64 No god but God
After having lived a monogamous life with Khadija for more than
twenty-five years, Muhammad, in the course of ten years in Yathrib,
married nine different women. However, with very few exceptions,
these marriages were not sexual unions but political ones. This is not
to say that Muhammad was uninterested in sex; on the contrary, the
traditions present him as a man with a robust and healthy libido. But
as Shaykh of the Ummah, it was Muhammad’s responsibility to forge
links within and beyond his community through the only means at
his disposal: marriage. Thus, his unions with Aisha and Hafsah linked
him to the two most important and influential leaders of the early
Muslim community—to Abu Bakr and Umar, respectively. His mar-
riage to Umm Salamah a year later forged an important relationship
with one of Mecca’s most powerful clans, the Makhzum. His union
with Sawdah—by all accounts an unattractive widow long past the age
of marriage—served as an example to the Ummah to marry those
women in need of financial support. His marriage to Rayhana, a Jew,
linked him with the Banu Qurayza, while his marriage to Mariyah, a
Christian and a Copt, created a significant political alliance with the
ruler of Egypt.
Nevertheless, for fifteen hundred years—from the medieval Popes
of the Crusades to the Enlightenment philosophers of Europe to
evangelical preachers in the United States—Muhammad’s wives have
been the source of numerous lurid attacks against the Prophet and the
religion of Islam. In response, contemporary scholars—Muslim and
non-Muslim alike—have done considerable work to defend Muham-
mad’s marriages, especially his union with Aisha, who was nine years
old when betrothed to the Prophet. While these scholars should be
commended for their work in debunking the bigoted and ignorant
critiques of anti-Islamic preachers and pundits, the fact is that Mu-
hammad needs no defense on this point.
Like the great Jewish patriarchs Abraham and Jacob; like the
prophets Moses and Hosea; like the Israelite kings Saul, David, and
Solomon; and like nearly all of the Christian/Byzantine and Zoroastrian/
Sasanian monarchs, all Shaykhs in Arabia—Muhammad included—
had either multiple wives, multiple concubines, or both. In seventh-
century Arabia, a Shaykh’s power and authority was in large part
determined by the size of his harem. And while Muhammad’s union