Beyond the Veil

by Fatema Mernissi

  Muslim marriage gave absolute male authority a stamp of holy approval. One source of data on marriage in early Islam is the eighth volume of the Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kubra (‘The Book of Great Classes’) by Ibn Saad.3 The work as a whole is a classification of the early Muslim community. The eighth volume, On Women, is a compilation of biographical information about the first women converts to join the Prophet’s entourage. The first part of the book contains information on women related to the Prophet either by blood or marriage ties: his female cousins, aunts, daughters, and wives. The second part is a compilation of biographical data on 574 women who were among the first converts.

  A systematic analysis of Ibn Saad’s book was undertaken in 1939 by Gertrude Stern in order to assess marriage in the early Muslim community.4 She did not try to interpret her findings or to make them fit any particular theory. Her work is therefore a mere description of marriage processes: betrothal, consent, guardianship, dowry, adultery, and the dissolution of marriage ties. She found no ‘fixed institution of marriage’. She describes a diversity of sexual unions whose ‘outstanding feature appears to be the looseness of marriage ties in general and the lack of any legal system for regulating procedure.’5

  If one takes into consideration the preceding facts in conjunction with other factors such as the absence of any contract or legal guardian, the exclusion of the wife from her husband’s inheritance, the easy methods of divorce, the lack of a period of seclusion after divorce and widow-hood – the idda – the conclusion must be reached that there was no fixed institution of marriage and that marriage ties were in no sense regarded as binding.6

  The work of Gertrude Stern is impressive in its rigorous attempt at objectivity and strict analysis of the data, yet her assertion that ‘there was no idea of a fixed institution of marriage’ can be misleading. This can mean either that there was no fixed institution of marriage at all or that there was no institution of marriage similar to models Stern considered stable. The difference is enormous. From her description it seems likely that what she meant was that there was no fixed and meticulously regulated institution similar to the juridically complex procedure of Muslim marriage.

  According to Ibn Saad’s biographical data, polygamy existed neither in Mecca, a sophisticated urban centre with trading relations reaching deep into the Byzantine world, nor in Medina, the basically agrarian community to which the Prophet emigrated. Stern wrote:

  There is no reliable evidence of the practice of polygamy in pre-Islamic times at al-Madinah [Medina], as understood in the Islamic era, that is, the system of a man marrying a number of women and maintaining them in one or more establishments. . . . Moreover, from a study of the genealogical tables which I have compiled, it is to be observed that there is no indication of a well-defined system of polygamy.7

  She arrived at identical conclusions for Mecca, adding:

  It is possible that Meccan men contracted marriages with tribal women, but that they were either of a temporary character or the woman remained with her own people, but as is the case of the Medinans there is no evidence of a man supporting and maintaining more than one wife at a times.8

  Here Gertrude Stern draws attention to a vital detail usually overlooked in the analysis of pre-Islamic marriages: the uxorilocal character of the marriage.9 Polygamy in an uxorilocal setting is an altogether different institution from polygamy in a virilocal one. Uxorilocal polygamy could very well co-exist with a similar polyandrous right of the woman, who might be visited by many men.

  The Prophet’s great-grandfather, Hashim, contracted an uxorilocal marriage. The offspring of the union, the Prophet’s grandfather, Abd al-Muttalib, was raised by his mother.10 Hashim (who was from Mecca) contracted the union during a trip to the town of Medina, where he asked Salama Bint Amr for her hand and married her. She bore him Abd al-Muttalib. Hashim left Medina and went back to Mecca, leaving the child behind with its mother. After Hashim’s death, his brother went to Medina to fetch the boy, then an adolescent. It took three days of negotiations between Salama and the uncle to decide the fate of the child, who said that he would leave his mother only if she herself ordered him to do so. Salama is described as a woman who

  . . . because of her noble birth and her high position among her people, never allowed herself to marry anyone except under the condition that she would be her own master and retain the initiative to leave her husband if she disliked him.11

  Muslim historians link sexual self-determination to the woman’s high social position.12 Al-Baghdadi’s Kitab al-Muhabbar contains a chapter entitled ‘Women who kept complete autonomy after their marriage, who stayed with their husband if they wanted and left him if such was their desire, and who behaved in this manner because of their prestigious position (qadrihinna) and their high rank (sharafuhunna).’ The names of women of the Arab aristocracy then follow, with Salama Bint Amr heading the list. It is understandable that Ibn Hisham, the historian of the Sira (‘biography’) of the Prophet, would seek some justification other than matriliny to explain Salama’s attitude, since matriliny was condemned as prostitution by the time the Sira was written.

  The Prophet’s own father, Abdallah, contracted a matrilineal marriage with Amina Bint Wahb.

  When Abdallah Ibn Abd al-Muttalib married Amina Bint Wahb, he stayed with her for three days. Such was the prevailing custom when the man decided to marry a woman who stayed among her own tribe.13

  Amina evidently stayed with her own kin. When Abdallah died on his way home to Mecca from a trip, Amina was seven months pregnant with the Prophet. The child stayed with his mother until her death. He was then six years old. Only after her death was he taken in charge by his father’s kin.14

  Women’s independence from their husbands and their insistence on sexual self-determination seem to have been possible only because they were backed by their own people. This independence persisted even with the growing affirmation of patrilineal trends in the Arab society of Muhammad’s time, when the principle of marriage by capture or purchase was gaining ground.15

  Marriage by capture or purchase implies a structure of virilocal polygamy. This was a novel idea in the Prophet’s time, as is evidenced by his own inconsistent attitude towards it. Although he himself married thirteen women, he adamantly opposed Ali, his son-in-law, when the latter decided to contract a second marriage and thus provide Fatima, the Prophet’s favourite daughter (who was not particularly known for her beauty), with an unwelcome co-wife.

  I will not allow Ali Ibn Abi Talib and I repeat, I will not allow Ali to marry another woman except if he divorces my daughter. She is a part of me, and what harms her, harms me.16

  The Prophet appears to have known that it was harmful for a woman to share a husband. Another illustration is provided by the Ansar, the Prophet’s political supporters. They thought polygamy so degrading that they urged one of their daughters, Leila Bint al-Khatim, not to marry the Prophet.17 They argued that she was too proud. She might get jealous and make trouble in the household of the Prophet and thus provoke tension between him and his allies. A third example is that of the Prophet’s wife (or concubine) Rayhana, whom he is supposed to have divorced because she was too jealous to bear sharing him with her co-wives. He remarried her when she regained control over her feelings.18 But probably the most outstanding instance of rebellion against polygamy is that of Amina, the Prophet’s great-granddaughter. Whenever she contracted a marriage, she insisted on keeping total control. Before marrying Zaid Ibn Umar she set these conditions: ‘He will not touch another woman. He will not prevent her from spending his money, and will not oppose any decision she might make. Otherwise she will leave him.’19

  Women’s Resistance to Islam

  Amina recognized that women were much happier before, the Prophet’s time. When asked why she was so funny and humorous and her sister, Fatima, so deadly serious, she answered

  It is because she [Fatima] was named after her Muslim grandmother [Fatima is the daughter of the Prophet] while I was
named after my pagan great-great-grandmother, who died before Islam’s arrival. [Amina is the mother of the Prophet.]20

  This idea is corroborated by historical incidents, some violent and bloody like the case of the so-called harlots of Hadramaut, others more peaceful like the insistence of early Muslim women on their freedom of action in initiating and ending sexual unions.

  After the death of the Prophet in June 632, a broad movement of apostasy swept the Arabian peninsula, and the tribes refused to pay taxes to the Prophet’s successor, the first caliph, Abu Bakr.21 The movement was severely repressed and ended one year later, after fierce battles between Islam and its opponents. One of the movements of apostasy was led by a group of women who celebrated the death of the Prophet in a joyful atmosphere. The event is recorded in Ibn Habib al-Baghdadi’s Kitab al-Muhabbar.22

  There were in Hadramaut six women, of Kinda and Hadramaut, who desired the death of the Prophet of God; they therefore [on hearing the news] dyed their hands with henna and played on the tambourine. To them came out the harlots of Hadramaut and did likewise so that some twenty-odd women joined the six.23

  The caliph received two letters relating the event and asking him to punish the blasphemous women. Both letters were written by men. The caliph’s answer to the governor of Kinda, ordering him to retaliate, reads as follows

  In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful. From Abu Bakr to al-Muhajir Ibn Abi Umayyah. The two righteous servants [of God] who remained steadfast in their religion when the greater part of their tribes apostasized (may God grant them the reward of the righteous for this and smite the others with the fate of the wicked) have written to me declaring that before them there are certain women of the people of Yemen who have desired the death of the Prophet of God, and that these have been joined by singing-girls of Kinda and prostitutes of Hadramaut, and they have dyed their hands and shown joy and played on the tambourine in defiance of God and in contempt of His rights and those of His Prophet. When my letter reaches you, go to them with your horses and men, and strike off their hands. If anyone defends them against you, or stands between them and you, expostulate with him, telling him the enormity of the sin and enmity which he is committing; and if he repents, accept his repentance, but if he declines, break off negotiations with him and proceed to hostilities – God will not guide the traitors! However, I think, nay I am sure, that no man will condone the evil acts of these women or hinder you from smiting them away from the religion of Muhammad as one might smite off the wings of a gnat.24

  If we interpret this opposition between a group of women and Islam as a clash of interests, we have to analyse what interests were at stake. First we must identify the parties. The identity of the first caliph is indisputable, but that of the women is not. The Muslim document dismisses them summarily as harlots. But this ‘harlotry’ was unusual indeed. The Muslim historian Ibn Habib al-Baghdadi identifies twelve of them. Two were grandmothers, one a mother, and seven were young girls. Three of the twelve belonged to the ashraf (‘the noble class’) and four to the tribe of Kinda, a royal tribe which provided Yemen with its kings.25 Some of the men who intervened to defend the women against the Muslim governor’s forces were from this same royal tribe. What kind of harlotry is practised by elderly grandmothers, young girls, the most noble of women, the members of princely houses? And why, in any case, was the clapping of tambourines by twenty-six women in the faraway villages of south Arabia so threatening to the powerful Muslim military order?

  A.F.L. Beeston explains the conflict between the women and Islam as a clash between the old religion and the new.26 He speculates that the new religion deprived these women dissidents of their position as pagan priestesses of the old temples, where religious prostitution was practised. This speculation is not altogether warranted by the text.

  The text, however, does make two things clear. First, some women opposed Islam because it jeopardized their position. Whatever that position was, it was evidently more advantageous than the one Islam granted them. Second, the opposition between these women and Islam was clearly grounded in the sexual field. The fact that the caliph labelled his opponents as harlots implies that Islam condemned their sexual practices, whatever they were, as harlotry. I believe that the incident of the harlots of Hadramaut is an example of Islam’s opposition to prevailing sexual practices in pre-Islamic Arabia.

  Matrilineal Trends in Pre-Muslim Society

  Robertson Smith pointed to the sixth and seventh centuries as a transitional phase in Arab kinship history. He argued that the period of Islam’s appearance had a multiplicity of sexual unions belonging to two trends: a matrilineal trend, which he calls sadiqa marrriage,27 and a patrilineal trend he calls ba’al or dominion marriage.28 The two systems, which existed side by side down to the Prophet’s time,29 were diametrically opposed to each other. Not only were they governed by different kinship laws, but they ‘imply fundamental differences in the position of women and so in the whole structure of social relations’.30 The difference between the two systems can be summarized as

  Matrilineal Trend

  Patrilbical Trciid

  Kinship rule

  Child belonged to the mother’s group

  Child belonged to the father’s group

  Paternity rule

  Physical paternity unimportant: the genitor does not have rights over his offspring

  Physical paternity important because the genitor must be the social father

  Sexual freedom of women

  Extended, her chastity has no social function

  Limited, her chastity is a prerequisite for the establishment of the child’s legitimacy

  Status of women

  Depends on her tribe for protection and food

  Depends on her husband for protection and food

  Geographical setting of marriage

  Uxorilocal

  Virilocal

  Sadiqa marriage (from sadiq, ‘friend’, and sadiqa ‘female friend’) is a union whose offspring belong to the woman’s tribe. It is initiated by a mutual agreement between a woman and a man and takes place at the house of the woman, who retains the right to dismiss the husband. In ba’al marriage the offspring belong to the husband. He has the status of father as well as of his wife’s ba’al, or ‘lord’, ‘owner’.

  In such a marriage

  The wife, who follows her husband and bears his children, who are of his blood, loses the right freely to dispose of her person. Her husband has authority over her and he alone has the right of divorce.31

  Robertson Smith concludes that Islam accelerated the transition from matriliny to patriliny by enforcing a marriage institution that had much in common with the patrilineal dominion marriage, and by condemning all matrilineal unions as zina.

  Certainly Mecca made no exception to the rule that Arabian ba’al marriage was regarded as constituted by capture or by purchase, that the marital rights of the husband were a dominion over his wife, and that the disposal of her hand did not belong to the woman herself but to her guardian. For all this is still true even under Islam; the theory of Muslim law is still that marriage is purchase, and the party from whom the husband buys is the father, though by a humane illogicality the price becomes the property of the woman, and the husband’s rights are not transferable. And so, though Islam softened some of the harshest features of the old law, it yet has set a permanent seal of subjection on the female sex by stereotyping a system of marriage which, at bottom, is nothing else than the old marriage of dominion.32

  Sadiqa marriage was characterized by sexual freedom for women, symbolized by their sovereignty over the marital household, namely the tent in which they received their husbands.

  The women in jahiliya, or some of them, had the right to dismiss their husbands, and the form of dismissal was this: if they lived in a tent, they turned it around so that if the door faced east, it now faced west, and when the man saw this, he knew that he was dismissed, and he did not enter.33

  It is eviden
t that this kind of marriage could only be uxorilocal, since the woman remained with her tribe and depended on it. The symbolic gesture of dismissal was known as ‘she draws a curtain between the husband and herself’ and was used in the case of Muhammad Ibn Bashir, whose wife ‘drew a curtain between him and her and disappeared’.34

  The variety of sexual unions practised in pre-Islamic Arabia is best described by the reliable Muslim traditionalist Bukhari:

  Ibn Shihab said, Urwah Ibn al-Zubair informed him that Aisha, the wife of the Prophet (God bless and preserve him) informed him that marriage in jahiliyah was of four types:

  One was marriage of people as it is today, where a man betroths his ward or his daughter to another man, and the latter assigns a dowry [bride price] to her and then marries her.

  Another type was where a man said to his wife when she was purified from her menses, send to N. and ask to have intercourse with him; her husband then stays away from her and does not touch her at all until it is clear that she is pregnant from that [other] man with whom she sought intercourse. When it is clear that she is pregnant, her husband has intercourse with her if he wants. He acts thus simply from the desire for a child. This type of marriage was known as Nikah al-Istibda [‘the marriage of seeking intercourse’].

  Another type was where a group of less than ten men used to visit the same woman and all of them to have intercourse with her. If she became pregnant and bore a child, when some nights had passed after the birth she could send for them, and not a man of them might refuse. When they had come together in her presence, she would say to them, ‘You [plural] know the result of your acts. I have borne a child and he is your [singular] child, N.’ naming whoever she will by his name; her child is attached to him and the man may not refuse.