Talk:Asma bint Abi Bakr

Edits in April 2014

Asma’s Date of Birth

Recent changes have altered Asma's birthdate to 592. This is apparently because Asma died in 692, and according to her grandson Hisham ibn Urwa, she was 100 years old.

However, Hisham would have calculated this in lunar years. The solar year is about 11 days longer than the lunar, and 100 x 11 days is about three years. Therefore Asma would have been only 97 solar years old, giving her a birthdate of 595 CE (as the original form of this article stated).Petra MacDonald 04:32, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Ten Years Older than Aisha?

Several versions of this article have included the claim that Asma was “ten years older” than her sister Aisha. Since this information is of minimal interest to the article, it seems to be an unsubtle attempt (for polemic reasons) to suggest that Aisha was much older than nine when she married Muhammad. In particular, it is odd that this alleged age-difference was mentioned next to the statement about Asma’s age at death instead of in its natural place, the beginning of the article, where Asma’s family-members are listed.

The “almost all historians” who say that Asma was ten years the elder are all quoting a single narrator, Abdul Rahman ibn Abi Zinnaad. He was born too late to be an eyewitness, did not cite his sources, and is considered a weak narrator on technical grounds. Important historians like Al-Dhahabi, Ibn Kathir and Ibn Hajar quote Ibn Abi Zannaad, but they never say they agree with him. For example, Al-Dhahabi quotes on the same page another tradition stating that the age-difference was “a few more than ten years.” Since it is very well attested that Aisha was born in 614, and there is no serious doubt that Asma was born in 595, it would appear that Ibn Abi Zinnaad’s “ten years” calculation was incorrect. While we could insert a paragraph in the main article explaining all this, it really doesn’t seem to be of sufficient importance to the life of Asma. In an article of this length, surely it is sufficient to give her dates of birth and death and the fact that she was Abu Bakr’s firstborn?Petra MacDonald 04:32, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Note: I have edited my original statement above because I had attributed the quote to the wrong person. Dhahabi (same person as Zahabi) was only quoting Ibn Abi Zinnaad (a different person). The link to the secondary source was broken so I have removed it. I have how seen the primary source (Dhahabi vol. 2 entry #143) with my own eyes.Petra MacDonald 10:22, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Servant or Slave?

An anonymous editor removed two references to slavery. The hypothetical one (“Asma did not own a slave”) was removed completely, and the factual one (“Abu Bakr gave Asma a slave”) was altered to “servant”, with Asma’s personal commentary (“I felt set free”) removed. The truth is, the early texts did not always distinguish between “servant” and “slave”. For example, a free female servant who did a slave’s work could be indiscriminately referred to as a jariya, the everyday word for a “female slave”. So without more information, we do not know this person’s legal status.

However, the referenced translator, Aisha Bewley, used the English word “slave”. It should not be changed unless there is clear evidence from the Arabic original that “servant” would be more appropriate. The fact that Abu Bakr “gave” this person (as a gift?) suggests slavery (but does not prove it). Of course, Asma might have freed the slave later; that is a completely separate issue.Petra MacDonald 04:32, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Wife-Beating

The same anonymous editor removed the reference to Asma being beaten by her husband. The reason given was that this is “not in Tabari,” whose book “Tahthib al-Athar was never finished.”

In fact the incident was referenced to a secondary source, the Iranian scholar Ali Dashti, who cited two early sources for the story. One was Zamakhshari, and no reason was given for discrediting this reference. The other was the Tahthib al-Athar, with no explanation of how its unfinished nature implies that Dashti could not have accessed the information from the part that was finished.

The expression “X was harsh towards women,” here referenced to Ibn Saad, is a euphemism that means “X beat his wives”. So I see nothing implausible about Dashti’s assertion that he found a more specific reference to Al-Zubayr’s wife-beating twice over.Petra MacDonald 04:32, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Age relation to sister in death section

The sentence " According to almost all the historians, Asma, the elder sister of Aisha, was 10 years older than Aisha" does not belong in the section about her death, contains weasel words that are not supported by reliable sources, and it a direct quote (without attricution) from http://www.discoveringislam.org/aisha_age.htm. I tried to remove it and it keeps being re-added. Hopefully someone else can help address and weigh in on this. The sources being given are difficult to check due to not being in English nor readily available online, but the statement contradicts well sourced information elsewhere that indicates this is not the consensus view of "almost all historians". As noted above, this view is isolated to a very small minority of sources. UnequivocalAmbivalence (talk) 14:15, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

I must notify that the above user is WP:INCOMPETENT and WP:NOTHERE. The sources are available online in the Arabic language. If you lack competence to read in Arabic, then this is not our problem. Editing articles without being competent enough to edit them will only lead to WP:Disruptive editing. The statement is well-sourced and it perfectly matches with what the sources are saying.--5.107.81.93 (talk) 14:38, 28 November 2015 (UTC)