A Dictionary of Islam Being a cyclopedia of the...

“The fatal blot in Islām is the degradation of women.… Yet it would be hard to lay the blame altogether on Moḥammad. The real roots of the degradation of women lie much deeper. When Islām was instituted, polygamy was almost necessitated by the number of women and their need of support; and the facility of divorce was quite necessitated by the separation of the sexes, and the consequence that a man could not know or even see the woman he was about to marry before the marriage ceremony was accomplished. It is not Moḥammad whom we must blame for these great evils, polygamy and divorce; it is the state of society which demanded the separation of the sexes, and in which it was not safe to allow men and women freely to associate; in other words, it was the sensual constitution of the Arab that lay at the root of the matter. Moḥammad might have done better. He might boldly have swept away the traditions of Arab society, unveiled the women, intermingled the sexes, and punished by the most severe measures any license which such association might at first encourage. With his boundless influence, it is possible that he might have done this, and, the new system once fairly settled, and the people accustomed to it, the good effects of the change would have begun to show themselves. But such an idea could never have occurred to him. We must remember that we are dealing with a system of the seventh century, not of the nineteenth. Moḥammad’s ideas about women were like those of the rest of his contemporaries.

He looked upon them as charming snares to the believer, ornamental articles of furniture difficult to keep in order, pretty playthings; but that a woman should be the counsellor and companion of a man does not seem to have occurred to him. It is to be wondered that the feeling of respect he always entertained for his first wife, Khadeejeh, (which, however, is partly accounted for by the fact that she was old enough to have been his mother,) found no counterpart in his general opinion of womankind: ‘Woman was made from a crooked rib, and if you try to bend it straight, it will break; therefore treat your wives kindly.’ Moḥammad was not the man to make a social reform affecting women, nor was Arabia the country in which such a change should be made, nor Arab ladies perhaps the best subjects for the experiment. Still he did something towards bettering the condition of women: he limited the number of wives to four; laid his hand with the utmost severity on the incestuous marriages that were then rife in Arabia; compelled husbands to support their divorced wives during their four months of probation; made irrevocable divorce less common by adding the rough, but deterring, condition that a woman triply divorced could not return to her husband without first being married to some one else—a condition exceedingly disagreeable to the first husband; and required four witnesses to prove a charge of adultery against a wife—a merciful provision, difficult to be fulfilled. The evil permitted by Moḥammad in leaving the number of wives four instead of insisting on monogamy was not great.

Without considering the sacrifice of family peace which the possession of a large harem entails, the expense of keeping several wives, each of whom must have a separate suite of apartments or a separate house, is so great, that not more than one in twenty can afford it. It is not so much in the matter of wives as in that of concubines that Moḥammad made an irretrievable mistake. The condition of the female slave in the East is indeed deplorable. She is at the entire mercy of her master, who can do what he pleases with her and her companions; for the Muslim is not restricted in the number of his concubines, as he is in that of his wives. The female white slave is kept solely for the master’s sensual gratification, and is sold when he is tired of her, and so she passes from master to master, a very wreck of womanhood. Her condition is a little improved if she bear a son to her tyrant; but even then he is at liberty to refuse to acknowledge the child as his own, though it must be owned he seldom does this. Kind as the Prophet was himself towards bondswomen, one cannot forget the unutterable brutalities which he suffered his followers to inflict upon conquered nations in the taking of slaves. The Muslim soldier was allowed to do as he pleased with any ‘infidel’ woman he might meet with on his victorious march. When one thinks of the thousands of women, mothers and daughters, who must have suffered untold shame and dishonour by this license, he cannot find words to express his horror.

The strict legislation regarding women as expressed in Muḥammadan law, does not affect their position amongst wild and uncivilized tribes. Amongst them she is as free as the wild goats on the mountain tops. Amongst the Afreedees in the Afghān hills, for example, women roam without protection from hill to hill, and are engaged in tending cattle and other agricultural pursuits. If ill-treated by their husbands, they either demand divorce or run away to some neighbouring tribe. Not a few of the tribal feuds arise from such circumstances.

Amongst the Bedouins (Badawīs), Mr. Palgrave tells us, their armies are led by a maiden of good family, who, mounted amid the fore ranks on a camel, shames the timid and excites the brave by satirical or encomiastic recitations. (Arabia, vol. ii. p. 71.)

The influence which Afghān women have exercised upon Central Asian politics has been very great, and, as we have already remarked, the Muḥammadan State of Bhopal in Central India has for several generations past been governed by female sovereigns. [CONCUBINES, DIVORCE, MARRIAGE, WIVES.]

According to the injunctions of the Prophet, a twentieth of the complete fine for murder is due for mūṣiḥah; a tenth for hāshimah; three-twentieths for munaqqilah; and a third for āmmah. All other fines are left to the discretion of the judge.

“De Sacy and Caussin de Perceval concur in fixing the date of the introduction of Arabic writing into Mecca at A.D. 560 (Mém. de l’Acad., vol. 1. p. 306; C. de Perc., vol. i. p. 294.) The chief authority is contained in a tradition given by Ibn Khallicân, that the Arabic system was invented by Morâmir at Anbar, whence it spread to Hira. It was thence, shortly after its invention, introduced into Mecca by Harb, father of Abû Sofiân, the great opponent of Mahomet. (Ibn Khallicân, by Slane, vol. ii. p. 284.) Other traditions give a later date; but M. C. de Perceval reconciles the discrepancy by referring them rather to the subsequent arrival of some zealous and successful teacher than to the first introduction of the art (vol. i. p. 295). I would observe that either the above traditions are erroneous, or that some sort of writing other than Arabic must have been known long before the date specified, i.e. A.D. 560. Abd al Muttalib is described as writing from Mecca to his maternal relatives at Medîna for help, in his younger days, i.e. about A.D. 520. And still farther back, in the middle of the fifth century, Cussei (Quṣaiy) addressed a written demand of a similar tenor to his brother in Arabia Petræa. (Kâtib al Wâckidi, 11½; Tabari, 18, 28.)

“The Himyar or Musnad writing is said by Ibn Khallicân to have been confined to Yemen; but the verses quoted by C. de Perceval (vol. i. p. 295) would seem to imply that it had at one period been known and used by the Meccans, and was in fact supplanted by the Arabic. The Syriac and Hebrew were also known and probably extensively used in Medîna and the northern parts of Arabia from a remote period.

“In fine, whatever the system employed may have been, it is evident that writing of some sort was known and practised at Mecca long before A.D. 560. At all events, the frequent notices of written papers leave no room to doubt that Arabic writing was well known, and not uncommonly practised, there in Mahomet’s early days. I cannot think, with Weil, that any great ‘want of writing materials’ could have been felt, even ‘by the poorer Moslems in the early days of Islam.’ (Mohammed, p. 350.) Reeds and palm-leaves would never be wanting.” (Muir’s Mahomet, Intro., p. viii.)

The intimate connection of the Arabic alphabet, as it is now in use, with the Hebrew, or rather Phœnician alphabet, is shown not only by the form of the letters themselves, but by their more ancient numerical arrangement, known by the name of Abjad, and described under that head on page 3 of the present work. This arrangement, it will be remembered, is contained in the six meaningless words:—