Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet's Legacy

by Jonathan A.C. Brown

The norm that the ulama did come to consensus on was only a general guideline: they prohibited sexual intercourse for girls ‘not able to undergo it,’ on the basis that otherwise sex could be physically harmful. If the groom and his wife or her guardian disagreed about her capacity for sex, a Shariah court judge would decide, perhaps after a female expert witness examined her.49 This was also based on the Prophet’s marriage to Aisha. The couple had concluded the marriage contract when Aisha was only six but had waited to consummate the marriage until she reached physical maturity. In the case of the Hanbali tradition followed by the Mufti of Saudi Arabia, sex was allowed when the bride was ‘at the age at which others like her have intercourse,’ specifying nine as the norm for suitability for sex on the basis of Aisha’s Hadith. A Scottish physician resident in Aleppo in the mid 1700s noted how families endeavored to marry their children off (i.e., complete the marriage contract) at a young age but that they would not consummate the marriage until the girl ‘had come of age.’ Historical evidence from nineteenth-century Ottoman Palestine suggests that husbands having sexual intercourse with wives before they reached puberty did sometimes occur. But it was rare, condemned socially and censured by Shariah court judges. Shariah courts in French Algeria in the 1850s considered it equally despicable, although colonial officials seemed unable to grasp the crucial difference between c...