Page 174 - UAE Truncal States

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The Islamic Basis of Society

pregnancy or while giving birth.45 This is one reason why in every
family one finds that several children are only half-brothers and half-
sisters. Another reason is that if a man had more than one wife at a
time he often kept the households well apart or even in different
locations in the country. Half-brothers and sisters also did not see
much of each other if a mother died young and her children were
brought up by their grandmother, while their father married again.
In the case of multiple marriages of members of the ruling family
the first wife was usually herself a member of that family. Later wives
were often daughters of shaikhs of important tribes or tribal sections
with whom the Ruler wanted to establish closer relationships. A
separate household was set up for each one of the wives unless she
stayed with her parents. Thus the children of the respective
marriages were unlikely to meet each other very much, if at all, while
they were young, and they were quite naturally influenced by their
family’s and tribe’s domestic situation and ambitions. Shaikh Zayid
bin Khallfah had one wife who was the daughter of the shaikh of the
Manaslr, two of his wives were from the A1 Bu Falah family, one was
from the ruling A1 Maktum family in Dubai, one was the daughter of
one of the shaikhs of the Na'Irn in Buraimi and one was also a Na'aimi
whose only child died very young. Some of his marriages were
arranged for political reasons to foster his steadily growing influence
in the Buraimi area and among the beduin tribes. After his death in
1909 the various tribal and political interests influenced his sons to
the extent that they committed fratricide while aspiring to become
Rulers.46
With the exception of the wealthy and the politically influential
families, monogamy was the common pattern of marriage in the
Trucial Stales until the changes in the economic and cultural
conditions brought certain changes in this pattern, too. In some cases
when a man could afford to do so he might not want to divorce the
mother of his children and yet he wanted a younger wife in order to
have more children. The majority of men had one wife at a time; when
she died or he divorced her he would take another.47

The social role of women
The preceding paragraphs demonstrated how the internal structure
of the family is very largely the result of the role which women play in
this Islamic and tribal socio-cultural context. Although the social
rating of women in the public sphere was different from that of men

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