This Thesis Has Been Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for a Postgraduate Degree (E.G
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This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: • This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. • A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. • This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. • The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. • When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Prosopographical Approaches to the Nasab Tradition: a Study of Marriage and Concubinage in the Tribe of Muḥammad, 500-750 CE Majied Robinson Thesis submitted for PhD The University of Edinburgh 2013 Abstract This thesis will demonstrate how prosopographical methods can be used to provide a narrative of social change for the Quraysh tribe of Late Antiquity. By applying these methods to records of their marriage behaviour, it will be shown that the pre-Islamic Quraysh led a far more marginal existence than is widely thought, and that in the post- Islamic period they were surprisingly flexible with regard to their marriage practices and ideas on group membership. The first three chapters focus on historiography and methodology. Chapter One introduces the methodological preliminaries that lie at the heart of this research; these concern the nature of the data, the manner in which it is extracted and the way it will be structured within databases. Issues regarding the quality and reliability of the marital records as preserved in the nasab (tr: genealogical) literary tradition are also discussed in this section. Chapter Two provides a historiography of the nasab tradition, paying particular attention to the nature of its emergence and the possible effects of social and cultural contexts on the quality of the marriage data. This provides the groundwork for Chapter Three which focuses more narrowly on the work from which most of our data are extracted – the Nasab Quraysh of al-Zubayrī (d. 851). The remaining five chapters outline how the data within the nasab tradition can be analysed and incorporated into existing secondary scholarship. Chapters Four and Five establish that the data show a rapid rise in concubinage at the same time as the Arab military conquests of the seventh century. This has implications for our current consensus on the nature of marriage and identity in the seventh and eighth centuries. Chapters Six to Eight investigate the marriages made by the Quraysh to Arab women in the sixth to eighth centuries, and will show how practice adapted to context. To conclude, it will be argued that this investigation not only establishes the high quality of the marriage data as preserved in the nasab tradition, but also the enormous potential of prosopographical methods when applied to the study of early Islamic history. 1 Contents Abstract…..............................................................................................................1 Contents.................................................................................................................2 List of maps and tables...........................................................................................4 Acknowledgements...............................................................................................8 Notes on citations and transliteration.....................................................................9 Introduction......................................................................................................................11 Part One – Data, methods and historiography..................................................................25 Chapter One: Methodology..................................................................................25 Chapter Two: Historiography of the nasab tradition...........................................60 Chapter Three: The Nasab Quraysh in context....................................................86 Part Two – Data analysis and application......................................................................109 Chapter Four: The statistical analysis of concubinage.......................................114 Chapter Five: Origins of Islamic concubinage...................................................136 Chapter Six: Marriage datasets...........................................................................159 2 Chapter Seven: Marriage in the late jāhiliyya and early Islam..........................186 Chapter Eight: Caliphal Umayyad marriage......................................................223 Conclusion.....................................................................................................................232 Appendix One – Hajīn marriage....................................................................................242 Appendix Two - Marriages of the brothers of Muʿāwiya and Marwān I......................248 Bibliography..................................................................................................................250 3 List of Tables, Graphs and Maps Tables Table 1.1: First-stage data extraction...............................................................................39 Table 1.2: Advanced data extraction...............................................................................40 Table 1.3: Comparison of degrees of separation..............................................................43 Table 1.4: Appearances of Khalaf b. Wahb’s descendants in historical literature...........47 Table 1.5: Where Khalaf b. Wahb’s descendants appear in select historical sources......49 Table 1.6: Appearances of Khalaf b. Wahb’s descendants outside the Nasab Quraysh............................................................................................................................50 Table 1.7: Proportions of Khalaf b. Wahb’s descendants in select works.......................50 Table 1.8: Comparison of wives and children for an early Islamic cohort as recorded in the Nasab Quraysh and Asad Ahmed’s The Religious Elite............................................52 Table 2.1: Authors of genealogical works as recorded in the Fihrist..............................66 Table 2.2: Number of genealogist deaths per quarter century from al-Fihrist and extant works................................................................................................................................69 Table 3.1: Number of appearances of Zubayrids as recorded in the Nasab Quraysh in outside historical works....................................................................................................88 4 Table 3.2: Number of appearances of Zubayrids in outside works that do not appear in the Nasab Quraysh...........................................................................................................89 Table 3.3: Zubayrid rāwīs in al-Ṭabarī’s Taʾrīkh.............................................................94 Table 4.1: Maternal status of children by generation.....................................................119 Table 4.2: Proportion of concubines and children of concubines by generation...........121 Table 6.1: Marriages of the fourth generation descendants of Quṣayy b. Kilāb (Cohort One)...............................................................................................................................163 Table 6.2: Breakdown of marriages by major groupings for pre-Islamic cohort...........168 Table 6.3: Marriages of Muḥammad and early Muslim converts (Cohort Two)...........169 Table 6.4: Breakdown of marriages by major groupings for early Islamic cohort........175 Table 6.5: Marriages of Umayyad caliphs and their sons (Cohort Three).....................177 Table 6.6: Breakdown of marriages by major groupings for Umayyad caliphs and their sons................................................................................................................................184 Table 7.1: Comparison of (non-concubine) marriage patterns of the three cohorts.......187 Table 7.2: Comparison of marriage patterns between pre-Islamic and early Islamic cohorts............................................................................................................................189 Table 7.3: Degree of separation between marriage partners measured over time..........190 5 Table 7.4: Number of exogamous marriages of pre-Islamic and early Islamic cohorts by tribe................................................................................................................................191 Table 8.1: Changing maternal statuses of the children of Umayyad caliphs and sons compared to Qurashī generational average....................................................................224 Table 8.2: Comparison of maternal statuses of the children of Umayyad caliphs and sons compared to Qurashī generationally weighted average..................................................225 Table 8.3: Maternal status of children of Umayyad caliphs and sons by generation.....225 Table 8.4: Origins of child-bearing Arab wives of Umayyad caliphs and their sons....226 Table 10.1: Marriages to Arab women by the Generation