426 family: primary source documents its future prestige Many a Muslim writer notes that the best guarantee for love is for lovers to be married and that marrying for love is good but that being in love takes second place to the procreative potential of bride and groom Having several wives could help a man have children The wealthy and powerful, such as sultans, could have four wives and numerous concubines, but the sharia was usually interpreted to require that each wife be set up in her own household, equal to the household of each other wife Few among the vast majority of men could afford to meet this requirement, so the practice was restricted to the small minority of very rich people In theory, a married woman was never to be unescorted among men not of her immediate family She was to be watched carefully so that when she became pregnant, there could be no doubt that her husband was the father In extreme cases wives were imprisoned under lock and key in the women’s quarters, the harem In the countryside and among the working class, cloistering a wife was impractical because wives took part in the family business, perhaps grinding grain or preparing goods for sale Birth was attended by female family members, female friends, and midwives, and the process of birth apparently varied by local custom, from crouching down during labor to standing with legs spread apart At birth the father whispered in the infant’s ear the adhan, the call to prayer, and then the shahada, the first pillar of Islam, that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is his messenger Small children were the responsibility of their mothers, and a child would remain with the mother if she was divorced When children reached the age of reason, which varied by regional custom, the father took responsibility for them, even Asia and the Pacific after divorcing their mother A disciplined household was considered ideal, and the wife was supposed to obey her husband The husband was expressly allowed to beat a wife into submission, although if a wife could prove that the beatings happened for no reason, she could gain a court-ordered annulment or divorce from her husband In the majority of Muslim households the partnership of husband and wife in society, family life, and daily work was of great importance and may have discouraged abuse of women, at least in cities and towns, where courts were available There are hints that the lives of women in the countryside of Arabia and North Africa could be hellish because of the lack of law enforcement Inheritance laws favored male family members because under the sharia, men bore the financial burden of caring for a family The laws varied somewhat according to time and place, but in general if a man died first, then his will could leave one-third of his wealth to anyone he chose; another third would go to his wife, and the rest would go to his children, with sons receiving twice as much as daughters If the wife died first, the wealth could go to her husband or to her children or male relatives, such as brothers See also agriculture; architecture; children; cities; death and burial practices; economy; education; empires and dynasties; foreigners and barbarians; gender structures and roles; health and disease; hunting, fishing, and gathering; laws and legal codes; migration and population movements; nomadic and pastoral societies; occupations; religion and cosmology; sacred sites; settlement patterns; social organization; towns and villages; trade and exchange • Taika Reform Edicts (Japan, 645) • Again, there have been very many cases in which wives or concubines, when dismissed by their husbands, have, after the lapse of years, married other husbands, as ordinary morality allows Then their former husbands, after three or four years, have made greedy demands on the second husband’s property, seeking their own gain Again, there have been very many cases in which men, relying on their power, have rudely demanded people’s daughters in marriage In the interval, however, before going to his house, the girl has, of her own accord, married another, and the rude suitor has angrily made demands of the property of both families for his own gain Again, there have been numerous cases of this kind Sometimes a wife who has lost her husband marries another man after the lapse of ten or twenty years and becomes his spouse, or an unmarried girl is married for the first time Upon this, people, out of envy of the married pair, have made them perform purgation Again, there are cases in which women, who have become men’s wives and who, being put away owing to their husbands’ dislike of them, have, in their mortification at this injury, compelled themselves to become blemished slaves