“When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her; then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house.
“And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man’s wife.
“And if the latter husband hate her, and write her a bill of divorcement, and giveth it in her hand, and sendeth her out of his house; or if the latter husband die, which took her to be his wife;
“Her former husband, which sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after that she is defiled; for that is abomination before the Lord: and thou shalt not cause the land to sin, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.”
The ground of divorce in the Mosaic law was “some uncleanness in her.” There were two interpretations of this by the Jewish doctors of the period of the New Testament. The School of Shammai seemed to limit it to a moral delinquency in the woman, whilst that of Hillel extended it to trifling causes. Our Lord appears to have regarded all the lesser causes than fornication as standing on too weak a ground.
[Matt. v. 32]: “But I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.”
It will be seen that Muḥammad adopted the teaching of the School of Hillel, omitting the bill of divorcement, which was enjoined in [Deut. xxiv. 3], thereby placing the woman entirely at the will and caprice of her husband.
Burkhardt tells us of an Arab, forty-five years old, who had had fifty wives, so that he must have divorced two wives and married two fresh ones on the average every year. We have cases of Muḥammad’s own “Companions” not much better. This is the natural and legitimate effect of the law.
Sir William Muir (Life of Mahomet, vol. iii. p. 305) says: “The idea of conjugal unity is utterly unknown to Mahometans, excepting when the Christian example is by chance followed; and even there, the continuance of the bond is purely dependent on the will of the husband.… I believe the morale of Hindu society, where polygamy is less encouraged, to be sounder, in a very marked degree, than that of Mahometan society.”
DĪWĀN (ديوان). (1) In Muḥammadan law, the word signifies an account or record book, and also the bags in which the Qāẓī’s records are kept. (2) It is also a court of justice, a royal court. (3) Also a minister of state; the chief officer in a Muḥammadan state; a finance minister. (4) In British courts a law-suit is called dīwānī, when it refers to a civil suit, in contradistinction to faujdārī, or “criminal suit.” (5) A collection of odes is called a dīwān, e.g. Dīwān-i-Ḥāfiz̤, “the Poems of Ḥāfiz̤.”