Muhammad's wives
Muhammad was monogamous for 25 years. After his first wife Khadija bint Khuwaylid died, he proceeded to marry the wives listed below, and most of them were widows. Muhammad's life is traditionally delineated as two epochs: pre-hijra (emigration) in Mecca, a city in western Arabia, from the year 570 to 622, and post-hijra in Medina, from 622 until his death in 632. All but two of his marriages were contracted after the Hijra (migration to Medina). Of Muhammad's thirteen wives, at least two, Rayhana bint Zayd and Maria al-Qibtiyya, were referred to simply as concubines; however, there is debate among Muslims as to whether these two officially became his wives. Of his thirteen wives, only two bore him children, a fact which has been described as "curious" by Cornell University Professor of Near Eastern Studies David S. Powers.
Women in Islam
Polyandry, the practice of a woman having more than one husband (even temporarily, after payment of a sum of money to the man or the man's family), by contrast, is not permitted.
The Prophet Muḥammad quite deliberately did not recommend cousin-marriage as his "sunnah" or path to be followed; out of his thirteen wives, only one – the seventh, Zaynab bint Jaish, a divorceé said by historians to have been very beautiful – was his cousin. The rest of his wives came from diverse social and even religious backgrounds, with Safiyya bint Huyayy and Raihana bint Shamum being of Jewish origin.