What is the sunnah mahr in your local currency right now?

In many places around world, mahr prices are out of control. It seems many Muslims have forgotten the words of Rasulullah ﷺ:

“The most blessed marriage (nikah) is the one with the least expenses.”

[Sunan Abu Dawud, 2117]

There are clear benefits to reviving the sunnah in every aspect of our lives, and the mahr is no exception. So what is the sunnah mahr?

How Much is the Sunnah Mahr?
It is not technically haram to have a high mahr, as long as it does not cause harm, hardship, or push people into haram (and this does happen a lot!)

However, in all things, it is best to look to the example of the Prophet ﷺ. So what was the mahr of the mothers of the believers, radhi Allah anhun? How much was the mahr that the Prophet ﷺ gave to his wives?

There are several things to consider when trying to answer this question.

First is the literal mahr.

The Mahr Itself
Sheikh Salih al Munajjid (may Allah preserve him and free him) has done a good job of documenting the mahr of the mothers of the believers (radhi Allahu anhun) on his website, IslamQA:

“Muslim narrated in his Sahih (no. 1426) that Abu Salamah ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman said: “I asked ‘Aishah, the wife of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), what the mahr given by the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) was. She said: ‘The mahr that he gave to his wives was twelve uqiyah and a nashsh.’ He said, Do you know what a nashsh is? He said, she said it is half of an uqiyah. That was five hundred dirhams. This was the mahr given by the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) to his wives.”

Ibn Khaldun said:
“The consensus of the scholars from the beginning of Islam and the time of the Sahabah and the Taabi’in has been that the shar’i dirham is that of which ten coins weigh seven mithqals of gold. The uqiyah is forty dirhams of this type, and on this basis it is seven-tenths of a dinar… All of these amounts are agreed upon by scholarly consensus (ijma’).” (Al-Muqaddimah, p. 263)

Based on this, the weight of a dirham in grams is 2.975 grams.

So the mahr of the wives of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) was 500 x 2.975 = 1487.5 grams of silver.”
This doesn’t tell the whole story, however.

The Sunnah Mahr in Modern Currency
There are a few problems with the article on IslamQA. Firstly, it has not been updated to reflect inflation and the rising price of silver.

The most obvious way to calculate the modern mahr is to take the current market value of silver, and multiply it by 500 dirhams or 1487.5 grams of silver.

As of 21 Shawwal 1444 (13 May 2023), the price of silver was at $0.77 per gram.

0.77 x 1487.5 = $1,145.38

At the time the article on IslamQA was written, that number was closer to $400.

Purchasing Power
Even the updated number will not necessarily give us an accurate picture, because the purchasing power of silver changes over time. For example, if we calculate the cost of a meal, a suit of clothing, a camel, or a house, 500 dirhams might be significantly different than it is today.

So we can propose different calculation methods based on different data about the cost of things during the life of the Prophet ﷺ.

The Direct Silver Method
The most literal method is to simply look at 500 dirham and the literal weight of silver. This makes for a much less expensive mahr than other methods, since the value of silver has declined over the years relative to gold and other goods.

The Livestock Calculation Method
We also have reports about the cost of sheep in the time of the Prophet ﷺ.

“Urwa narrated that the Prophet ﷺ gave him one Dinar so as to buy a sheep for him. `Urwa bought two sheep for him with the money. Then he sold one of the sheep for one Dinar, and brought one Dinar and a sheep to the Prophet ﷺ. On that, the Prophet ﷺ invoked Allah to bless him in his deals.”

[Sahih al Bukhari, 3643]

1 dinar at that time was worth 12 dirhams, which means 500 dirhams could buy 42 sheep. Today, the cost of sheep usually ranges from $100 to $300, which gives us a mahr range of $4200 to $12,600.

The Cost of Living Method
Muhammed Siddiqi, a professor at the Aligarh Muslim University, estimated the cost of living of a family of 6 to be around 3000 dirham per year in Medina during the time of the Prophet ﷺ.

Taking this as a base, we can look at cost of living in different countries, and calculate the mahr to be 1/6th of the cost of living for a family of 6.

According to one estimate, cost of living estimates range from $294 per month to $3,585 in Monaco, the world’s most expensive country. According to these calculations, the global average cost of living is around $937 per month.

A family of six would have lower expenses due to sharing housing costs. At the time of writing, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the cost of living for a family of 6 at around $7,400 per month, which is a bit more than double than their estimate of cost of living for a single person, at $3,400. Based on this ration, we can increase cost of living estimates for a single person by 220% to get the figure for a family of 6.

This means that the cost of living in inexpensive countries for a family of 6 could be as low as $646 and as high as $7,887 in Monaco. Per year, this works out to a range between $7,752 and $94,644.

By this method, on the low end, the mahr could be calculated at around $1,292 (very close to the silver weight!) and at the high end, $15,774.

It’s likely that standard of living in Medina was much more similar to that of low income countries today than high income countries, so that shows a remarkable stability of value over the centuries.

The Gold Exchange Rate Method
The exchange rate from dinar to dirham in the time of the Prophet ﷺ was 12 dirham to 1 dinar. This means that silver price has gone down substantially relative to gold over the centuries.

1 dinar is approximately 4.25 grams of gold, and 1 gram of gold is around $64 at the time of writing. This means 1 dinar is currently worth around $272, which would buy 353 grams of silver, or over 117 dirham!

500 dirham in the time of the Prophet ﷺ could have bought at least 41 dinar, or 174.25 grams of gold. At the current spot price of gold, that’s over $11,263.

Which is the Best Method?
The main problem with the standard of living methodology is that people have all kinds of luxuries today that may not actually be necessary. The prevalence of riba in the economy has distorted living expenses by driving up the price of housing, and many people today throw away large amounts of food and still consider themselves poor.

For this reason, cost of living is probably the most flawed method of looking at the mahr, but it’s still interesting to think about.

I would argue that the livestock method is the most accurate, because the price of sheep is not heavily affected by factors like technology or riba. A sheep herder in Somalia can be competitive with a British sheep herder with all the modern technology. This means the real inputs of producing sheep remain relatively steady, whereas silver and gold can be heavily affected by mining technology.

For our mahr calculator, we’re including the following calculation methods:

Silver weight method: The current market value of 500 dirham worth of silver.
Relative gold method: The current market value of 500 dirham worth of gold in the time of Rasulullah ﷺ.
Sheep method (sheep price $150): The value of 500 dirham worth of sheep if each sheep cost 12 dirham.
Cost of living (world average): 1/6th of the world average annual cost of living for a family of 6.
Cost of living (national average): 1/6th of your national average cost of living for a family of 6.
Do you think our calculations are good? Share with your friends and family! Think our calculations are bad? Advise us with your evidence and we will update the model.