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child marriages, generallyPosted by Catherine Cartwright Jones on October 7, 2001 at 15:15:00: In reply to: OT/ Age of Aisha posted by txilar on October 7, 2001 at 07:13:53: I haven't found any sources that say anything other than that she was6. I agree that without birth documents, anything that long ago is open to question. At the time of Mohammed, there were several sorts of marriage norms. Adult women could choose sex partner (or several or not), adults could agree among themselves (either sex making the proposal), or adults could arrange marriages for their children (of any age). It was an interesting transition period when older polytheistic religions were giving way (under pressure from a vicious climate change) to one of several sorts of monotheism. The same disaster pushed kinship commitment changes, favoring polygyny over previous serial monogamy, and female sexual self determination. In any case, child marriage was not uncommon in 7th century Arabia, particularly when political and economic interests were at stake. Child marriages made good sense in terms of community structure, corralling emotionally and financially wasteful adolescent infatuations and giving them a legitimate channel for expression. Through the medieval period, Armenians would arrange marriages for their daughters by age 2, to deter them being abducted. In the Yemen, prior to the 20th century, brides younger than age 13 were considered the best choice, as they were more apt to be obedient. In National Geographic, 1917, a woman attending a night of the henna in Algeria or Morocco (exact location is unclear in the story) the bride was age 2 and the groom was age 4. Child marrige was outlawed during Indian independance ... though it's still not unheard of. So, on that line, as I was hennaeing 20-something adult models, I realized that this was probably not a very good choice in terms of bridal demographics for the medieval period. So, when one of my favorite models (the lady with the hand previously posted) said her daughter was fussing to be hennaed like mommy ... I said yes. You can see a family resemblence in thumb shapes there! I got that little hand hennaed in 7 minutes flat. She was ready to explode from fidgits by the time I got the last lines down!
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