CLARK HIST 252 - Women in Islamic Society During the Middle Ages

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WOMEN IN ISLAMIC SOCIETY DURING THE MIDDLE AGESThe rise and expansion of Islam, after the foundation by Mohammed, is an amazing story. Ultimately, the Muslims, as the believers of Islam are called, started a world-wide faith that today makes up the world’s second largest religious group after Christians. The role and status of women within Islam is one of essential contribution to its origins and continuation, but ever-changing roles.Mohammed could not have founded Islam alone. Marriage to his employer, the wealthy widowKhadija, allowed him the leisure and financial backing to pursue his new religious journey. Born in Mecca, Mohammed was raised by his grandfather and uncle when his parents died. At the age of twenty-five he married Khadija. Mecca was an important trading center for caravan trade between Medina, the Near East and India. An integral part of this caravan and commercial trade was raiding, and the Arabs were excellent warriors. These characteristics facilitated Islam to spread via the Muslim’s holy war or Jihad within a few decades beyond the Arabian Peninsula, first to the Near East, and then Northern Africa and parts of southern Europe, including Spain. As Islam came in contact with other societies, both monotheistic and polytheistic, there was much cultural integration. Consequentially, there was room for confusion and conflict as to the expectations and responsibilities of women’s lives. As in Christianity and the Bible, so too in Islam and the Koran (the Muslims’ holy book), the interpretation of the written versus the exegesis explanations of succeeding centuries confounded the historical record and oral transmissions.Mohammed’s marriage to Khadija took place when he was twenty-five and she was forty. As his employer, Khadija hired Mohammed to oversee her caravan trade between Mecca and Syria. She then proposed to him, and she was his only wife until her death about twenty-five years later. After about fifteen years of marriage to Khadija Mohammed no longer needed to work regularly, and he wasfree to lead a life of contemplation. While meditating in surrounding caves, Mohammed was visited by the angel Gabriel, who informed him that he was to be the messenger of Allah, the Arabic word for God. This meeting with Gabriel occurred in the year 610, and thereafter Mohammed continued to experience similar visions with specific religious instructions from Allah. Convinced that he was now the prophet of Allah, Khadija became his first convert. In general, however, Mohammed’s ideas met with general skepticism by the people of Mecca. This turned into active persecution after Mohammeddenounced polytheistic worship, centered at the Kaaba, as idolatry, and he and Khadija were forced to flee Mecca for Medina.1 Welcomed in Medina, Mohammed established his tenets and practices for Islam. The five pillars of Islam were straight forward, facilitating people’s conversion: 1. Announcing there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his Prophet; 2. Prayer five times per day; 3. Fasting during the month of Ramadan; 4. Alms to the poor and ill; and 5. if one could afford it, pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a person’s lifetime. Mohammed did not claim his ideas to be a new religion, but a culmination of beliefs from Judaism and Christianity. Muslims always called Jews and Christians as people of the same book. In other words, the Koran, compiled by Mohammed’s followers after his death, recorded the messages he had received from Allah, and stated that they were the final words of Allah.After Khadija’s death, the vision came from Allah that it was acceptable to have more than one wife. His next spouse was Aisha, a child bride of nine or ten. She was immediately succeeded by many more wives, usually widows or daughters, whose husbands and fathers had lost their lives in the course of spreading Islam. The Quranic (Koranic) verse detailing this is “Marry other women as may be agreeable to you, two or three or four.” At the time of Mohammed’s polygamy, disapproval of this was espoused by women from Medina, but it is thought that as Islam spread and encountered polygamy acceptance in other cultures, then multiple wives became an accepted practice for Muslims.Veiling and seclusion are two other practices that were added after Khadija’s death. Apparently,after Mohammed married Aisha and others, guests would stay too long in his wife or wives’ rooms at awedding feast or other occasions, leading to Mohammed’s revelation from Allah that veiling for women was necessary. Veiling, a custom from ancient times, was prevalent in the higher classes in the Near East dating back to the ancient Assyrians or even Mesopotamians. The ancient Greeks and Romans had adopted this custom too. Then when Christianity was established and starting spreading, veiling was deemed mandatory for respectable women. Muslims say that Koranic verses justify veiling,but it only tells women to veil their bosoms and hide their ornaments, not language specific to the head. As in other cultures and religions, interpretations vary throughout the Muslim world, and today 1 perhaps serendipity or maybe factual is the black stone inside the Kaaba. This represented the variousdeities that the polytheistic Arabs worshiped. When Mohammed espoused monotheism, then he said theblack stone was given to Abraham by God and then passed on through the centuries to the otherprophets, culminating with Mohammed, the last prophet of God or Allah. Cybele, the mother goddessfrom Anatolia, was represented by a black stone too. Scholars believe this stone is a meteorite.2there are different degrees of veiling.Mohammed died in his wife Aisha’s room in Medina, where he is buried. This is now the second most sacred spot in Islam after the Kaaba in Mecca.Over time as Islam won new followers, certain customs concerning women were established and written down in the Hadith, a further elucidation of the Koran. Mohammed’s second wife, Aisha, is given much credit for many of these writings, even those not pertaining to women. Aisha is credited with 2,210 traditions in the Hadith, and as she lived about forty years beyond Mohammed’s death, she was in a position to transmit events and words from the Prophet. Aisha was not alone in becoming oneof the major sources for the Hadith. Mohammed’s other wives were important too, and indicates the high esteem in which his wives were held.Arab marriage practices before Islam


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