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

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous – Part I

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous – Part II

If Muhammad was not the originator of veiling throughout the Islamic world, then who was? To answer that question we need to look at the Byzantine Empire. Despite what you may have been taught in your high school history class, the Roman Empire did not fall when the City of Rome fell to the barbarian hordes in 476AD. In fact, the Roman Empire carried on for another 1,000 years. Historians refer to the later period in Roman history as Byzantine, hence the name Byzantine Empire. Maybe you have heard of it? The Byzantine Empire is the name modern historians had given to the Christian Roman Empire to distinguish it from the Pagan Roman Empire.

The world in which Muhammad (570-632 AD) lived was dominated by the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine Empire was considered to be the height of civilization for many centuries, and it loomed large in the popular imagination of people everywhere. Think of the Byzantine Empire as the United States of the Dark Ages. The Byzantines had a sprawling empire that extended from one end of the Mediterranean Sea to the other. To give you a sense of how large the Byzantine Empire was, let us take a look at following map which shows the extent of the empire in 600 AD:

The capital of the Byzantine Empire was Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey). Constantine, the first Christian emperor of the Roman Empire, transferred the imperial capital from Rome to the ancient city of Byzantium in 330 AD (and renamed thus after himself). Constantinople was situated at the crossroads of east and west which made the city a prime-trading hub in a network that extended across nearly all of Eurasia and North Africa. Constantinople became a city without rival anywhere in the world. One visitor to Constantinople so impressed with its splendor wrote:

I think myself that in the forty richest cities of the world had there been so much wealth as was found in Constantinople. For the Greeks say that two-thirds of the wealth of this world is in Constantinople and the other third scattered throughout the world.

—Robert of Clari

Constantinople was the preeminent city of the Dark Ages which made it the disseminator of culture for any civilization that came in contact with the Byzantine Empire. Constantinople was to the Dark Ages what New York, Paris or Milan is to our world, well you get the picture.

If you want a relevant example of Byzantine cultural preeminence let us take a look at a Byzantine custom of face veiling. The Byzantines were the originators of the face veil for women. The wealthy Christian women of Constantinople wore veils as a sign of high social status and nobility. Women who were unveiled in Byzantine society were looked down upon as lower class. The veiling and seclusion of upper and middle class Byzantine woman was a status symbol for men signifying they were sufficiently wealthy and affluent. If a woman did go outside of the home she had to be accompanied by a male relative, thus protecting her from the advances of strangers.

It was not appropriate for a woman to sit at the same table with men, unless they were a close blood relative such as her father, husband or brothers. Typically, women would eat in separate quarters and spend their days in rooms separated from the men.

Veiling in the Byzantine Empire was a class phenomenon and an urban one. Women living in rural areas or a lower class working women usually had no veil covering their face. Apart from wealth and social standing, the seclusion and veiling of women stems from the notion of male honor. In Byzantine society, the man’s honor is linked with the purity of his women. Therefore, it was a matter of utmost importance for the female behavior to be controlled to maintain male honor.

When we compare Islamic veiling with Byzantine veiling, there are just too many parallels between the two for it to be coincidental. In fact, it was the Muslims who adopted veiling from the Byzantines. If you wanted to figure out how this happened, we need to take a closer look at the period after the initial wave of Muslim conquests.

Muhammad lived in Arabia, which was on the fringes of the known world and was considered by Byzantium to be a backwater place where country bumpkins and uncouth rednecks lived. Despite this isolation, the Arabs were familiar Byzantine beliefs and cultural values. If you cast your mind back to the map of Europe from 600 AD, the Byzantine Empire stood as a giant colossus. It would not be too hard imagine people living in remote lands wanting to emulate in one form or another  the habits of the greatest civilization of the day.

In the context of Byzantine cultural preeminence, we should not find it all too surprising to see Muhammad arriving at the decision to veil his wives. After all, once he achieved a high social standing among his followers, it was only a matter of time before they insisted he veil his wives. As we have already seen, this is exactly what Muhammad did. Veiling your women was the kind of thing you did back then when you wanted to be considered “respectable”.

When the Muslims burst onto the world stage in the 7th century, they swept almost everyone before them. In just a few short years, Muhammad had transformed the Arabs from an undisciplined rabble, into one of the most potent forces the world has thus far seen. After Muhammad died in 632AD, the Muslims embarked on a wave of conquest that would see them vanquish the Persian Empire and nearly overwhelmed the Byzantine Empire. The scales of the Muslim conquests were breathtaking. By 650 AD, the Muslim conquests extended from modern-day Tunisia to the borders of India.

Not only were the Muslims able to create a vast empire but they were savvy enough to hold onto their new territories permanently. Unlike many of their modern counterparts, the Muslims of this era were highly tolerant toward their new found subjects. In fact, most of the recently conquered Christians and Jews found Muslim rule to be preferable to that of their former Byzantine masters. It is hard to imagine today any non-Muslim preferring to live in an Islamic controlled state, but this was actually the case. It was this tolerance that was the key element enabling the Muslims to create the brilliant Islamic civilization that these conquests would soon become.

Through their conquest of vast swathes of Byzantine territory, the Muslims came into intimate contact with Byzantine/Greco-Roman civilization and immediately fell under its spell. Apart from the Byzantines, the Muslims of the Dark Ages were excellent preservers of Greco-Roman literature and culture. Our modern world owes an immense debt to the early Muslims for preserving much of the knowledge we have today about our Greco-Roman heritage.

It is often said that imitation is the greatest form of flattery. The Muslims vacuumed up Byzantine/Greco-Roman ideas and knowledge with relish enabling them to build the greatest civilization of the Dark Ages. Once such notion that the Muslims became very fond of was the Byzantine custom of veiling. It was during this time that face veiling spread throughout the Muslim world. Just like in the Byzantine Empire, Muslim veiling was primarily limited to the upper and middle classes as a sign of social standing. It would only happen in latter centuries that the practice would filter its way down to the lower classes. Given the Muslim admiration for Byzantine/Greco-Roman civilization, it only made sense for them to adopt veiling. Veiling would elevate Muslims over their subjects thus giving themselves and additinal measure of  “respectability”.

Reflecting on the origins of the veil, one cannot help but be confronted with the realization that veiling is a social custom invented by men for their own social prestige and egos, rather than an instrument of divine law for the so called “protection” of women. The Muslims gladly copied the Byzantines custom and then made it into divine law. The rest is history as you might say. Given the current debate over veiling, one wonders would the Muslims be so steadfast in the veil’s defense if they realized their ancestors adopted this custom from the West in the first place.