Muslim Marriage and Contemporary Challenges Margherita Picchi Contents Introduction ....................................................................................... 2 Marriage in the Islamic Sources (Qur’an and Sunna) ........................................... 3 The Qur’an ....................................................................................... 3 The Sunna ........................................................................................ 5 Marriage in the Islamic Tradition ................................................................ 5 General Conception of Marriage ................................................................. 6 Impediments to Marriage ......................................................................... 7 Guardianship of Women (Wilaya) ............................................................... 7 Rights and Duties of the Spouses ................................................................ 9 Modern Transformations and Contemporary Challenges ....................................... 11 Women, the Family, and Colonial Modernity ................................................... 11 Nation States and Family Laws .................................................................. 12 Minimum Marriageable Age ................................................................. 13 Polygyny ...................................................................................... 14 Marriage Registration ......................................................................... 14 Recent Developments ............................................................................ 15 Conclusions ....................................................................................... 18 References ........................................................................................ 19 Abstract This chapter aims to retrace the historical evolution of Muslim marriage, as represented in Islamic legal texts and public discourses, from the advent of Islam to our contemporary age. To do so, it will provide a short overview of the normative references to marriage in Islamic scriptural texts (the Qur ’an and the hadith compilations), covering instructions on who is marriageable to a Muslim, how to contract a valid marriage, and what legal consequences the spousal union entails for both partners. Then, it addresses the various ways in which premodern M. Picchi (*) “Giorgio La Pira” Library and Research Centre, Foundation for Religious Studies John XXIII (FSCIRE), Palermo, PA, Italy e-mail: picchi@fscire.it © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Woodward, R. Lukens-Bull (eds.), Handbook of Contemporary Islam and Muslim Lives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73653-2_55-1 1