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48 OWEN BERKELEY-HILL
we read in Chapter II of the Koran: "Your wives are a tilth for you, so go into them when you like"; again, "Men are the maintainers of women, because Allah made some to excel others and because they spend out of their property; tine good women are tlierefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded, and those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them and leave them alone in the sleeping places and heat them, tlien if they obey you do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great" (Koran, Chapter IV. v. 34); again, "O true be- lievers, verily of your wives and your children ye have an enemy: wherefore beware of them" (Koran, Chapter LXIV, v. 14).
These utterances, we may take it, were determined for Mo- hammed by the "daughter-complex"; it is the father who speaks | of "obedience", "admonishing", and "beating".
There is nothing of particular significance in the precepts of the Koran, nor in the "tladith", as regards consanguinity in its bearing on marriage. In formulating his precepts in this respect Mohammed seems to have followed more or less the code of Moses, with the notable exception that the prohibition against a man marrying his grandmother, such a remarkable feature of the Mosaic ordinance, iinds no place in the list of relations with whom marriage is forbidden.
However, when we come to examine the pronouncements of Mohammed in regard to X^idows, Divorce, Orphans, and the re- lations between parents and offspring, we find evidence indicating the operation of strong subjective feeling.
Before the days of Mohammed, the Arabs had entertained tJie world-wide prejudice against the re-marriage of widows, so that, , according to Burckhardt S the Arabs regarded every thing connec- ted with the nuptials of a widow as ill-omened, and unworthy of the participation of generous and lionourable men.
We may be sure therefore that the very specific and precise legis- lation formulated by Mohammed in regard to the re-marriage of widows and to the provision that should be made for women on becoming widows, are the outcome of his own personal predeliction for widows due to his fixation on his mother. Indeed, the most notable reform instituted by Mohammed in this connection was the abolition of the Arab custom of permitting the inheritance by the son of his father's wives, a procedure that was so closely akin > Quoted by Wcstermarck: The History of Humun Marriage p. 127.
