A Dictionary of Islam / Being a cyclopedia of the doctrines, rites, ceremonies, and customs, together with the technical and theological terms, of the Muhammadan religion. Papyras Classics

← A Dictionary of Islam / Being a cyclopedia of the doctrines, rites, ceremonies, and customs, together with the technical and theological terms, of the Muhammadan religion.

Chapter 90

I.—The Condition of Women before the time of Muḥammad

Although the condition of women under Muslim law is most unsatisfactory, it must be admitted that Muḥammad effected a vast and marked improvement in the condition of the female population of Arabia.

Amongst the Arabs who inhabited the peninsula of Arabia the condition of women was extremely degraded, for amongst the pagan Arabs a woman was a mere chattel. She formed the integral part of the estate of her husband or father, and the widows of a man descended to his son or sons by right of inheritance, as any other portion of patrimony. Hence the frequent unions between step-sons and mothers-in-law, which were subsequently forbidden by Islām, were branded under the name of Nikāḥu ʾl-Maqt, or “odious marriages.”

The pre-Islāmic Arabs also carried their aversion to women so far as to destroy, by burying alive, many of their female children. This fearful custom was common amongst the tribes of Quraish and Kurdah. For although they used to call the angels “daughters of God,” they objected (as do the Badawī to this day) to female offspring, and used to bury their infant daughters alive. This horrible custom is referred to in the Qurʾān, where it is said, Sūrah vi. 138: “Thus have their associates made seemly to many of the idolaters the killing of their children to destroy them.” And, again, Sūrah xvi. 60, 61: “When any one of them has tidings of a female child, his face is overclouded and black, and he has to keep back his wrath. He skulks away from the public for the evil tidings he has heard;—is he to keep it in disgrace, or to bury it in the dust?”

It is said the only time on which ʿUs̤mān shed a tear, was in the days of ignorance, when his little daughter, whom he was burying alive, wiped the dust of the grave-earth from his beard.

The ancient Arabic proverbs illustrate the ideas of pre-Islāmic Arabia as to the position of women, e.g.:—

“A man can bear anything but the mention of his wives.”

“Women are the whips of Satan.”

“Trust neither a king, a horse, nor a woman.”

“Our mother forbids us to err and runs into error.”

“What has a woman to do with the councils of a nation?”

“Obedience to a woman will have to be repented of.”