Marital Harm through the Ages

Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā al-Wansharīsī, al-Miʿyār al-muʿrib, ed. Muḥammad Ḥajjī, 13 vols. (Wizārat al-Awqāf wa al-Shuʾūn al-Islāmiyya, 1981), 4:5–7; David S. Powers, “Women and Divorce in the Islamic West: Three Cases,” Hawwa 1, no. 1 (2003): 31–32.

Karen Pearlston, “Male Violence, Marital Unity, and the History of Interspousal Tort Immunity,” The Journal of Legal History 36, no. 3 (2015): 260.

Pearlston, “Male Violence, Marital Unity,” 261; Salvatore Lucio Patti, “Intra-Family Torts: From Immunity to Special Rules in Criminal and Civil Law,” European Journal of Comparative Law and Governance 3 (2016): 117–29.

Jack Herskowitz, “Tort Liability Between Husband and Wife: The Interspousal Immunity Doctrine,” University of Miami Law Review 21 no. 2 (1966): 425; William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vols. (Clarendon Press, 1769), 1:431.

Blackstone, Commentaries, 1:430.

Pearlston, “Male Violence, Marital Unity,” 268; William E. McCurdy, “Torts between Persons in Domestic Relation,” Harvard Law Review 43, no. 7 (1930): 1035 and “Action by a Wife against Her Husband for a Tort to the Person,” The Yale Law Journal 23, no. 7 (1914): 614.

Blackstone, Commentaries, 1:432.

McCurdy, “Torts between Persons,” 1036; Pearlston, “Male Violence, Marital Unity,” 261–62, 266; Patti, “Intra-Family Torts,” 119.

McCurdy, “Torts between Persons,” 1043.

Patti, “Intra-Family Torts,” 121–22.

Carl Tobias, “Interspousal Tort Immunity in America,” Georgia Law Review 23 (1989): 359.

As we saw in common law in Europe and America, the doctrine of coverture placed women’s rights under their husbands. Medieval European laws and ancient societies like Greece granted men broad control over family affairs and, in early Roman law, even life-or-death power over family members. Similarly, in some Confucian and Hindu societies, male heads were responsible for maintaining order and discipline within the household. For more, see Suzanne Dixon, The Roman Family (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 40ff; Nancy Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation (Harvard University Press, 2002), 11–13; Walter Slote and Georga De Vos, Confucianism and the Family (SUNY Press, 1998), 146; Uma Chakravarti, Gendering Caste: Through a Feminist Lens (Sage Publications Pvt. Ltd, 2018), 70.

Sunan Abī Dāwūd, no. 2146; Sunan Abī Dāwūd, no. 2144; Sunan Ibn Mājah, no. 2060.

See, for example, Qur’an 30:21 and 4:19.

Jonathan Brown, Misquoting Muhammad (Oneworld Press, 2014), 272.

Qur’an 4:34, trans. The Clear Qur’an.

See the story of Khawla bint Thaʿlaba in Sunan Ibn Mājah, no. 2063. The story of Ḥabība bint Sahl is found in Sunan Abī Dāwūd, no. 2227 and Sunan al-Nasāʾī, no. 3462.

See, for example, Manṣūr ibn Yūnus al-Buhūtī, Kashshāf al-qināʿ ʿan matn al-Iqnāʿ, ed. Ibrāhīm Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd (Dār ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 2003), 2540.

Al-Buhūtī, Kashshāf al-qināʿ, 2543.

Al-Wansharīsī, al-Miʿyār al-muʿrib, 3:6ff.

Muwaffaq al-Dīn ibn Qudāma, al-Mughnī, ed. ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abd al-Muḥsin al-Turkī and ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ al-Ḥulū, 15 vols. (Dār ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1997), 9:343.

Muḥammad ibn Rushd al-Ḥafīd, Bidāyat al-mujtahid, ed. Muḥammad Ṣubḥī Ḥasan Ḥallāq, 4 vols. (Maktabat Ibn Taymiyya, 1995), 3:19; Muḥammad al-Dusūqī, Aḥmad al-Dardīr, and Khalīl ibn Isḥāq al-Jundī, Ḥāshiyat al-Dusūqī ʻalā al-Sharḥ al-kabīr, ed. Muḥammad ʿIllīsh, 4 vols. (Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Kutub al-ʿArabiyya, n.d.), 2:278.

Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Fatḥ al-Bārī bi-sharḥ al-Bukhārī, ed. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Bāz and Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Bāqī, 13 vols. (al-Maktaba al-Salafiyya, 1970), 9:299.

Abū Bakr b. Masʿūd al-Kāsānī, Badāʾiʿ al-ṣanāʾiʿ fī tartīb al-sharāʾīʿ, ed. ʿAlī Muḥammad Muʿawwaḍ and ʿĀdil Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Mawjūd, 10 vols. (Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīya, 2003), 3:606; Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, 4 vols. (Dār al-Maʿrifa, 1982), 2:50.

Nick Haslam, “Concept Creep: Psychology’s Expanding Concepts of Harm and Pathology,” Psychological Inquiry 27, no. 1 (2016): 1–17; Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind (Penguin Press, 2018), 25.

Lukianoff and Haidt, Coddling of the American Mind, 26.

“Global Norms and Standards: Ending Violence Against Women,” UN Women, accessed March 23, 2021, unwomen.org.

Valerie Hudson, Donna Lee Bowen, and Perpetua Lynne Nielsen, “What Is the Relationship between Inequity in Family Law and Violence Against Women? Approaching the Issue of Legal Enclaves,” Politics and Gender 7 (2011): 454–55.

The Mālikī school stands out for explicitly allowing judicial divorce on the grounds of harm (al-tafrīq li’l-ḍarar). While the Ḥanbalīs also permit divorce due to harm, they do not define it as a specific category within judicial divorce. For more, see Tesneem Alkiek, “The Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿa, Maṣlaḥa, and Reforming Family Law: Mālikī Law as a Case Study” in The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Reform, ed. Natana Delong-Bas and Emad Hamdeh (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). On how this rule became a doctrinal position among the Mālikīs, see Mohammad Fadel, “Doctrinal Change in Mālikī Law: the Case of Judicial Divorce On Account of Harm (ḍarar),” Journal of Comparative Legal History (forthcoming), dx.doi.org.

As quoted in Muḥammad al-Mahdī al-Wazzānī, al-Nawāzil al-jadīda al-kubrā, ed. ʿUmar ibn Abbād, 8 vols. (Wizārat al-Awqāf wa al-Shuʾūn al-Islāmiyya, 1997), 3:473. If a wife was coerced into a bilateral divorce (khulʿ) by way of harm, Mālikī scholars allowed for the wife to retroactively take her case to court. If harm is established, she is to be returned anything she gave in exchange for the divorce.⁠ This is because, if harm occurs, a wife has the right to a judicial divorce (taṭlīq) and thus should have been able to freely leave the marriage.

Al-Dardīr in al-Dusūqī, al-Dardīr, and al-Jundī, Ḥāshiyat al-Dusūqī, 2:345.

Al-Dusūqī in al-Dusūqī, al-Dardīr, and al-Jundī, Ḥāshiyat al-Dusūqī, 2:345; Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Mawwāq, al-Tāj wa al-iklīl li- Mukhtaṣar Khalīl, 8 vols. (Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1994), 5:265.

Al-Wansharīsī, al-Miʿyār al-muʿrib, 3:134–35; al-Wazzānī, al-Nawāzil al-jadīda, 3:450–1.

Hadia Mubarak, Rebellious Wives, Neglectful Husbands: Controversies in Modern Qur’anic Commentaries (Oxford University Press, 2022), 104-5; Maḥmūd ibn Umar al-Zamakhsharī, al-Kashshāfʿan ḥaqāʾiq ghawāmiḍ al-tanzīl wa-ʿuyūn al-aqāwīl fī wujūh al-taʾwīl, ed. ʿĀdil Aḥmad al-Mawjūd and ʿAlī Muḥammad Muʿawwaḍ, 6 vols. (Dār al-Ḥadīth, 2012), 2:156; Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-ghayb (al-tafsīr al-kabīr), 33 vols. (Dār Fikr, 1981), 11:66.

Ibn Taymiyya, al-Mustadrak ʿalā majmūʿ fatāwa shaykh al-Islām Aḥmad ibn Taymiyya, ed. Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad Qāsim, 5 vols. (N.p., n.d.), 4:215, 218; al-Buhūtī, Kashshāf al-qināʿ, 2549–50.

The Hanbalis, for example, grant a woman a divorce if her husband is missing or absent without a valid excuse and she is experiencing harm (ḍarar) as a result. See Wahba al-Zuḥaylī, al-Fiqh al-islāmī wa-adillatuh, 8 vols. (Dār al-Fikr, 1985), 7:533.

Ibn Qudāma, al-Mughnī, 10:170.

Al-Buhūtī, Kashshāf al-qināʿ, 2544–45.

Al-Ṣadr al-Shahīd, Sharḥ Adab al-qāḍī li-l-Khaṣṣāf, ed. Muḥiyy al-Dīn al-Sarḥān, 4 vols. (Maṭbaʿat al-Irshād, 1978), 4:228–29.

Al-Ṣadr al-Shahīd, Sharḥ Adab al-qāḍī li-l-Khaṣṣāf, 4:249.

Ibn Rushd, Bidāyat al-mujtahid, 3:98.

Al-Ṣadr al-Shahīd, Sharḥ Adab al-qāḍī li-l-Khaṣṣāf, 4:229, 233–34.

Ibn Rushd, Bidāyat al-mujtahid, 3:96; al-Zuḥaylī, al-Fiqh al-islāmī, 7:514–27; al-Buhūtī, Kashshāf al-qināʿ, 2461–69.

Ibn Rushd, Bidāyat al-mujtahid, 3:133.

Al-Buhūtī, Kashshāf al-qināʿ, 2570.

Ibn Rushd, Bidāyat al-mujtahid, 3:185–86.

Tesneem Alkiek, “Spousal Harm in the Mālikī Law School: Evidence and Procedure,” Islamic Law and Society 31, 1-2 (2023): 18–22, doi.org.

Al-Buhūtī, Kashshāf al-qināʿ, 2567; Ibn Taymiyya, al-Mustadrak, 4:221; al-Kāsānī, Badāʾiʿ al-ṣanāʾiʿ, 5:144-5; Yaḥya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawī, Rawḍat al-ṭālibīn wa ʿumdat al-muftīn, ed. Zuhayr al-Shāwīs, 12 vols. (Al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1991), 7:370.

Muḥammad al-Khalwatī, Ḥāshiyat al-Khalwatī ʿalā Muntahā al-irādāt, ed. Sāmī ibn Abd Allāh al-Ṣaqīr and Muḥammad ibn Ṣāliḥ al-Luḥaydān, 7 vols. (Dār al-Nawādir, 2011), 4:525; al-Mawwāq, al-Tāj wa al-iklīl, 5:263–64.

Ibn Qudāma, al-Mughnī, 10:263; Maribel Fierro, “Ill-treated Women Seeking Divorce: The Qurʾānic Two Arbiters and Judicial Practice among the Mālikīs in al-Andalus and North Africa,” in Dispensing Justice in Islam: Qadis and Their Judgments, ed. Muhammad K. Masud, Rudolph Peters, and David S. Powers (Brill, 2006), 323–47.

Al-Mawwāq, al-Tāj wa al-iklīl, 5:264.

Al-Buhūtī, Kashshāf al-qināʿ, 2567; Mubarak, Rebellious Wives, Neglectful Husbands, 148.

Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-ʿArabī, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, ed. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭāʾ, 4 vols. (Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2003), 1:536.

Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, no. 2328a.

Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, no. 6042.

Hadia Mubarak, “Classical Exegeses on Key Qurʾānic Verses Concerning Women,” in The Oxford Handbook of Islam and Women, ed. Asma Afsaruddin (Oxford University Press, 2023), 50–51; Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-Bayān ʿan Taʾwīl al-Qurʾān, 2nd ed., ed. Maḥmūd Shākir and Aḥmad Shākir, 13 vols. (Dār al-Maʿārif, 1961), 8:314–315.

Al-Wazzānī, al-Nawāzil al-jadīda al-kubrā, 3:448.

Saḥīḥ Muslim, no. 1708.

​​Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Khaṭīb al-Shirbīnī, Mughnī al-muḥtāj ilā maʿrifat maʿānī alfāẓ al-Minhāj, ed. ʿAlī Muḥammad Muʿawwaḍ and ʿĀdil Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Mawjūd, 6 vols. (Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1994), 4:427.

Khalīl ibn Isḥāq, al-Tawḍīḥ sharḥ Mukhtaṣar Ibn al-Ḥājib, ed. Abū al-Fadl al-Dīmyāṭī, 6 vols. (Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 2012), 3:446.

Fatḥī al-Duraynī, Naẓarīyat al-taʿassuf fī istiʿmāl al-ḥaqq fī al-fiqh al-Islāmī, 2nd ed. (Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1977), 256.

ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Abū Shuqqa, Taḥrīr al-marʾa fī ʿaṣr al-risāla, 6 vols. (Dār al-Qalam li-l-Nashr wa al-Tawzīʿ, 2017), 5:244.

Muḥammad al-Ṭāhir ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa al-tanwīr, 30 vols. (al-Dār al-Tūnusiyya li-l-Nashr, 1984), 5:44; Mubarak, Rebellious Wives, Neglectful Husbands, 130.

Al-Wazzānī, al-Nawāzil al-jadīda al-kubrā, 3:446.

Fareeha Khan, “Tafwīḍ al-Ṭalāq: Transferring the Right to Divorce to the Wife,” The Muslim World 99 (2009): 505.

C. Haerpfer, R. Inglehart, A. Moreno, C. Welzel, K. Kizilova, J. Diez-Medrano, M. Lagos, P. Norris, E. Ponarin, and B. Puranen, eds., World Values Survey: Round Seven – Country-Pooled Datafile Version 5.0.0, JD Systems Institute & WVSA Secretariat, 2022, doi.org.

Mubarak, Rebellious Wives, Neglectful Husbands, 151.

Al-Wazzānī, al-Nawāzil al-jadīda al-kubrā, 3:459–60.

Al-Wazzānī, al-Nawāzil al-jadīda al-kubrā, 3:453.

Al-Wazzānī, al-Nawāzil al-jadīda al-kubrā, 3:451.

Al-Wansharīsī, al-Miʿyār al-muʿrib, 4:304.

Judith Tucker, In the House of the Law (University of California Press, 1998), 66.

The Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, “Domestic Violence: Ottoman Empire,” by Elyse Semerdjian, accessed August 5, 2020, dx.doi.org.proxy.library.georgetown.edu.

Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Iʿlām al-muwaqqaʿīn ʿan rabb al-ʿālamīn, ed. Mashhūr Ḥasan Āl Salmān and Aḥmad ʿAbd Allāh Aḥmad, 7 vols. (Dār Ibn al-Jawzī, 2002), 5:368.

Mariam Sheibani, “Marriage, Divorce, and Inheritance in Classical Islamic Law and Premodern Practice,” in The Oxford Handbook of Islam and Women, ed. Asma Afsaruddin (Oxford University Press, 2023), 165.

Sheibani, “Marriage, Divorce, and Inheritance”; Amalia Zomeño, “Islamic Marriage Contract in al-Andalus,” in The Islamic Marriage Contract: Case Studies in Islamic Family Law, ed. Asifa Quraishi and Frank Vogel (Harvard University Press, 2008), 144.

ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Salmūn al-Kinānī, al-ʿAqd al-munaẓẓam li-l-ḥukkām, ed. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Shāghūl (Dār al-Āfāq al-ʿĀrabiyya, 2011), 116–22.

Khan, “Tafwīḍ al-Ṭalāq,” 502–10.

Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ al-Bārī, 9:303.

Sunan Abī Dāwūd, no. 2146.

Mubarak, Rebellious Wives, Neglectful Husbands, 146.

Mubarak, Rebellious Wives, Neglectful Husbands, 147.

Al-Dusūqī, al-Dardīr, and al-Jundī, Ḥāshiyat al-Dusūqī, 2:343; Ibn ʿĀshūr, al-Taḥrīr wa al-tanwīr, 5:43.

Al-Buhūtī, Kashshāf al-qināʿ, 2567.