Читать книгу A Dictionary of Islam. Being a cyclopedia of the doctrines, rites, ceremonies, and customs, together with the technical and theological terms, of the Muhammadan religion онлайн

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Burkhardt tells us of an Arab, forty-five years old, who had had fifty wives, so that he must have divorced two wives and married two fresh ones on the average every year. We have cases of Muḥammad’s own “Companions” not much better. This is the natural and legitimate effect of the law.

Sir William Muir (Life of Mahomet, vol. iii. p. 305) says: “The idea of conjugal unity is utterly unknown to Mahometans, excepting when the Christian example is by chance followed; and even there, the continuance of the bond is purely dependent on the will of the husband.… I believe the morale of Hindu society, where polygamy is less encouraged, to be sounder, in a very marked degree, than that of Mahometan society.”

DĪWĀN (ديوان‎). (1) In Muḥammadan law, the word signifies an account or record book, and also the bags in which the Qāẓī’s records are kept. (2) It is also a court of justice, a royal court. (3) Also a minister of state; the chief officer in a Muḥammadan state; a finance minister. (4) In British courts a law-suit is called dīwānī, when it refers to a civil suit, in contradistinction to faujdārī, or “criminal suit.” (5) A collection of odes is called a dīwān, e.g. Dīwān-i-Ḥāfiz̤, “the Poems of Ḥāfiz̤.”