antique fraternal polyandry, and it is in fact of fraternal or Thibetan polyandry that Strabo speaks. Has this fraternal patriarchal polyandry been preceded by a matriarchal polyandry, after the mode of the Naïrs—a polyandry which did not make the woman the property of the husbands? Without being able to give a direct proof of this, we may, however, consider it as very probable. In the present day the partial marriages, by which the women of the Hassinyeh Arabs engage themselves for some days of the week only, strongly resemble the matriarchal polyandry of the Naïrs, and temporary marriage, or mot' a, of the ancient Arabs approaches nearly to it also.
It is this kind of marriage, in all probability, that the prophet means when he inveighs against "fornication."
By the mot' a marriage the woman does not leave her home; her tribe preserves the rights it has over her, and her children do not belong to the husband. In short, the conjugal union is only contracted for a fixed time. These mot' a marriages had nothing dishonourable in them, and did not in the least prevent the women from finding fresh husbands when, at the expiration of the lease, they became once more free.[1]
The custom of mot' a marriage was long prevalent in Arabia. Ammianus speaks of it,[2] saying that the wife received a price or indemnity from her temporary husband, and that, if it happened to the contracting parties to wish to continue to live together at the expiration of the time fixed, they inaugurated a fresh and more durable union by a symbolic ceremony, during which the wife offered to her husband a javelin and a tent.
The prophet himself decided with great hesitation to condemn the mot' a marriage. A tradition makes him say that "if a man and a woman agree together, their union should last for three nights, after which they may separate or live together, as they please."[3]
In fact, the mot' a marriage was only abolished in the time of Omar; and it is important to remark with regard to it, that this mode of marriage, singular as it may appear to us, was, for the woman, very superior to the servitude of the
