614 laws and legal codes: further reading O assembly of women, give alms, although it be of your gold and silver ornaments; for verily ye are mostly of hell on the day of resurrection (continues) Every woman who dieth, and her husband is pleased with her, shall enter into paradise That which is lawful but disliked by God is divorce When ye return from a journey and enter your town at night, go not to your houses, so that your wives may have time to comb their disheveled hair A woman may be married by four qualifications: one, on account of her money; another, on account of the nobility of her pedigree; another, on account of her beauty; a fourth, on account of her faith; therefore look out for religious women, but if ye it from any other consideration, may your hands be rubbed in dirt God has ordained that your brothers should be your slaves: therefore him whom God hath ordained to be the slave of his brother, his brother must give him of the food which he eateth himself, and of the clothes wherewith he clothes himself and not order him to anything beyond his power, and if he does order such a work, he must himself assist him in doing it A widow shall not be married until she be consulted; nor shall a virgin be married until her consent be asked, whose consent is by her silence He who beats his slave without fault, or slaps him in the face, his atonement for this is freeing him When the Prophet was informed that the people of Persia had made the daughter of Chosroes their queen, he said the tribe that constitutes a woman its ruler will not find redemption Do not prevent your women from coming to the mosque; but their homes are better for them Further Reading Derk Bodde and Clarence Morris, Law in Imperial China (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1973) R C van Caenegem, Legal History: A European Perspective (London: Hambledon Press, 1991) R C van Caenegem, An Historical Introduction to Private Law (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1992) Wael Hallaq, Law and Legal Theory in Classical and Medieval Islam (Aldershot, U.K.: Variorum, 1995) Wael Hallaq, The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2005) Alan Harding, Medieval Law and the Foundations of the State (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2002) M B Hooker, A Concise Legal History of South-East Asia (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1978) Ephraim Isaac, “Law and Justice,” Social Structure of the Ethiopian Church Available online URL: http://tezeta.org/5/socialstructure-of-the-ethiopian-church-by-ephraim-isaac Downloaded on September 21, 2007 Bruce Elliott Johansen, ed., The Encyclopedia of Native American Legal Tradition (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998) Siriman Kouyate, From the Charter of Kurukan Kuga Available online URL: www.oecd.org/dataoecd/56/56/38874847.pdf Downloaded on October 4, 2007 A man who behaves ill to his slave will not enter into paradise Forgive thy servant seventy times a day From Charles F Horne, ed., The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, Vol 6: Medieval Arabia (New York: Parke, Austin, and Lipscomb, 1917) Eugene L Mendonsa, “Tradition, Civic Culture and Kinship.” In West Africa: An Introduction to Its History, Civilization and Contemporary Situation (Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 2002) Joseph Schacht, An Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1964) Peter Stein, Roman Law in European History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999) Frank E Vogel, Islamic Law and Legal System: Studies of Saudi Arabia (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2000) Bernard G Weiss, The Spirit of Islamic Law (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998) ▶ literature introduction The Middle Ages saw the end as well as the partial preservation of many traditions of oral literature through the spread of writing At the same time, many vernacular languages developed in the Middle Ages and, with them, modern literary forms While people in the modern world inevitably think of