It is this kind of marriage, in all probability, that the prophet means when he inveighs against “fornication.”
By the mot’a marriage the woman does not leave her home; her tribe preserves the rights it has over her, and her children do not belong to the husband. In short, the conjugal union is only contracted for a fixed time. These mot’a marriages had nothing dishonourable in them, and did not in the least prevent the women from finding fresh husbands when, at the expiration of the lease, they became once more free.[207]
The custom of mot’a marriage was long prevalent in Arabia. Ammianus speaks of it,[208] saying that the wife received a price or indemnity from her temporary husband, and that, if it happened to the contracting parties to wish to continue to live together at the expiration of the time fixed, they inaugurated a fresh and more durable union by a symbolic ceremony, during which the wife offered to her husband a javelin and a tent.
The prophet himself decided with great hesitation to condemn the mot’a marriage. A tradition makes him say that “if a man and a woman agree together, their union should last for three nights, after which they may separate or live together, as they please.”[209]
In fact, the mot’a marriage was only abolished in the time of Omar; and it is important to remark with regard to it, that this mode of marriage, singular as it may appear to us, was, for the woman, very superior to the servitude of the Mussulman harem. It was a personal contract, in which her parents did not interfere, and which did not degrade her from the rank of an independent person to the humiliation of merely being a thing possessed. The mot’a marriage indicates, besides, very free manners, as is attested by a number of facts and traditions, particularly certain religious rites of the Canaanites, the Aramites, and the pagan Hebrews, and also the licentious practices of women and girls in the temple of Baalbek.
By degrees the mot’a marriage gave place to a definite marriage, the ba’al marriage, by which the young girl went to live with her husband and owed him fidelity. Marriages of this kind were sought at first by the chiefs, to whom they assured alliances. As a consequence these unions became honourable, and dethroned the ancient matrimonial custom.[210] Henceforth the women who continued to live in the ancient mode were dishonoured, and treated as prostitutes, whose dwelling was indicated by a special flag. At the same time the taste for paternity was born in men, and, in case of doubt on this matter, sages whose profession it was, declared the signs by which a man could recognise his own offspring.[211]
IV. Polyandry in General.
I have quoted or made a summary of nearly all the information that has reached us on the subject of ancient and modern polyandry. From thence we may conclude that in no way are we authorised to consider this form of conjugal union as having been general. Still it has become a necessity in a good number of gross societies. It has specially prevailed in countries badly supplied with food, where the struggle for existence was severe, where warlike conflicts with neighbouring tribes were incessant, and where, in order to endure, the community was forced to diminish the impedimenta and the useless mouths. In such conditions, men still savage or barbarous have recourse without hesitation all over the world to female infanticide; and as, on the other side, the chiefs and strong men monopolise as many women as possible, the debauchery of unmarried women and polyandrian households become necessary palliatives.
We have seen that there are two principal kinds of polyandry—the matriarchal and patriarchal. In the first, the woman or girl does not quit her family or her gens; sometimes even she is permitted the right of choosing her husbands, who are not related to each other, and upon whom the woman scarcely depends at all, since she remains with her own relations, and bears children for them.
On the contrary, in the patriarchal polyandry, the woman, captured or bought, is almost entirely uprooted; she leaves her natural protectors to go and live with her husbands, to whom she belongs, who are limited in number, are nearly always brothers or relations, and to whom she cannot be unfaithful without authorisation.