Medieval Islamic people

Children in the Islamic Empire generally did what their parents did. Girls never went to school, but they worked at home taking care of their brothers and sisters and cooking. Girls carried water from the well, and they went out to look for fuel for the fire. Boys usually worked in the fields, plowing or weeding. But some boys went to school in the madrasa, where they learned to recite the Koran, and also learned how to live an Islamic life.

Friendships were less emphasized in the Islamic world than family relationships. Usually people got their positions through an uncle or a cousin. But we do still hear of close friendships between both men and women.

When the free children grew up they usually got married. Most women married their first or second cousins. Islamic law allowed men to have up to four wives if they could take care of all of them equally, but most men still only had one wife. Some powerful traders and sheiks had more than one wife. Once they were married, women moved to their husband’s house and took care of his house. Women hardly ever went out of the house alone – when they went out, their husbands or brothers went with them, and they wore a veil covering their heads and sometimes their faces so nobody would see them