Abstract
In Middle Eastern cultures, the focal point of marriage is the wedding night where def loration, dukhla, takes the form of a ritual. It means the entry and signifies the consummation of marriage by the double confirmation of the female virginity and male virility, an indispensable condition for living a marital life together. In Oman, they build a honeymoon hut, kille, for the newly wed spouses at the groom’s home, consisting of one room, richly decorated by the groom’s female kin. The bride and groom spend seven days, in solitude, with no chores except defloration, and when this is over, the hut is torn down.1
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Unni Wikan, Behind the Veil in Arabia: Women in Oman (PhD thesis, University of Oslo) (Oslo, Ethnographical Museum, 1978), 352.
Hind Khattab, Women’s Perception of Sexuality in Rural Giza (Cairo, The Population Council, 1996), 24.
Diane Singerman, Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics, and Network in Urban Quarter of Cairo (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1995), 96–97.
Unni Wikan, Life among the Poor in Cairo (London, Tavistock, 1980), 84.
Marie Bassili Assaad, “Female circumcision in Egypt, social implications, current research, and prospects for change,” Studies in Family Planning, vol. 11, no. 1, 1980, 13.
Anne Cloudsley, Women of Omdurman: Life, Love and the Cult of Virginity (London, Ethnographica, 1983), 61.
Sara Skandrani et al., “The rule of virginity among young women of Maghrebine origin in France,” Transcultural Psychiatry, vol. 47, no. 2, 2010, 306.
Aziz Yasan and Faruk Gürgen, “Marital satisfaction, sexual problems, and the possible difficulties on sex therapy in traditional Islamic culture,” Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, vol. 35, 2009, 71.
Altan Essizoglu et al., “Double standard for traditional value of virginity and premarital sexuality in Turkey, a university students case,” Women and Health, vol. 51, 2011, 140.
Douglas A. Davis and Susan Schaefer Davis, “Dilemmas of adolescence, courtship, sex, and marriage in a Moroccan town,” in Donna Lee Bowen and Evelyn A. Early, eds., Everyday Life in the Muslim Middle East (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1993), 87.
Elizabeth W. Fernea, “Childhood in the Muslim Middle East,” in Elizabeth W. Fernea, ed., Children in the Muslim Middle East (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1995), 10.
Abdel Wahab Bouhdiba, Sexuality in Islam (London, Saqi, 1998), 186.
Fataneh Farahani, Diasporic Narratives of Sexuality: Identity Formation among Iranian-Swedish Women (Doctoral Thesis in Ethnology, Stockholm University, 2007), 82.
Daisy Hilse Dwyer, Images and Self-Images: Male and Female in Morocco (New York, Columbia University Press, 1978), 65.
Paul Vieille, “Iranian women in family alliance and sexual politics,” in Lois Beck and Nikki R. Keddie, eds., Women in the Muslim World (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1978), 456.
Copyright information
© 2015 David Ghanim
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ghanim, D. (2015). Ritual of Defloration. In: The Virginity Trap in the Middle East. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137507082_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137507082_11
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-70404-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-50708-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Intern. Relations & Development CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)