Cousin marriage in the Middle East
[5] 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.
[3][6] Prior to the origins of Islam, cousin marriage was an acceptable practice in the Middle East according to writings in the Bible.
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.
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.
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 Middle East.
[14] Prevalence of marriages up to and including distance of second-degree cousin in the world according to The National Center for Biotechnology Information in 2012.
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.
In the upper and middle classes, the young man was seldom allowed to see the face of his female cousin after she reached puberty.
Among the upper classes it appeared to be again more common, as certain leading families protected their wealth and status by reserving daughters for their cousins, though sons had more freedom of choice.
[30] In her discussion of the city of Aleppo during the Ottoman Empire, Meriwether finds a rate of cousin marriage among the elite of 24%.
[31] Meriwether cites one case of cousin marriage increasing in a prominent family as it consolidated its position and forging new alliances became less critical.
[citation needed] A 1984 study of consanguineous (primarily first cousin) marriages among the Arab population in rural Western Galilee found it occurred among 49% of Druze, 40% Muslims, and 29% of Christians.
In the Southern Caucasus, cousin marriages usually happen among Azeris and ethnically related minorities such as Tats, Talysh and Mountain Jews, whereas among the neighboring Armenians and Georgians, It is considered a social taboo to marry up to seventh generation cousin, however, the practice is common among the Yazidi communities living in these counties.
The main reason behind the high percentage of autosomal recessive conditions is the union between groups of people known to share genetic traits inherited from one or more common ancestors.
[41][42][43] In some areas, higher proportion of first-cousin marriages in Pakistan has been noted to be the cause of an increased rate of blood disorders in the population.
[44] The BMJ reports in 2024 that young Pakistanis are moving away from cousin marriage due to an increasing awareness of genetic diseases, with the rate decreasing from 67.9% in 2006-07 to 63.6% in 2018.
[45] In India, consanguineous marriage is seen mostly among first-cousins, and mostly practiced in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka except Kerala.
But for demographic reasons the ideal of in-marriage can never be fully realized and hence societies allowing it can always draw on the advantageous aspects of both in- and out-marriage.
In societies like Europe that place greater value on affinal relations, responsibility for a married woman rests with both her husband's family and her own.
[48] Holý's field experience among the Berti people of Pakistan allowed him to undertake an extensive study of cousin marriage in their culture.
Holý believed that many of his findings from field experience among the Berti people of Pakistan could generalize to other Middle Eastern groups.
Stated pragmatic reasons for the parents included gaining access to the labor of a daughter's children by marrying her to a kinsman and thereby keeping her family close by, increased attentiveness on the part of a wife to her aging in-laws if she is related to them, and the ease of marital negotiations if the parents are brothers, or in the next best case, if the mother of one child is the sister of the father of the other child.
[49] Holý states that despite all this, creating a general theory of the existence of a preference for FBD marriage in terms of pragmatic reasons is not possible.
Holý argues from the case of the Palestinians that FBD marriage should not be viewed as simply "adding" affinal ties to previous agnatic ones.
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1059–1111) in his principal ethical work, the Ihya 'ulum al-din, gives the different reason that "the woman should not be a near relative of the husband, because near relationship diminishes the sensuous desire."
Finally the ancient Arabic poet 'Amr b. Kulthum states, "Do not marry in your own family, for domestic enmity arises therefrom."
Due to the poverty of many families this outlay often requires exceptional effort, and especially because the decision traditionally is in the hands of the groom's father, these considerations may weigh heavily on the outcome.
While babies of Pakistani heritage accounted for roughly 3.4% of all births in the UK in 2005, "they had 30% of all British children with recessive disorders and a higher rate of infant mortality," according to research done by the BBC.
