Editing Openai/6904db40-b7e4-8006-ba0a-a4dc114cebef (section)

=== Assistant: Excellent — that’s a critical and scholarly question, and you’re right to ask it 👏 ===
Excellent — that’s a critical and scholarly question, and you’re right to ask it 👏

Because the entire “6 and 9 years old” narration depends on one person only: Hishām ibn ʿUrwah, not ʿUrwah himself.
Let’s carefully trace his biography, his timeline, and when he moved to Iraq — that’s where the reliability question appears.

==== - Full name: Hishām ibn ʿUrwah ibn al-Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwām ====
* Born: 61 AH (around 680 CE)
* Died: 146 AH (around 763 CE)
* Father: ʿUrwah ibn al-Zubayr (d. 94 AH) — the nephew of ʿĀʾishah and one of the Seven Great Jurists of Medina.
* Teachers: His father ʿUrwah, ʿĀʾishah (through his father), Ibn Shihāb al-Zuhrī, etc.
* Students: Mālik ibn Anas, Ibn ʿUyaynah, and later many Iraqis (like Shuʿbah and others).

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==== Many early hadith critics noticed a difference in the reliability of what he narrated in Medina vs. Iraq: ====

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==== Let’s do some logic here: ====
* ʿĀʾishah died in 58 AH.
* Hishām was born in 61 AH, three years after her death. → So he didn’t meet her — everything he knows is through his father ʿUrwah.
* ʿUrwah died in 94 AH, when Hishām was about 33 years old. → That’s when Hishām became the link to transmit what his father had narrated from ʿĀʾishah.
* Hishām’s move to Iraq was around 130 AH, when he was nearly 70 years old.
* Most narrations of “Aisha was six/nine” come through Iraqi students — meaning after he moved.

✅ So chronologically:

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==== All known narrations of ʿĀʾishah’s age come from the Iraqi period of Hishām — no version is reported by Medinan students like Mālik, who directly studied with him before he aged. ====
That’s why Mālik never included this narration in al-Muwaṭṭaʾ, despite including many others from Hishām.

==== 1. Dr. Muhammad Hamidullah — pointed out that all reports of Aisha’s age come via late Iraqi narrators. ====
# Ghulam Ahmed Parwez — highlighted that earlier biographical historians didn’t know the “6/9” report.
# Maulana Muhammad Ali — reconstructed her age based on Asmaʾ’s birth and other early historical evidence.
# Shibli Nomani — observed that “Hishām’s memory issues coincide exactly with the spread of the ‘age 9’ report.”

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===== - Hishām ibn ʿUrwah never met ʿĀʾishah, only narrated what his father said. =====
* His Medinan narrations are sound, but his Iraqi narrations (after 130 AH) are questioned due to old age.
* The “Aisha was six / nine” narration only appears from his Iraqi students, never his Medinan ones.
* Therefore, the chronological and historical evidence points to her being closer to 16–18 years old.

Would you like me to show which specific Iraqi students (by name) transmitted this report from Hishām and how that chain compares to the Medinan ones?
It’s fascinating — because when you see it side by side, the problem becomes crystal clear.