Marriage in pre-Islamic Arabia

The first of the four marriages that existed in pre-Islamic Arabia was marriage by agreement. This consisted of an agreement between a man and his future wife's family. This marriage could be within the tribe or between two families of different tribes.

Some women were forbidden from marrying outside of their tribe and had to either marry another member of the tribe or a stranger who would agree to live with the tribe.

In the case that involved a man and woman of two different tribes, the woman would leave her family and permanently reside with her husband. The children of these marriages were considered part of their father's tribe, unless a different arrangement had previously been made which returned the children to their mother's tribe.

The reason for intertribal marriages was to ensure the protection and possession of the children the couple would produce.[2] Women in some intertribal marriages had more freedom and retained the right to dismiss or divorce their husbands at any time. The women had precise rituals they used to inform their husbands of their dismissal, such as this: "if they lived in a tent they turned it around, so that if the door faced east, it now faced west, and when the man saw this, he knew that he was dismissed and did not enter".[3]

Marriage by Mahr was the standard marriage practice. These marriages consisted of the groom or groom's father paying the bride an amount, indicating that he's capable of supporting her financially after the marriage. "Mahr", to marry them. (Mahr is very important in Islamic marriage. Allah has used the word "faridah" for it. It means something fixed, decided and obligatory. It is obligatory on the husband to pay mahr. In pre islamic era mahr was usually given to the Bride's father and was seen as his property.[2]

Marriage by capture, often taking place during times of war, marriage by capture occurred when women were taken captive by men from other tribes and placed on the slave market of Mecca. From the slave market these women were sold into marriage or slavery. In captive marriages men bought their wives and therefore had complete control over them. Women in these marriages had no freedom and were subjected to following their husband's orders and bearing his children. These women became their husbands' property and had no right to divorce.[2]

Marriage by inheritance was a practice that involved the possession of a deceased man's wives (When a man died, his son inherited all his wives except his own mother) being passed down to his son. In such a case, the son has several different options. He could keep them as his wives, arrange a marriage by purchase for them to enter into from which he would receive a dowry for them, or he could simply dismiss them.

Beena is a form of marriage used in pre-Islamic Arabia, in which a wife would own a tent of her own, within which she retained complete independence from her husband, according to William Robertson Smith.[4] The term was suggested by John Ferguson McLennan, who noted that in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) the marriage when a husband goes to live in the wife's village is called "beena marriage", and suggested "beena" as a general term for this kind of marriage.[5] The social system by which a couple lives with or near the wife's family is known by anthropologists as matrilocality.

• William Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in early Arabia, (1885)