My PhD thesis, entitled “The Hadith of ʿĀʾišah’s Marital Age: A Study in the Evolution of Early Islamic Historical Memory”, is now publicly available. The full unabridged version can be accessed here: I originally submitted both an abridged and unabridged version of my thesis for examination, and my examiners advocated for the unabridged version to … [Read more…]
Since the publication of Javad Hashmi’s article regarding my DPhil research, some readers have quite understandably asked for more details. The full DPhil thesis should be available soon (and will be made available on this blog), but in the meantime, I can at least offer a summary thereof to give a better idea of the … [Read more…]
In an ongoing series of articles, I have been exploring the much-debated question of the origins of proto-Sunnī Hadith criticism: in Part 1 (here), I summarised the relevant lists and reports recorded in the traditional Sunnī sources; in Part 2 (here), I summarised the last century or so of secular scholarship thereon, canvasing all of … [Read more…]
In late September of 2022, I passed the final exam (viva/defence) for my PhD at Oxford University, pending minor corrections. The subject of my thesis was the famous and controversial hadith about the Islamic prophet Muḥammad’s marriage to his wife ʿĀʾišah bt. ʾabī Bakr at a young age: according to the dominant version of the … [Read more…]
I was asked on Twitter to apply an isnad-cum-matn analysis to the famous “Hadith of the Cloak”, an exegetical hadith relating to Q. 33:33. There are actually several hadiths that seem to be referred to as such, including a tradition attributed to ʾUmm Salamah, and another attributed to ʿĀʾišah. In this article, I will be … [Read more…]