pre-Islamic Arabia Pre-Islamic Arabia ( ar, شبه الجزيرة العربية قبل الإسلام) refers to the Arabian Peninsula before the emergence of Islam in 610 CE. Some of the settled communities developed into distinctive civilizations. Informatio ...

, a variety of different marriage practices existed. The most common and recognized types of marriage at this time consisted of: marriage by agreement, marriage by capture, marriage by mahr, marriage by inheritance and Mutah or temporary marriage.Shah, N. (2006). Women, The Koran and International Human Rights Law. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. pp. 32. .

Marriage by agreement

The reason for intertribal marriages was to ensure the protection and possession of the children the couple would produce. Women in some intertribal marriages had more freedom and retained the right to dismiss or divorce their husbands at any time. The women had precise rituals they used to inform their husbands of their dismissal, such as 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 did not enter".Mernissi, F. (1987). Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society. Indiana University Press. pp. 75. .

Marriage by Mahr

Marriage by Mahr was the standard marriage practice. These marriages consisted of the groom or groom's father paying the bride an amount, indicating that he's capable of supporting her financially after the marriage. "

Mahr In Islam, a mahr (in ar, مهر; fa, مهريه; tr, mehir; sw, mahari; also transliterated ''mehr'', ''meher'', ''mehrieh'', or ''mahriyeh'') is the obligation, in the form of money or possessions paid by the groom, to the bride at the time ...

", to marry them. Mahr is very important in Islamic marriage. Allah has used the word "faridah" for it. It means something fixed, decided and obligatory.

Marriage by capture

Marriage by capture Bride kidnapping, also known as marriage by abduction or marriage by capture, is a practice in which a man abducts the woman he wishes to marry. Bride kidnapping (hence the portmanteau bridenapping) has been practiced around the world and ...

, often taking place during times of war, marriage by capture occurred when women were taken captive by men from other tribes and placed on the slave market of

Mecca Mecca (; officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, commonly shortened to Makkah ()) is a city and administrative center of the Mecca Province of Saudi Arabia, and the holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow ...

. From the

slave market A slave market is a place where slaves are bought and sold. These markets became a key phenomenon in the history of slavery. Slave markets in the Ottoman Empire In the Ottoman Empire during the mid-14th century, slaves were traded in special ...

these women were sold into marriage or slavery. In captive marriages men bought their wives and therefore had complete control over them. Women in these marriages had no freedom and were subjected to following their husband's orders and bearing his children. These women became their husbands' property and had no right to divorce.

Beena

Beena is a form of marriage used in pre-Islamic Arabia, in which a wife would own a tent of her own, within which she retained complete independence from her husband, according to

William Robertson Smith William Robertson Smith (8 November 184631 March 1894) was a Scottish orientalist, Old Testament scholar, professor of divinity, and minister of the Free Church of Scotland. He was an editor of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' and contributo ...

. The term was suggested by

John Ferguson McLennan John Ferguson McLennan FRSE LLD (14 October 1827 – 16 June 1881), was a Scottish advocate, social anthropologist and ethnologist. Life He was born in Inverness, the son of John McLennan, an insurance agent, and his wife, Jessie Ross. He was ...

, who noted that in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) the marriage when a husband goes to live in the wife's village is called "beena marriage", and suggested "beena" as a general term for this kind of marriage.Smith, pp. 70, 71

Notes

References

,
Kinship and Marriage in early Arabia
', (1885) {{Types of marriages, state=autocollapse Ethnography

Arabia The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّة, , "Arabian Peninsula" or , , "Island of the Arabs") or Arabia, is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plat ...

Women in pre-Islamic Arabia