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reprehensible in marriage and not permitted” touch on whether the father must consult virgins, non-virgins, or both; how their consent is expressed; and whether he can compel them over expressed objections. 12 Though several authorities ' Abd al-Razzaq cites allowed the marriage of minors without consent, only two suggested that compulsion of b a ligh virgins was permitted. Dozens took the view that a b a ligh female, whether virgin or non-virgin, could not be married against her wishes. 13
    For Malik and Shafi ' i, the relevant issue was virginity, not minor- ity. Unlike Abu Hanifa, they held the permission hadith to be compat- ible with paternal compulsion in marriage (though their interpretive strategies vary), even when the bride had arrived at her majority, so long as she remained virginal. Let us compare the treatment of this hadith in the Muwa tt a © and the Mudawwana. Where the permission hadith ap- peared in the Muwa tt a © , Malik did not take it to mean that a father was bound to seek his virgin daughter’s consent. Instead, the Muwa tt a © fol- lowed the hadith with an account of two companions who married off their virgin daughters without consulting them. Malik affirmed that such contracts were binding and justified them as Medinan practice: “This is the way we do things.” 14
    The Muwa tt a © here expresses a characteristic stance about the liv- ing example of the Medinan community: it constitutes an authoritative proof of correct practice. Rather than viewing the acts of ordinary Mus- lims as a potential competitor to the spoken transmission of Muham- mad’s words and deeds, the customary practice of Medinans, passed down from many to many, is more reliably authentic than any indi- vidual hadith could be. 15 Thus, Malik feels no need to reconcile these actions with the apparent sense of the Prophet’s declaration that a vir- gin’s permission must be sought. The Mudawwana, by contrast, prefaces
    these accounts with an explanation: when the Prophet ordered the marriage guardian to ask a virgin’s permission to marry her off, he was referring only to a fatherless virgin girl (al-bikr al-yat i ma) . 16 The term wal i , “marriage guardian,” was understood to exclude reference to fa- thers who served in this capacity. 17 In addition to repeating the anec- dotes given in the Muwa tt a © , the Mudawwana presented further evidence of a father’s right to marry off his daughters without their consent. It cites Ibn Wahb’s report, ultimately depending on a narration from al-Hasan al-Basri, that “the Messenger of God, may God’s blessings and peace be upon him, married two of his daughters to ' Uthman b. ' Affan and did not consult them.” 18 The Mudawwana ’s provision of evidence and ratio- nales, we may surmise, implicitly responds to competing Hanafi views; the assertion that such marriages were the practice in Medina was insuf- ficient as a rebuttal, since Hanafi authorities did not recognize Medinan customary usage as a proof.
    Both the Mudawwana and the Umm describe a father’s power over his daughter in terms of her virginity rather than her age or maturity. The Umm characteristically seeks to reconcile the doctrine of compul- sion with the seemingly obvious sense of the permission hadith. 19 As a first step, Shafi ' i argues that exemplary Prophetic practice (sunna) granted a father the power of compulsion over his virgin daughters. Though the Muwa tt a © and Mudawwana presented anecdotes about Com- panions and the Prophet marrying off their daughters, the Umm fo- cused on the Prophet’s own marriage to ' A ' isha, concluded when she was six or seven (Shafi ' i admits to uncertainty about her exact age) and con- summated when she was nine. 20 In Shafi ' i’s view, she was still a minor when consummation occurred. 21 The binding nature of Muhammad and ' A ' isha’s union establishes fathers’ power to contract binding mar- riages for their minor virgin daughters: “Abu Bakr’s