This is a three part series on the origins of the veil within Islam.  The following are the links for the first and third posts in this series:

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous – Part I

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous – Part III

If you wanted to try to figure out where the veiling phenomenon began, the most obvious place to start would be Islam and its holy book the Quran. You may have heard of it? Muslims believe the Quran to be a book of divine guidance for mankind, and consider the Quran to be the final revelation from God. The Quran was compiled by Muhammad’s followers shortly after his death in 632 AD. Unfortunately, the Quran does not provide any clear-cut answers on the necessity for veiling as one would hope. The Quran does address the issue of modesty with the following verse which, has often been interpreted by Muslim clerics, as a requirement for women to wear a veil over their face:

And say to the believing women that they cast down their looks and guard their private parts and do not display their ornaments except what appears thereof, and let them wear their head-coverings over their bosoms, and not display their ornaments except to their husbands or their fathers, or the fathers of their husbands, or their sons, or the sons of their husbands, or their brothers, or their brothers’ sons, or their sisters’ sons, or their women, or those whom their right hands possess, or the male servants not having need (of women), or the children who have not attained knowledge of what is hidden of women; and let them not strike their feet so that what they hide of their ornaments may be known; and turn to Allah all of you, O believers! so that you may be successful.

—Qur’an 24:31

While the above passage can be easily understood as a commandment for women to be modest, it does not explicitly order women to wear a face veil. Early on in Muhammad’s prophet career the veil was a not a requirement. Mohammad had many wives and none of them wore veils, nor did he prescribe other women to do so. Muhammad was a bit of a social engineer who came up with all kinds of ideas that were considered wild and wacky for his day. Moroccan sociologist and researcher Fatima Mernissi, would even go further suggesting that:

Muhammad sought an ideal society, one that would have been revolutionary by seventh century standards, one in which men and women shared greater equality, where women were considered valuable and had more freedom to control their lives. Muhammad’s own wives enjoyed a great deal of freedom and authority, which would have been contrary to the established practices of society at the time.

While Mohammad did come up with many revolutionary ideas that would change the course of world history, there were still limits to what he was genuinely willing to change. The change in Muhammad’s stance regarding veiling would come later. Muhammad came under attack for his social engineering experiment and was pressured by his supporters to veil his wives. Omar, Muhammad’s close and chauvinistic confidant, encouraged him to isolate his wives from everyone else and limit their role in his life.

It seems that Muhammad caved under Omar’s pressure and shortly thereafter conveniently produced the “revelation” of the curtain. This is the Quran’s only explicit mention of veiling, and it relates only to Muhammad’s wives. The following is the relevant passage, best known as the Verses of the Curtain:

Believers, do not enter the houses of the Prophet for a meal without waiting for the proper time, unless you are given leave. But if you are invited, enter; and when you have eaten, disperse. Do not engage in familiar talk, for this would annoy the Prophet and he would be ashamed to bid you go; but of the truth God is not ashamed. If you ask his wives for anything, speak to them from behind a curtain. This is more chaste for your hearts and their hearts.

—Sura 33:53

This requirement for veiling was only limited to the wives of Muhammad and was NOT extended to all Muslim women. Let me repeat that again in case you missed it, the Quaran does not contain any explicit, easy to understood instructions that commands Muslim women to have their face veiled. Now this is where things get kind of interesting. While the Quran says virtually nothing about veiling, there is a body of Islamic literature called the Hadith that says a whole lot. The Hadith are oral traditions relating to the thoughts and actions of Muhammad that were written down and gathered into large collections between 100 and 200 years after his death. While the late composition of the Hadiths do not exactly lend themselves to accuracy, its transmitters could easily put words into Muhammad’s mouth retroactively to justify their own opinions, they are regarded by many Muslim scholars as valuable tools for determining how a Muslim should live. The following are some Hadith passages that have been used by Muslim scholars to justify face veiling:

The Prophet said: Allah does not accept the prayer of a woman who has reached puberty unless she wears a veil.

—Abu Dawud (2:641)

Muhammad is asked whether it is right for a young woman to leave her house without a veil.  He replies, ”She should cover herself with the veil of her companion.

—Bukhari (6:321)

If you take these instructions at face value, they seem to suggest that Muhammad had some pretty clear ideas on how women should dress. While these instructions form the foundation of veiling within Islam, they may not necessarily reflect what Muhammad actually said. Let us also remember that the Quran, which was composed immediately after Muhammad’s death, said virtually nothing on veiling. Its seem the authors of the Quran forgot to mention Muhammad’s supplemental instructions regarding veiling. I suppose they just not worth mentioning at this stage of the game.

After Muhammad passed away in 632 AD, the world would be in store for some dramatic changes. In the years after the prophet’s death, the Muslims embarked on a wave of conquests the likes of which the world has not seen since the days of Alexander the Great. In a period of less than 20 years, the Muslims managed to seize the Persian Empire and nearly overwhelm the Byzantine Empire. It was after these conquests that the Muslims first came into contact with a Byzantine culture that had a popular and prominent tradition of veiling. Coincidentally, it was also during this time that the practice of face veiling became widespread throughout the Islamic world. It seems that the Muslims developed quite a penchant for veiling, seeing how well it worked for their conquered subjects, and decided to take up the practice themselves. Since the Hadith veil passages were composed between 100 and 200 years after Muhammad’s death, they come across as retroactive commandments put in Mohammad’s mouth to justify a veiling practice that became very popular throughout the Islamic world. In my next post in this series, I will delve into the origins of Byzantine veiling and why the Muslims would want to adopt a habit from a conquered people.