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 Hijab 5:

Muhammed's Women

 After justifying Muhammed's marriage with Zaynab, 'Allah' did the same to Muhammed's matrimony to several women. Muhammed not only went further then the average Arab concerning his relationship with women, but he tried constantly to justify his acts by 'revelations' from 'Allah'. The Koran allows Muslim men to have four wives, excluding concubines and slave women. Muhammed, on the other hand, married at least sixteen wives, in addition to concubines, and stayed married to nine of them until his death. 'Allah' made sure Muhammed would have a plenty of women to save him from celibacy, as he revealed:

Prophet, We have made lawful to you the wives to whom you have granted dowries and the slave-girls whom Allah has given you as booty; the daughters of your paternal and maternal uncles and of your paternal and maternal aunts who fled with you; and any believing woman who gives herself to the Prophet and whom the Prophet wishes to take in marriage. The privilege is yours alone, being granted to no other believer.28

This 'revelation' descended after Muhammed had married more than four wives. Muhammed did not ask 'Allah's' permission he just followed his desires and conveniently had revelations to justify his acts. In the next verse 'Allah' sent down another revelation:

It shall be unlawful to you [Muhammed] to take more wives or to change your present wives for other women, though their beauty pleases you, except where slave-girls are concerned. Allah takes cognisance of all things.29

It seems that in verse 52, 'Allah' cancels the 50th, and prohibits Muhammed from taking any more wives or change his present wives for new ones. This sura was 'revealed' in Medina in AH 5. At that time, he was only married to a handful of women, but later he married several more, in a complete violation of verse 52.
  'Allah' had prohibited Muslims to follow Muhammed's example in this matter, which is rather strange if they are supposed to follow his sunna in all things. However, after looking at Muhammed's relationships with women one begins to understand why this dubious side of the Prophet was not to be imitated.
     When referring to Muhammed's relationships with women, one has to mention the fact that he had, it is believed, a happy marriage with his first wife, Khadija. Indeed, Muhammed was monogamous until after her death, but then he took another 15 wives and some concubines. According to tradition, Muhammed stated the following: "Three things of your world have been made desirable to me: perfume, women, and my delight in prayer."30 No wonder Nabia Abbot described him as "the prayerful and perfumed prophet of Islam, [who] was avowedly a great lover of ladies..."31 Muhammed even visualised his perfect Paradise in the hereafter, and he stated:

The statement of Allah, Beautiful women restrained [i.e. chained] in pavilions. Allah's Apostle said, 'In Paradise there is a pavilion made of a single hallow pearl sixty miles wide, in each corner there are wives who will not see those in the other corners, and the believers will visit and enjoy them.'32

Thus Paradise will be, according to Muhammed's fancy, to visit and have sex with other men's wives!
 Muhammed and other Meccans had been accustomed to practise a strict monogamy, but one has to wonder how his alleged desire for women was quenched. No evidence has been found revealing whether Muhammed had any concubines during his marriage with Khadija; nor do we know to what extent he was engaged in the qiyan promiscuity in Mecca, if at all. We must, however, assume that he did 'play the field' as any other Meccan of noble birth would have done, despite his marriage. The fact is, that Muhammed had an unusual sexual appetite, as the hadith says:

Narrated Qatada: Anas bin Malik said, 'The Prophet used to visit all his wives in a round, during the day and the night and they were eleven in number.' I asked Anas, 'Had the prophet strength for it'' Anas replied, 'We used to say that the Prophet was given the strength of thirty.'33

Thus, in order to quench his thirst for women, he married frequently, and enjoyed several concubines as the dessert.
 The most likely explanation for Muhammed change from monogamy to polygamy, is that Meccan customs denounced polygamy. Muhammed did not marry more than one woman until he became a Statesman in Medina. But was not polygamy common in Mecca and Medina? The answer is no. The best data on marriage in pre-Islamic Mecca is Ibn Saad's eight volume Book of Great Classes.  This standard biographical source of the early Muslim community, and their ancestors, includes a whole volume of the biographies of early Muslim women; its first part discusses Muhammed's wives and female relatives, but the later part gives data on 574 women among the early Muslims. A methodical analysis of Ibn Saad's book was performed by Gertrude Stern in her Marriage in Early Islam (1939). She discovered and proved beyond doubt, that "there was no fixed institution of marriage at all" in pre-Islamic Arabia. Fatima Mernissi discusses her discovering and stated:

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.34

Thus, why did Muhammed introduce polygamy to both Medina and Mecca? What changes in gender relations occurred with the advent of Islam? Mernissi responds:  "According to my reading of the historical evidence, Islam banished all practices in which the sexual self-determination of women was asserted."35 That included the mu'ta marriage, which was intended to be short-lived anyway, as a legalisation of extra-marital copulation. What Islam basically did, was to denounce free sex, and thus the qiyan harlots in Mecca and Medina lost some of their best clients. Indeed, Muhammed great-grandmother, Salma from Medina, practised mu'ta, and "she would only marry on condition that she should retain control of her own affairs. If she disliked a man, she left him."36
 One of the first commandments given to a Muslim convert, was to denounce zina. This concept indicates an illicit sexual intercourse, that is, copulation outside marriage, both fornication and adultery. Mernissi states once more:  "Before Islam, zina was not considered a sin, a crime against religion. With Islam, it became a crime against God, His laws, and the established order."37 Thus, why did it happen, that Muhammed introduced massive polygamy in Mecca and Medina, at the same time as he abolished extra-marital sex? The answer must evidently be: Muhammed introduced polygamy in order to legally satisfy his own lust and sexual desires and of those Muslims who had been accustomed under jahiliya to practise zina and enjoy the services of the qiyan.
 The number of Muhammed's wives was 16, added to by at least 8 concubines or slave women. In addition to those women, Muhammed had agreed to marry Leila bint al-Khatim, who was discouraged by her tribe to wed the aged Prophet. She, as well as other women, had given herself in marriage (hiba) to Muhammed, who had accepted without hesitation. There were three women, Asma bint al-Numan, Mulaika bint Kaab and Fatima bint al-Dahhak, who divorced Muhammed straight after their wedding, simply by saying 'I take refuge in Allah from thee'. Fatima Mernissi discusses the fact that during Muhammed's time, women could get a divorce without any hassle. She states: "Hiba ... was outlawed after the Prophet died. If he was the last Arab man to be chosen freely, he was also probably the last to be repudiated by them." 38
 Muhammed's marriages are said to have been of a different nature. Some of his wives had belonged to clans he had conquered by force. Others were women he had lusted for and married with pleasure. Those beautiful women who were married to Muhammed became an object of jealousy to Aisha and some of his earlier wives, who were either too young or too old to be able to satisfy Muhammed's sexual needs. With such a group of women, one wonders how he could have satisfied them and maintained equality between the various women he had access to.

 

Notes:

28 The Koran 33:50-51.
29 The Koran 33:52.
30 Farah, Marriage and Sexuality, 66.
31 Abbot, Aishah, vii.
32 Quoted in Morey, Islamic Invasion, 203.
33 Ibid, 190.
34 Mernissi, Beyond the Veil, 67-68.
35 Ibid, 66-67.
36 Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad,59.
37 Mernissi, Beyond the Veil, 58.
38 Ibid, 51-52.