Beena marriage

Beena is a form of marriage used in pre-Islamic Arabia, in which a wife would own a tent of her own, within which she retained complete independence from her husband, a form of matriarchy.^[1]

The term was suggested by John Ferguson McLennan, who noted that in Ceylon the marriage when a husband goes to live in the wife's village is called "beena marriage", and suggested to use "beena" as a general term for this kind of marriages.^[2]

Notes

1. Smith, p. 167
2. Smith, pp. 70, 71

References

• William Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in early Arabia, (1885)