An Evaluation of Caetani's Views on the Prophet Muḥammad's Marriage to Zaynab bint Jahsh

Abstract

Orientalism studies, which have been given importance in the Western world since the last quarter of the 18th century, were considered important in Italy as well as in the whole West. After the translation of Annali Dell'Islām by one of the most important representatives of Italian orientalism, Leone Caetani's with the name of Islamic History by Hüseyin Cahid Yalçın, this work became well-known in Turkiye and made an impact in scientific circles. So much that this translated work caused outrage in the public opinion of the Republic of Turkiye. Leone Caetani has significantly benefited from the sources of Islamic history in his work that he created over many years. Sometimes he remained faithful to the traditional Islamic understanding of history, but sometimes he tried to enrich his expressions with fiction that did not reflect the facts. However, while doing this, he also used disrespectful expressions towards the Prophet. He put forward many wrong views about the life of the Prophet. Some of them are about the family life and marriages of the Prophet of Islam. Along with these determinations, the main aim of our study is to determine the issues that the Italian orientalist Caetani discussed the marriage of the Prophet with Zaynab bint Jahsh, to examine their correspondence and accuracy in Islamic historical sources, and to identify the points where Caetani contradicted himself. As a matter of fact, the issue of the Prophet's marriage with Zaynab has remarkable aspects, and Orientalists also emphasize this issue. While doing this, we briefly touched upon the evaluations of Leone Caetani in his study, which is the primary source of our work, about the Prophet's wives and marriages. In the continuation, in the main body of our notification, we have included the rumors and evaluations in Caetani’s work about Propet’s marriage with Zaynab. We examined whether these narratives have equivalents in the main sources of Islamic history and made analyzes, criticisms, and evaluations over his narrations. We consulted the works of Ibn Hishām, al-Ṭabarī, and al-Wāqidī, whom Caetani referred to as sources. As a result, in this voluminous work of Caetani, which was prepared as a result of years of hard work, it can be seen that he could not maintain objectivity in his statements about Muḥammad’s marriage with Zaynab, it is understood that he made insulting accusations against Muḥammad on this subject and produced stories that were the product of his own imagination. As a matter of fact, the fact that he reduced this marriage, which had important consequences in terms of Islamic family law, to simple and human interests, shows that Caetani acted with prejudice in this regard.