Medieval Family Life || The Family in the Islamic World

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The Arabs who occupied the enormous Arabian Peninsula between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf had done so for millennia. They were the Semitic neighbors of the ancient peoples of Mesopotamia and were related to the Hebrews, Syrians, Phoenicians, and Babylonians who succeeded the ancient Sumerians and Akkadians in the region. Some Semitic communities were absorbed into the Hellenistic and Roman empires, but the Bedouin culture was never conquered by either Alexander the Great or Augustus. As a result, the Bedouins did not absorb either Greco-Roman polytheism or Judeo-Christian monotheism in significant ways, despite living side by side with these two religious systems that dominated the Mediterranean region. Indeed, the animist and tribal-based religious system that had long been part of Arab culture persisted well after Christianity came to rule over all other religious systems in the eastern half of the Roman Empire.

In the seventh century, when the prophet Muhammad, at age 40, began to believe that God was speaking to him, Arab Bedouin culture was changing rapidly. The formerly migratory Bedouin were becoming acclimated to urban life once the cities of Mecca and Medina became centers of the caravan trade. Both were international cities with substantial Christian and Jewish populations who established trading posts there to bring goods from the Persian Gulf and India into the Byzantine and North African Christian empires and kingdoms. Muhammad was profoundly influenced by both Judaism and Christianity: although he had probably never read the Bible, his visions incorporated biblical imagery and stories, and these were compiled after his death into the collection of prophetic visions known as the Quran. In addition, Arab culture’s centuries-long contact with Roman, Hellenistic, and Greek civilization had imbued those geographical areas where most of the contact occurred with a hybrid culture that incorporated elements from all of the dominant societies in the Mediterranean, Arabian, and Mesopotamian regions.

00:00 Context
06:47 The Religion of Islam
08:17 The Status of Women and the Structure of the Family
16:13 Children and the Extended Medieval Muslim Family
18:54 Marriage and Divorce in Medieval Muslim Law
27:55 Children, Legitimacy, and Illegitimacy
30:04 Depictions of Marriage and Women in the Hadith Literature

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