady ‘Aisha. Though the purpose of the question was vague, I answered anyhow; people marry for love, companionship, etc. Well, she followed up, how could someone find that with a 6-year-old? One of the biggest reasons we can’t comprehend the marriage of Lady Aisha and Prophet Muhammad, peace to him, is that we don’t realize how dramatically the purpose of marriage has changed over the years. Sure, there have always been true Romeo and Juliet stories, but love alone has rarely been viewed as enough of a reason to marry (as the famous story itself shows).
When we get married, in our culture, love is a given. And while the prophet, peace to him, loved his wives it’d be incorrect to assume that he loved them romantically before marriage. There were some women who he married that he did not know well before marriage like Juwayriyya bint al-Harith others like Umm Salama were well-known members of his community who were previously married, thus the chance for ‘romantic interest’ wasn’t possible. Khadija’s love for the prophet, peace to him, was well known as she recited a speech to him in which she discussed his good qualities. Thus some marriages were built on what we can call romantic love while most were not.
His marriage to Umm Salama, for instance, was a part of the tradition to care for widows and orphans, his marriage to Juwayriyyah created a bond between warring tribes and freed her people from slavery. While we may be able to look at both reasons as nice and quaint we can hardly imagine ourselves marrying for similar reasons. They may be nice additional reasons to marry someone but we’d be perturbed if they were the only reasons. Granted the slavery example is not relevant in our society but simply think of anyone marrying for political reasons over personal reasons, this was, in fact, a point of criticism for Hillary Clinton, that she stayed in her marriage for political reasons and not for love. Analogous to the example of Umm Salama, the idea that a woman is married primarily to be taken care of is met with disdain.
Our culture dictates that our marriage should be to a life partnership in which we marry our equals to whom we are in love with. And while there is little wrong with this idea (at least, not that we’ll explore in this post), it is simply is our culture’s definition of marriage, it does not transcend time or even culture. It took several Disney movies to successfully convince us that all that matters is love —you can be a poverty-stricken thief and still marry a princess as long as you love each other (Aladdin). People of other times and other cultures had different considerations.
The American family is also unique in that we are expected to live as isolated nuclear families, thus the role of husband and wife takes on even more weight than in cultures where extended families remain close. Aisha still saw her family often after marriage and when she faced difficulty in her marriage she was able to seek refuge in their home. Another aspect of marriage unique to our culture is that idea both partners should bring in an income to help support the family. While this is not a legal requirement in Islam (only men must take care of women) it was also not a cultural expectation in the prophet’s time. None of his wives were known to have an income except Lady Khadija.
When we ask, How could a nine-year-old girl get married? We are asking that question with our social context in mind, not theirs. Could an American nine-year-old girl be suitable for marriage with the normative cultural context and expectations of marriage that exist in our society? No. So while that may not help to ease our comforts we should at least be humbled by the realization that we have not honestly assessed their culture or our own if we have not realized that marriage, it’s definition and purpose, has evolved over time and still varies amongst cultures.
I address the age of Aisha specifically in a longer essay for Yaqeen Institute, the purpose of this essay was only to begin the discussion on why people get married and the way the answer to this question has varied through time and place.
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Consider picking up a copy of my book, 40 Hadith of ‘Aisha, An English collection of 40 Hadith narrated by the beloved wife, scholar, and sage ‘Aisha bint Abu Bakr, available here. Also, consider signing up for our monthly newsletter here: bythefigandtheolive.com/newsletter. For speaking engagements visit Nuriddeenknight.com
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