Muhammad, the Qur'an and Islam
rejection of this tradition was motivated by the desire to hide anything
scandalous, by claiming that 1) Khadija, as wealthy and independent, could
have married whom she pleased and 2) that the literary device of having
someone get drunk to approve a marriage is known from other Arabic
works. In Middle Eastern culture, however, women, irrespective of their
rank or personal wealth, generally must be given in marriage by a male
relative. The identification of literary devices, moreover, does not preclude
historicity, as later generations are often inspired to action by deeds
described in earlier works. Based on the information provided in the Qur'an
(93:68a), that Muhammad was an orphan deprived of wealth and high
social rank (43:30), there must have been resistance within the family of
Khadija against such a marriage. Furthermore, it is well documented that
Muslim traditionalists often suppressed information which they regarded as
being negative (Ibn Hisham chose not to mention how Khadija married).
One must question also the possible motivation for Muslims to have
invented and propagated the tradition about the role of Khadija's father at
her marriage, if it were not true. Andrae, Mohammed, p. 41, gives the
tradition of the drunkeness of Khadija's father without making further
comment on variant accounts.
[31] This remark also implicitly concurs with the testimony of Qur'an
43:30, that Muhammad was not a notable person among the Quraysh.
[32] In Tabari, History, vol. 6, p. 49, n. 60, Watt and McDonald state that
Muslim sources appear to have had no problems with Khadija being 40 and
bearing seven children. Buhl, Muhammeds, p. 119, n. 33, gives, among
others, Ibn Sa`d, Tabaqat, vol. 8, 10, p. 2, as showing Khadija to have been
28 years old when she married Muhammad.
[33] Guillaume, Muhammad, p. 83; Ibn Sad, Classes, vol. 1, 1, p. 150; Tabari, History, vol. 6, pp. 48 f. Only Ibn Sad shows `Abdullah as having
been born after Muhammad's call.
[34] This view was held by Sprenger and others; see Buhl in SEI, p. 391.
Buhl, Muhammeds, p. 120, n. 36, gives Halabi, III, 335, 17 as an example
of an Islamic source. The reasons for accepting this tradition as historical
are that Muslims would have no logical reason for inventing this, and yet a
great number of reasons for later trying to suppress this information. See
nn. 64-66, below.