Cousin marriage is a form of consanguinity (marriages among couples who are related as second cousins or closer). While consanguinity is not unique to the Arab world, Arab countries have had "some of the highest rates of consanguineous marriages in the world". The bint 'amm marriage, or marriage with one's father's brother's daughter (bint al-'amm) is especially common, especially in tribal and traditional Muslim communities, where men and women seldom meet potential spouses outside the extended family. Rates of cousin marriage in the Middle East have been found to vary from 29% in Egypt to nearly 58% in Saudi Arabia.
Western anthropologists have debated the significance of the practice; some view it as the defining feature of the Middle Eastern kinship system while others note that overall rates of cousin marriage have varied sharply between different Middle Eastern communities. In pre-modern times rates of cousin marriage were seldom recorded.Holy, also Patai, p. 140 In recent times, geneticists have warned that the tradition of cousin marriage over centuries has led to increased numbers of people with recessive genetic disorders, due to inbreeding.
History Pre-Islamic Prior to the origins of Islam, cousin marriage was an acceptable practice in the Middle East, according to writings in the Bible. Abraham sent his servant back to his brother to get a wife for his son, Isaac. Isaac eventually married his first cousin once removed, Rebekah (daughter of Bethuel, the son of Nahor, Abraham's brother).
The Persian king Ardashir I of the Sasanian Empire advised his lawyers, secretaries, officers, and husbandmen to "marry near relatives for the sympathy of kinship is kept alive thereby." The same motivation is given in ancient Arabic sources referring to the practice of marriage between paternal cousins prevalent in pre-Islamic Arabia. The Kitab al-Aghani similarly features the story of Qays ibn Dharih, who was not allowed by his father to marry a beautiful maiden from another tribe because, in the words of his father felt that, as a rich and wealthy man, he did not want his son to take the side of a stranger. There is the related consideration that a man who grows up with a cousin in the intimate setting of one extended family knows her and so may develop his own liking or love for her. There is also the benefit of knowing the qualities of the spouse: a Syrian proverb reads, "Ill luck which you know is better than good luck with which you get acquainted." Keeping property in the family is a final reason for cousin marriage. One of the earliest examples of this is the five daughters of Zelophehad from ancient Israel () who, upon inheriting from their father, all married their father's brother's sons.
Relation with the spread of Islam A 2000 study by Andrey Korotayev found that parallel-cousin (Father's Brother's Daughter – FBD) marriage is likely to be common in areas that were part of the eighth-century Umayyad Caliphate and remained in the Islamic world, i.e., North Africa and the Middle East. Korotayev argues that while there is some functional connection between Islam and FBD marriage, the permission to marry a FBD does not appear to be sufficient to persuade people to actually marry FBD, even if the marriage brings with it economic advantages. According to Korotayev, a systematic acceptance and practice of parallel-cousin marriage took place when Islamized non-Arab groups adopted Arab norms and practices, even if they had no direct connection with Islam, to raise their social standing.Korotayev, A.V. "Parallel Cousin (FBD) Marriage, Islamization, and Arabization", Ethnology 39/4 (2000): 395–407.
Religious aspects In the book of Islam, the Quran, Sura An-NisaQ.4:22-5 gives a fairly detailed list of what sort of marriages are prohibited in Islam, (including "your fathers' sisters, and your mothers' sisters, and brother's daughters, and sister's daughters, and your foster-mothers") but does not include first cousins, and ends by saying: "Lawful to you are all beyond these". Pious Muslims look to the life of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and early Muslims as examples to be followed." One of Muhammad's wives – Zaynab bint Jahsh was the daughter of Muhammad's aunt. However, Muhammad had no children with Zaynab, only with Khadija bint Khuwaylid, and Maria al-Qibtiyya. Ali, Muhammad's cousin and the fourth Rashidun caliph, was married to Muhammad's daughter Fatimah.
The Quranic law dictating that daughters receive a portion of the inheritance appears to have provided a financial incentive to cousin marriage, as the inheritance would remain in the extended family.Patai, Myth of the Jewish Race, 169-72 Answering a 2012 audience question, the Islamic preacher Zakir Naik said that the Quran does not forbid cousin marriage but quotes Dr. Ahmed Sakr as saying that there is a hadith of Muhammad that says: "Do not marry generation after generation among first cousins". The fatwa center at IslamWeb.net was unable to find "any scholar who mentioned" this hadith, and lists several scholars (Al-Qaadhi Al-Husayn, Imaam al-Haramayn (Al-Juwayni), Ibn al-Salah) who have stated the hadith is inauthentic.
Prevalence in modern times In 2011, it was estimated that intra-familial unions made up up to 20-50% of all marriages in North Africa, Middle East and West Asia.
Besides Muslims, some Jews and Arab Christians in the Middle East have a history of cousin marriage. In addition, some Muslim groups living outside the Middle East, such as expatriate Pakistanis living in England, also practice consanguineous marriage.
Arabian Peninsula Raphael Patai reports that in central Arabia, no relaxation of a man's right to the father's brother's daughter (FBD, or paternal female cousin) seems to have taken place in the past hundred years before his 1962 work. Here, the girl is not forced to marry her paternal male cousin, but she cannot marry another unless he gives consent. Among the Jews of Yemen, this rule was also followed, albeit not as rigidly. In northern Arabia the custom is very strong and any outsider wishing to marry a woman must first come to the paternal male cousin, ask his permission, and pay him what he wants, and a man who marries off his daughter without the consent of the paternal male cousin may be killed by family members. The right of the paternal male cousin is such that a shaykh or elder may not be able to prevail against it. Among the Bedouin, it can happen that a paternal male cousin can lodge a complaint after the marriage has taken place, compelling the father to reimburse the bride price or have the marriage annulled. If the paternal male cousin cannot marry his paternal female cousin immediately due to financial or other considerations, the paternal male cousin can also "reserve" her by making a public and formal statement of his intentions to marry her at a future date. A more distant relative acquires priority to marry a girl over her paternal male cousin by reserving her soon after her birth.Patai 145–153
In Kuwait, 22.5-64.3% of marriages are consanguineous according to a 2009 study in the journal Reproductive Health. The same study found that the rate in Bahrain was 39-45% of marriages, 56.3% in Oman, and 54% in Qatar. Further research in Qatar showed that the more education and workforce participation a woman has, the less likely it becomes that she will enter into a consanguineous marriage. Other research has estimated that the consanguinity rate is 40% in Saudi Arabia.
Egypt As of 2016, about 40% of marriages in Egypt were between cousins. Another source (Reproductive Health) puts the figure at 20.9-32.8% for marriages between blood-related partners as of 2009.
In Egypt, cousin marriage may have been even more prevalent than in Arabia in past periods, with one source from the 1830s observing that it was common among Egyptian Arabs and native Egyptian Muslims, but less so in Cairo, where first cousin marriage accounts for 35 percent of marriages. Reportedly, the husband and wife would continue to call each other "cousin" because the tie of blood was seen as indissoluble, while the marriage was not. In the upper and middle classes, the young man was seldom allowed to see the face of his female cousin after she reached puberty. Cousin marriage is not only practiced by Muslims, but also by some Egyptian Copts in the past, although at a lesser rate (approximately 7-12% of all Coptic marriages). However, despite centuries of most Copts abstaining from cousin marriages, the Coptic Church in 2024 launched an initiative to ban relative marriages completely due to potential health risks.Patai, p. 139-40 Estimates from the late 19th and early 20th century state variously that either 80 percent of the Egyptian fellahin marry first cousins or two-thirds marry them if they exist. Cousin marriage was also practiced in the Sinai Peninsula, where a girl is sometimes reserved by her cousin with money long before puberty, and among Bedouins in the desert between the Nile and the Red Sea. Cousin marriage was practiced in Medina during Muhammad's time, but out of 113 recorded marriages in one sample, only 15 were between paternal cousins of any degree.Patai 141
Iran Cousin marriages are decreasing among Iranians. Since the Pahlavi era, fewer Iranians have practised cousin marriages.Golden River to Golden Road, R. Patai, 136Women in Ancient Persia, 559–331 BC By Maria Brosius, p. 68Patai, p. 139 There is a strong preference for marrying a first cousin, but no specific preference for the father's brother's daughter. For the quarter of women married after age 21, it was found that the incidence of consanguinity declined to 28%. Additionally, the proportion of cousin marriage among urban families stayed constant: it was only rural families that drove the increase. For all periods, the proportion of cousin marriage among highly educated women was somewhat lower than among uneducated women. It is hypothesized that decreases in infant mortality during the period may have created a larger pool of eligible cousins to marry.Givens 1994
Iraq 47-60% of marriages in Iraq are consanguineous, according to a 2009 study in the journal Reproductive Health, with marriage of a man to his father's brother's daughter being preferred. The uncle of the girl – or father of the boy – assigns or reserves his niece to his son at an early age, the parents from both families arrange for the marriage usually early. This is usually done to preserve wealth in the family and is more common in rural areas. Among the Jews of Iraq, if the cousin cannot be persuaded to forgo his rights, then he is paid a sum of money by the girl's father. Among the Kurdish Hamawand tribe, the paternal male cousin must give his consent for the marriage to take place, though in the southern Kurdish regions, the cousin's right is not as strongly emphasized. Among Arabs in Iraq,Patai 168 the cousin right has also traditionally prevailed.
Barth finds in his study of southern Kurdistan that in tribal villages, 57% of all marriages were cousin marriages (48% bint 'amm marriages), while in a nontribal village made up of recent immigrant families, only 17% were cousin marriages (13% bint 'amm).
Levant
Jordan 28.5-63.7% of marriages in Jordan are consanguineous according to a 2009 study in the journal Reproductive Health.
Lebanon 12.8-42% of marriages in Lebanon are consanguineous according to a 2009 study in the journal Reproductive Health. A 1983-84 study of cousin marriage among 2,752 households in the capital, Beirut, found a 7.9% rate of marriage between first cousins among Christians, and a 17.3% rate among Muslims.
In Lebanon, first-cousin marriage rates differ among religious affiliations, as it is found to be 17% for Christians and 30% for Muslims throughout the past century; however, first-cousin marriage is declining among all marriages in Lebanon.
Syria