the many with whom Mahomet was content to pass a few days and nights.
There are also signs in the Kuran at this time of disagreements between
the different members of his household, and of their extravagant demands
upon Mahomet.

It was evidently not so easy to rule his wives as to acquire them.
Moreover, he was beginning to feel the sting of jealousy towards every
other man of the Muslim.

Here really begins the insistence upon restrictive regulations for women
which has been ever since the bane of Islam. Mahomet could not allow his
wives to go abroad freely, decked in the ornaments he himself had
bestowed, to become a mark for every envious gazer. They were not as
other women, and his imperious nature regarded them as peculiarly
inviolate, so that he fenced in their actions and secluded their lives.
As early as his marriage with Zeinab he imposed restrictions upon women's
dress abroad. They are not to traverse the streets in jewels or beautiful
robes, but are to cover themselves closely with a long sober garment.
Whereas his former sura regarding women had been confined to codifying
and rendering fairer divorce and property laws, now the personal note
sounds strongly, and continues throughout the whole of his later
pronouncements, regarding Muslim women. The next few months were to see
dangers and disturbances in his domestic life which were to fix the
position of women in Islam throughout the coming centuries, but before he
had long completed his latest marriage he was called away upon another
necessary expedition. Thus casually, almost from purely personal
considerations, was the law regarding the status of women established in
Islam. His ordinances have the savour of their impetuous creator, who
found in the subject sex no opposition against the writing down, in their
most sacred book, of those decrees which rendered their inferior position