The ethics of marriage holds a large place in Moslem literature, and also in the works of Al-Ghazali. Marriage is enjoined upon every Moslem, and celibacy is discouraged. “Marriage,” said Mohammed the Prophet, “is my custom, and he who dislikes it does not belong to my people.” And in another tradition: “Marriage is one-half of true religion.” Even the members of the ascetic orders in Islam are generally married. The vow of celibacy was therefore not known among the mystics. Marriage is defined by Moslem jurists as “a contract by which the husband obtains possession of the wife and is allowed to enjoy her, if there be no legal impediment preventing the same.” “Marriage,” says Al-Ghazali himself, “is a kind of slavery, for the wife becomes the slave of her husband and it is her duty to obey him absolutely in everything he requires of her, except in what is contrary to the laws of Islam.” In the selection of a wife, Al-Ghazali advises his disciples to look for the following qualifications: (1) piety, (2) good character, (3) beauty, (4) a moderate dowry, (5) ability to bear children, (6) that she be a virgin, (7) of a good family, (8) that she be not of near relation. The duties of the husband to the wife and the duties of the wife to her husband are given in detail by Al-Ghazali in his _Ihya_ and in some of his other works. The husband, according to this teaching, ought to maintain _a golden mean_ in dealing with his wife in twelve points, that is, he means that there should be no excess of kindness or excess of harshness in any of these particulars: (1) the marriage feast; (2) behaviour; (3) playfulness or caressing; (4) maintaining his dignity; (5) jealousy; (6) pecuniary allowance; (7) teaching; (8) granting every wife her rights (in the Moslem sense); (9) chastisement; (10) the rules of cohabitation; (11) childbirth; (12) divorce. In one place he says if the wife be disobedient and obstinate, the husband has the right to punish her and force her to obey him, but he must proceed gradually, exhort, admonish, threaten, abstain from intercourse with her for three days, beat her so as to let her feel the pain, but be careful not to wound her in the face, make her blood flow abundantly or break a bone! The teaching of Al-Ghazali on divorce and slavery is so thoroughly Moslem that much of it is untranslatable. Suffice it to say that he agrees with other doctors of Moslem law in excusing onanism and other sins under certain circumstances, and even indicates that it may become a duty if practiced in order to escape from greater sins.[68] In spite of his Islamic conception of the sexual relation, Al-Ghazali certainly inspires our respect by what he says on the kindly treatment of the wife and the evil of divorce. Only one would like to know whether he himself had more than one wife and whether she was a worthy helpmeet to her husband and he to her. His biographers are silent.