ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses three major Qur’anic concepts that define marital relations in the Islamic interpretive tradition: qiwama, wilaya and faddala. It elucidates the interpreters’ assumptions regarding the essentialist, dualist complementarity attributed to male and female natures. The chapter investigates how the premodern patriarchal understanding of qiwama, wilaya and faddala generated highly gender asymmetrical marriage laws that curtailed women’s basic rights and liberties. The general cultural context and social realities, especially the large presence of female slaves and concubines, inevitably influenced the way classical jurists conceived the marriage contract and the respective marital duties and norms. There are different juridical opinions regarding the conditions for granting absolute authority to men in the case of marriage guardianship. The chapter concludes with a succinct presentation of the modern definition of marital relations in terms of a gender oppositionality theory.
