Wednesday, November 4, 2020

The prophet Solomon's sexual excesses?

The story that the prophet Solomon had vowed he would sleep with several of his wives in one night, is known for its internal incoherences. Various reports number his wives as much as 60, 90, 99 or even 100, with whom he all had sexual relations in one night. 

In hadith science, when multiple versions of a report having the same narrator chain give different numbers everytime, the understanding is that the number was remembered differently by the narrators because of it being insignificant to the purports of the prophetic saying. 

Abu Hurairah is the sole narrator of this hadith and there is no suggestion that he heard it from the Prophet on multiple occasions, meaning the latter cannot be the reason of the contradiction. What might have happenned is the prophet spoke on one occasion of Solomon's vow to sleep with an unspecified large number of his wives in one night, as well as the number of wives he had in total. The narrators might have mixed the 2 statements.

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