Polygamy

Polygamy is a marriage institution in which a person has more than one spouse simultaneously, encompassing polygyny, in which a man has multiple wives, and the far rarer polyandry, in which a woman has multiple husbands, and anthropological surveys, including George Murdock's Ethnographic Atlas, have found that a large majority of documented human societies have historically permitted or preferred some form of polygamy, chiefly polygyny, even though monogamous unions have generally remained numerically the most common actual household arrangement even within polygamy-permitting societies. Polygyny has historically been practiced and, in some cases, remains legally recognized across large parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and parts of South and Southeast Asia, frequently regulated by religious law, including Islamic law, which permits a man up to four wives subject to conditions of equitable treatment, while polyandry is far rarer and has been documented chiefly in parts of the Himalayan region, including Tibet and Nepal, often linked to fraternal polyandry among brothers sharing a wife to preserve limited agricultural land undivided across generations. Contemporary state law varies widely on polygamy's legal status, ranging from full legal recognition in parts of Africa, the Middle East and South Asia to complete prohibition, including criminalization, across most of Europe, the Americas and East Asia, with the practice remaining a subject of ongoing legal, religious and human-rights debate internationally.