The City of the Prophet 63ally stripped of both their right to divorce and their access to poly-
andry (the practice of having more than one husband).
Although Muhammad’s views on marriage seem far more influ-
enced by Jewish tradition than by the traditions of pre-Islamic Arabia,
he was still a product of Meccan society. So while he limited the rights
of men to divorce their wives—forcing upon them a three-month rec-
onciliation period before the statement of divorce could take effect—
and while he provided women with the right to divorce their husbands
if they feared “cruelty or ill-treatment” (4:128), he nonetheless con-
solidated the move toward a patrilineal society by putting a definitive
end to all polyandrous unions. Never again could a Muslim woman
have more than one husband. Whether a Muslim man may have more
than one wife (polygyny), however, remains a contested issue to
this day.
On the one hand, Muhammad clearly accepted polygyny (within
limits) as necessary for the survival of the Ummah, especially after war
with the Quraysh resulted in hundreds of widows and orphans who
had to be provided for and protected by the community. “Marry those
women who are lawful for you, up to two, three, or four,” the Quran
states, “but only if you can treat them all equally” (4:3; emphasis added).
On the other hand, the Quran makes it clear that monogamy is the
preferred model of marriage when it asserts that “no matter how you
try, you will never be able to treat your wives equally” (4:129; again,
emphasis added). This seeming contradiction offers some insight into
a dilemma that plagued the community during its early development.
Essentially, while the individual believer was to strive for monogamy,
the community that Muhammad was trying to build in Yathrib would
have been doomed without polygyny.
For the vast majority of Muslims throughout the world, there is
little doubt that the two verses cited above, when combined and con-
sidered in their historical context, should be interpreted as rejecting
polygamy in all its forms. And yet, there are still those Muslims, espe-
cially in tribal societies like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, who justify
their polygynous marriages, not necessarily by referring to the Quran,
but by pointing to the example set by Muhammad, for whom neither
the limitations on polygyny, nor the preference for monogamy, had
any bearing.