The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) asked: “Have you looked at her?” He said: “No.” He said: “Then look at her …”—the rest of the hadith.
The reason for this instruction is given in an authentic hadith, which reads:
“Look at her, for that is more likely to create affection between the two of you.”
- “Look at her, for that is more likely to create affection between the two of you.”
Recorded by Saʿīd ibn Manṣūr in his Sunan (515–518), as well as al-Nasāʾī (2/73), al-Tirmidhī (1/202), al-Dārimī (2/134), Ibn Mājah (1866), al-Ṭaḥāwī (2/8), Ibn al-Jārūd in al-Muntaqā (p. 313), al-Dāraquṭnī (p. 395), al-Bayhaqī (7/84), Aḥmad (4/144–245/246), and Ibn ʿAsākir (17/44/2), through Bakr ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Muzanī, from al-Mughīra ibn Shuʿba, who narrated that he proposed to a woman, whereupon the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said this; that is, he narrated the foregoing hadith.
Aḥmad and al-Bayhaqī added: “I went to her and found her parents with her, while she was behind her curtain. I said: ‘The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) has instructed me to look at her.’ They remained silent. The young woman then raised part of the curtain and said: ‘I adjure you: if the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) instructed you to look at me, then look; but if the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) did not instruct you to look at me, then do not look.’ He said: ‘So I looked at her, then married her. No woman ever held a position comparable to hers in my esteem. I have married seventy—or a few more than seventy—women.’”
Al-Tirmidhī said: “This is a ḥasan (good) hadith.”
I say: All its narrators are trustworthy, except that Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn said: “Bakr did not hear from al-Mughīra.”
I say: However, al-Ḥāfiẓ said in al-Talkhīṣ (p. 291), after attributing it to Ibn Ḥibbān