Polygyny (Taʿaddud al-Zawjāt)

The Qurʾān permits a man up to four wives, but binds the permission to a condition of justice so demanding that the text itself warns it can scarcely be met — a tension every tradition has had to interpret.

At a glance

The permission appears in a verse about orphans: if you fear you cannot deal justly with orphan wards, the Qurʾān says, then marry women "two, or three, or four; but if you fear that you will not be just, then one" (4:3). Classical exegesis situates the revelation after Uḥud, when war had left the community with widows and fatherless children, and reads the verse as regulating — and capping — a pre-Islamic practice that had known no limit at all.

Later in the same sūra comes the counterweight: "You will never be able to be perfectly equal between wives, however much you desire it" (4:129). Jurists reconciled the two verses by distinguishing material justice — housing, maintenance, allotted time, which a husband must divide equally — from the affections of the heart, which no one commands. A husband who cannot sustain even the material equality, the schools agree, is not permitted the plurality.

Modern readings diverge and are best given attributively. Many contemporary scholars present polygyny as an exceptional provision for exceptional circumstances — widowhood, war, childlessness — rather than a norm; some modernist jurists, reading verses 4:3 and 4:129 together, argue the Qurʾān points toward monogamy as the practical default; several Muslim-majority states require judicial permission or a first wife's stipulation, while classical positions in both Sunni and Shiʿi law maintain the plain permission. All parties argue from the same two verses.

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Curated reference on Islamic belief and thought. On matters where traditions differ, positions are attributed rather than adjudicated; verify points of doctrine with qualified scholars.