According to Professor W. R. Smith in Mohammed’s time, in addition to the two forms of marriage mentioned, namely, that by capture and that by sale or contract, there existed also a more ancient form known as the _sadica_—a form of conjugal union which was a remnant of the matriarchal system. By observing the facts connected with this last-named institution, we shall be enabled to understand something of the position occupied by women during the earlier ages of human existence before wife-capture became prevalent.
Among certain tribes just prior to Islam, upon the event of marriage, the man presented the woman with a sum of money, which offering was simply an acknowledgment of the favour which she was conferring upon him. The husband went to live with the wife in her tent, and as the contract was for no specified length of time, he was at liberty to go whenever he tired of the conditions imposed on him by his wife and her relations. Any children, however, that were born as a result of this union belonged to the mother and became members of her _hayy_. If she desired him to go, she simply turned the tent around, “so that if the door had faced east it now faced west, and when the man saw this he knew that he was dismissed and did not enter.” In relation to these marriage customs Professor Smith says: “Here, therefore, we have the proof of a well-established custom of that kind of marriage which naturally goes with female kinship in the generation immediately before Islam.” Of this kind of marriage the same writer observes:
The _motă_ marriage was a purely personal contract, founded on consent between a man and a woman, without any intervention on the part of the woman’s kin.... Now the fact that there was no contract with the woman’s kin—such as was necessary when the wife left her own people and came under the authority of her husband—and that, indeed, her kin might know nothing about it, can have only one explanation: in _motă_ marriage the woman did not leave her home, her people gave up no rights which they had over her, and the children of the marriage did not belong to the husband. _Motă_ marriage, in short, is simply the last remains of that type of marriage which corresponds to a law of mother-kinship, and Islam condemns it, and makes it “the sister of harlotry,” because it does not give the husband a legitimate offspring, _i. e._, an offspring that is reckoned to his own tribe and has rights of inheritance within it.[125]