Authenticity of the Hadith About the Length of Life of the Prophets
Question:
I went through that hadith by ayesha r.a mentioned by imam bayhaqqi in his book Dalail al-nabuwwah and ibn e hajar:
وأخبرني ، أن عيسى ابن مريم عليه السلام عاش عشرين ومائة سنة ، فلا أراني إلا ذاهبا على رأس الستينَ
I have checked all narrators all are trusted and authentic.
What is your view point about that?
Answer:
First, many thanks for quoting the original Arabic of the hadith. This saved me a lot of time.
The full statement quoted in the Hadith that you are referring to is as follows:
وأخبَرني أنَّهُ لم يَكن نبيٌّ كانَ بعدَهُ نبيٌّ إلَّا عاشَ بعدَهُ نصفَ عمرِ الَّذي كانَ قبلَهُ ، وأخبَرني ، أنَّ عيسى ابنَ مريمَ عليْهِ السَّلامُ عاشَ عشرينَ ومائةَ سنةٍ ، فلا أُراني إلَّا ذاهبًا على رأسِ السِّتِّينَ
And he (i.e. the Prophet – pbuh) informed me (Hazrate Fatima) that any prophet that comes after another prophet lives half of the life of the prophet before him. And he said to me, Isa ibn Maryam lived for 120 years, so I see that I am going to leave (this world) as 60. (Dala’il al-nabuwwah 7:166)
Apart from Dala’il al-Nabuwwah, this statement and its variations (where instead of length of life, length of prophethood is referred to) have been narrated in other sources like Musnad Ishaq, al-Ahad wa al-Mathani, Sharh al-Mushkil al-athar and Mujam al-Kabir.
First, please note that it will not be enough to verify the reliability of the narrators of a hadith, in order to consider that hadith authentic. This is only looking at the hadith in terms of its narrators (rijal). The Hadith also needs to be sound and reliable in terms of content (diraya), meaning, it should not be out of the line with the Qur’an, or against more reliable narrations or against known facts or rationality.
I will explain the problem of the Hadith you mentioned in terms of the content, however before that I would like to point out that even in terms of narrators this hadith is not fully flawless.
Most of the narrations are coming from either Muhmmad ibn Abdullah ibn Amr ibn Uthman, known as al-Dibaj or Yaheya ibn Ja’dah.
Although there are positive views about Al-Dibaj, there are also some views as reported by Zahabi, that indicate to his weakness.
Yaheya ibn Ja’dah is trusted however he has never met Hazrate Fatima. It can be assumed that he has heard it through another trusted narrator however we read in Silsila ah-ahadith al-za’ifah from al-Albani that the main flaw of the chain of narrators that goes to Yaheya is Ubad ibn Ishaq al-Attar who is considered seriously weak.
Tabarani in Tabaqat has narrated this hadith with two different chains of narrators however both of them contain weak or untrusted narrators like Hakim ibn Jubayr and Ma’ruf ibn Kharrabudh.
Overall, the chains of narrators of the hadith cannot be considered to be fully reliable.
In terms of content the hadith has two major problems:
1. The most reported news is that the prophet (pbuh) died at the age of 63 (not 60). Also the reports suggest that Jesus (pbuh) died at the age of 33 or 32 (not 120), as narrated by Biyhaqqi after quoting the above hadith from ibn al-musib and wahb ibn munabbih respectively.
2. Basically what the hadith suggests is that the length of life of every prophet is half of the length of life of the prophet before him. There are 25 prophets just mentioned in the Qur’an and we know that there were more than them in the history. Even if we limit our scope to these 25 prophets, and even if we count out a few of them on the basis that they were prophets at the same time (like Lut and Ibrahim – pbut) we will still have around 15 to 20 prophets who came one after the other. It does not need much mathematical knowledge to appreciate that with the above rule and the above number of prophets (as a minimum), the length of the life of earlier prophets will be an unrealistic six figure number! (1)
On the basis of the above analysis I consider the quoted hadith to be either fabricated or very inaccurately reported.
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Footnote:
1. As mentioned above, other versions of the hadith refer to a different rule, where the figure that will be half is not the length of the life of a prophet, but the length of his prophethood. This rule leads to even more unrealistic figures!
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October 2013
I went through that hadith by ayesha r.a mentioned by imam bayhaqqi in his book Dalail al-nabuwwah and ibn e hajar:
وأخبرني ، أن عيسى ابن مريم عليه السلام عاش عشرين ومائة سنة ، فلا أراني إلا ذاهبا على رأس الستينَ
I have checked all narrators all are trusted and authentic.
What is your view point about that?
Answer:
First, many thanks for quoting the original Arabic of the hadith. This saved me a lot of time.
The full statement quoted in the Hadith that you are referring to is as follows:
وأخبَرني أنَّهُ لم يَكن نبيٌّ كانَ بعدَهُ نبيٌّ إلَّا عاشَ بعدَهُ نصفَ عمرِ الَّذي كانَ قبلَهُ ، وأخبَرني ، أنَّ عيسى ابنَ مريمَ عليْهِ السَّلامُ عاشَ عشرينَ ومائةَ سنةٍ ، فلا أُراني إلَّا ذاهبًا على رأسِ السِّتِّينَ
And he (i.e. the Prophet – pbuh) informed me (Hazrate Fatima) that any prophet that comes after another prophet lives half of the life of the prophet before him. And he said to me, Isa ibn Maryam lived for 120 years, so I see that I am going to leave (this world) as 60. (Dala’il al-nabuwwah 7:166)
Apart from Dala’il al-Nabuwwah, this statement and its variations (where instead of length of life, length of prophethood is referred to) have been narrated in other sources like Musnad Ishaq, al-Ahad wa al-Mathani, Sharh al-Mushkil al-athar and Mujam al-Kabir.
First, please note that it will not be enough to verify the reliability of the narrators of a hadith, in order to consider that hadith authentic. This is only looking at the hadith in terms of its narrators (rijal). The Hadith also needs to be sound and reliable in terms of content (diraya), meaning, it should not be out of the line with the Qur’an, or against more reliable narrations or against known facts or rationality.
I will explain the problem of the Hadith you mentioned in terms of the content, however before that I would like to point out that even in terms of narrators this hadith is not fully flawless.
Most of the narrations are coming from either Muhmmad ibn Abdullah ibn Amr ibn Uthman, known as al-Dibaj or Yaheya ibn Ja’dah.
Although there are positive views about Al-Dibaj, there are also some views as reported by Zahabi, that indicate to his weakness.
Yaheya ibn Ja’dah is trusted however he has never met Hazrate Fatima. It can be assumed that he has heard it through another trusted narrator however we read in Silsila ah-ahadith al-za’ifah from al-Albani that the main flaw of the chain of narrators that goes to Yaheya is Ubad ibn Ishaq al-Attar who is considered seriously weak.
Tabarani in Tabaqat has narrated this hadith with two different chains of narrators however both of them contain weak or untrusted narrators like Hakim ibn Jubayr and Ma’ruf ibn Kharrabudh.
Overall, the chains of narrators of the hadith cannot be considered to be fully reliable.
In terms of content the hadith has two major problems:
1. The most reported news is that the prophet (pbuh) died at the age of 63 (not 60). Also the reports suggest that Jesus (pbuh) died at the age of 33 or 32 (not 120), as narrated by Biyhaqqi after quoting the above hadith from ibn al-musib and wahb ibn munabbih respectively.
2. Basically what the hadith suggests is that the length of life of every prophet is half of the length of life of the prophet before him. There are 25 prophets just mentioned in the Qur’an and we know that there were more than them in the history. Even if we limit our scope to these 25 prophets, and even if we count out a few of them on the basis that they were prophets at the same time (like Lut and Ibrahim – pbut) we will still have around 15 to 20 prophets who came one after the other. It does not need much mathematical knowledge to appreciate that with the above rule and the above number of prophets (as a minimum), the length of the life of earlier prophets will be an unrealistic six figure number! (1)
On the basis of the above analysis I consider the quoted hadith to be either fabricated or very inaccurately reported.
---------------
Footnote:
1. As mentioned above, other versions of the hadith refer to a different rule, where the figure that will be half is not the length of the life of a prophet, but the length of his prophethood. This rule leads to even more unrealistic figures!
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October 2013