Page 174 - UAE Truncal States
P. 174

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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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