Maududi's Rejection of Hadith About Solomon

 بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

الصلاة والسلام عليك يا سيدي يا رسول الله

In the Name of Allah, the Rahman, the Merciful

Blessing and Peace upon you, Apostle of Allah

According to the Bible, the Prophet and King, Solomon, had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines (1 Kings 11:3).

The Holy Prophet Muhammad, sall Allahu alayhi wasallam, affirmed that Solomon had a large number of wives, and relayed that once Solomon resolved to sleep with a number of his wives, according to different versions of the Hadith, numbering sixty, or seventy, or ninety or ninety-nine or a hundred, for the purpose of producing boys who would grow up to be warriors in the cause of Allah. But since he did not say “if Allah wills”, none of them conceived except one who produced a child with a birth defect.

The gist of the Hadith is undoubtedly authentic as it has been reported in both Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. As for the discrepancy in the number of wives Solomon went to, ranging from sixty to a hundred, it appears to me that he had hundreds of wives, as mentioned in the Bible, but resolved to sleep with a select number of them that particular night. Whether the precise number was sixty, or seventy, or ninety, or ninety-nine or a hundred is not that important, except that we should know that it was an unusually large number of wives to sleep with in a single night, and that none of them conceived except for one is the lesson to be learnt about the virtue of saying in sha Allah “if Allah wills”.

Regrettably, some individuals in modern times have ridiculed and denied this Hadith. Among them was Abul-Ala Maududi, founder of the so-called Jamaat Islami, a political party in the Subcontinent that aims to establish an Islamic state. He said:

لیکن حدیث کا مضمون صریح عقل کے خلاف ہے 

کیا یہ توقع کی جاسکتی ہے کہ حضور  نے یہ بات واقعے کے طور پر بیان کی ہوگی

“The third section says that the Prophet Solomon one day swore that he would go in to his 70 wives that night, and from each a warrior would be born, who would fight in the cause of Allah, but while he said this he did not say: In sha Allah ‘if Allah so wills’. Consequently, only one wife conceived and from her also a defective child was born, whom the midwife brought and placed on his throne. This Hadith has been reported by Hadrat Abu Hurairah from the Holy Prophet and it has been related by Bukhari and Muslim and other traditionists in several ways. In Bukhari itself this tradition has been related at different places in different ways. At one place the number of the wives has been stated as 60 and at others 70 or 90 or 99 or 100. As far as the chains of the transmitters are concerned, most of the traditions have strong chains, and their authenticity cannot be disputed from the point of view of the principles of reporting. But the subject-matter of the Hadith is patently against reason, and proclaims aloud that such a thing could not have been said by the Holy Prophet, as reported. But, on the contrary, he might have probably mentioned it as an example of the foolish and nonsensical tale-telling of the Jews, and the hearer might have misunderstood that the Holy Prophet himself had stated it as an event. To force the people to accept such traditions only on the strength of their chains of transmitters would be making religion a matter of mockery and jest. Everyone can calculate for himself that even in the longest night of winter the interval between the Isha and the Fajr Prayers cannot be of more than ten to eleven hours. If the minimum number of the wives be 60, it would mean that the Prophet Solomon (peace be upon him) went on having intercourse with them continuously for 10 to 11 hours that night at the rate of six wives per hour, without having a moment’s rest. Is it practically possible? And can it be expected that the Holy Prophet might have related it as an event?” (Tafhim ul-Quran, v.4, p.337)

Maududi’s objection to the Hadith is clearly from a materialist paradigm which does not take into account that a Prophet sleeping with an extraordinary large number of his wives in one night may seem impossible for an ordinary person, but with the power of God, Who has power over all thing, why shouldn’t we Muslims accept such a miracle?

Instead of outright rejecting the Hadith, could he not instead have at least attempted to explain it even in a way that doesn’t involve anything supernatural or miraculous, such as saying that he began the process of sleeping with a large number of his wives at night, and continued to do so even past the time of Fajr into the morning? I am not suggesting that such an interpretation is necessary in order to accept the Hadith, but that it is better to make an interpretation than to outright dismiss the Hadith and ridicule it.

For the Sunni Muslims are agreed that Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim are the most authentic collections of Hadith, and this Hadith in particular has been reported in both. The sincere Muslim does not argue or reject Hadith but rather submits to the words of his master, the Holy Prophet, sall Allahu alayhi wasallam.

The modern-day trend of skepticism and even outright rejection of Hadith is extremely harmful to faith. The difference between us Sunni Muslims and the Hadith-rejecting deviants is that we incline to accept any Hadith that has a sound chain back to the Prophet, peace be upon him, even if its content can’t fully be grasped by the intellect. That is a problem with the limitation of our intellect and not a problem with the Hadith.