Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam by Kecia Ali Read Free Book Online Page A

analogy between marriage and slavery and marriage and other forms of ownership. The analogy can function only because of the perception of an underlying similarity: if there was no way in which the wife was viewed as like a slave, it would not work. The fact that the com- parison resonates unpleasantly to educated Muslim ears today suggests the extent to which the broader metaphorical ground has shifted. For the early jurists, however, analogies between marriage and slavery appear as if the parallels between these categories were “real or self-evident or in the nature of things.” 70 From our vantage point, we see them instead as a “code specific to the praxis of [a] given social group,” specifically, the jurists of premodern Muslim times. 71 A concern for descriptive effi- ciency, rather than a deliberate attempt at female subordination, helps explain frequent analogies between marriage and purchase or divorce and manumission. 72 But once analogies are in use, they are self- perpetuating. The continual approximation of wives and slaves, as well as husbands and masters, resulted in deeply entrenched ideas about male agency and female passivity in matters of marriage and sexuality.

    Structure of the Book
    The chapters of this book build a cumulative argument about jurispru- dential understandings of marriage and slavery, men and women, and husbands and wives. It argues for understanding early Muslim legal texts as expressions of a technical discourse, bound by its own internal logic and need for systematization and consistency. The legal-methodological imperatives driving the production and defense of legal doctrine cannot be divorced from their end product: a hierarchical framework for mar- riage and sexuality that deals with competing pressures by allowing dif- ferences in women’s legal personhood before and outside of marriage, but pressing for uniformity in the legal claims of wives. At the same time, an expansive vision of male marital privilege opens the rights and duties of husbands even to male slaves. Sexuality becomes the key realm for the construction of masculinity and femininity.
    Chapter 1 addresses the basic parallel between contracting mar- riage and buying a slave. It discusses the extent of and limits on pater- nal and owners’ power over the marriages of their charges and looks at the integration of slaves into an economy of kinship. Exploring varying
    legal views on women’s legal personhood, it discusses women’s capac- ity to contract marriage. The role of the ownership tie in establishing licit sexual access constitutes a major element of the conceptual rela- tionship between marriage and slavery.
    Chapter 2 treats interdependent claims established by marriage, fo- cusing on the exchange of maintenance for sexual availability. It stresses the gender differentiation of marital rights and explores the differences introduced when a female slave is married. By looking at the way in which claims are divided between her husband and her master, it be- comes possible to delineate with greater precision the core elements of the marital transaction.
    Chapter 3 turns from the husband’s rights to sex to the wife’s rights to companionship. It investigates wives’ claims on their husbands for sex and companionship, using jurists’ discussions of a wife’s right to an allotted portion of her husband’s time. Both the division between wives and concubines and the crucial distinction between the wife’s claims and the husband’s claims are evident. I show how the jurists were trapped, to a certain extent, by their own insistence on logical consistency.
    Chapter 4 looks at various modes of divorce, particularly the hus- band’s unilateral right to repudiation, frequently analogized to manu- mission. With sustained attention to the establishment of consensus on the right of a male slave to alone wield the right of divorce over his wife, this chapter argues that the right to sever the marriage tie is