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It's not specific to Pakistan: the same problem tends to be seen in many if not all cultures with a strong dowry tradition. If substantial wealth is transferred

It's not specific to Pakistan: the same problem tends to be seen in many if not all cultures with a strong dowry tradition. If substantial wealth is transferred with a bride, there's a powerful incentive to marry within the family. (This used to happen in Europe, but during the middle ages the church banned cousin marriages for political reasons: it stopped the nobility consolidating too much power.)

iguy 7y ago
It was certainly common for a long time in many places, and still is across what's now the muslim world (although I think it long predates Islam). But I'm not sure dowry tradition is quite the right marker, IIRC it's much less common in Hindu tradition (where the pattern was larger caste groups instead). But it's certainly a way of concentrating power in the family. And presumably, for a very long time, having lots of grandsons of undivided loyalty was important in conflicts with the neighbouring family/tribe... worth the individual fitness cost (and the extra miscarriages etc -- many of these strange illnesses would of course have killed the child).
- masklinn 7y ago
  > still is across what's now the muslim world (although I think it long predates Islam). It can trivially be seen to have little to do with islam in examples like the House of Habsburg, and the famously ignominous end of the Spanish line. Or orthodox jews (the endogamous set is wider than just a family, but you still see lots of rare genetic conditions crop up, and some jewish communities don't even stray outside of it e.g. Mashhadi jews). Though it does look related to Arabization. While first-degree cousin marriage has gotten quite a bit rarer used to be extremely common across the globe, and aside from the middle-east it also remains legal throughout eurasia (except for a few eastern european countries and notably china where it's entirely banned and india where it's dependent on culture and religion) and south america > IIRC it's much less common in Hindu tradition It's less common but hardly non-existent: according to Shrikant Kuntla, Srinivas Goli, T.V. Sekher, Riddhi Doshi via wikipedia[0] rate of consanguinous marriage is 25% of indian muslims, 15% for indian hindu, and under 10% for other indians. State / culture presents a much wider spread, from 1.2% in Himachal Pradesh to 38% in Tamil Nadu. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage#India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage#India
  - iguy 7y ago
    Well, royalty are special and weird, and a drop in the bucket, and prove little. My point was that it was a widespread pre-islamic custom, not one which arrived with the book; the geographical correlation with islam is because (as cstross says) it was largely stamped out in Europe a thousand years ago. It's my understanding that cousin-marriage was rare among european Jews, but a bit more common elsewhere. (Not sure if as high as the surrounding peoples, not sure.) There are indeed rare and interesting genetic conditions in some Jewish groups, but that's another story. (Am surprised by Tamil Nadu's 38%, thanks. But certainly north-indians take dowry pretty seriously, while avoiding cousins.)
    - masklinn 7y ago
      > (Am surprised by Tamil Nadu's 38%, thanks. But certainly north-indians take dowry pretty seriously, while avoiding cousins.) Yes, India seems extremely split between the north and the south, northern cultures have disapproved of it or forbidden it forever while southern states much less so.
      - iguy 7y ago
        I wonder how this happened... do you know if it's known? Could it be one of the relics of Buddhism adopted by the ~ Gupta revival, and never made it down south?
  - Aaron_Putnam 7y ago
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/11723308/First-cousin-marriages-in-Pakistani-communities-leading-to-appalling-disabilities-among-children.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/11723308/Fi... While British Pakistanis are responsible for 3% of all births, they account for 30% of British children born with a genetic illness. Cousin marriages in the UK are 1/200 for White couples, but 2/3 for Pakistani couples. The solution is to ban cousin marriages. It is unfair on the rest of society to have to shoulder the burden of excess healthcare costs, caused by the outdated and harmful cultural practices of immigrants.
- sateesh 7y ago
  * IIRC it's much less common in Hindu tradition (where the pattern was larger caste groups instead). In Hindu families too it was not that uncommon at all, though this trend has declined in the current generation marriages.
  - iguy 7y ago
    Can you say where this is from? TIL that there's a strong N/S pattern, wikipedia says 0.1 in Delhi in 1980, but an astonishing 38% in TN.
    - sateesh 7y ago
      My observation is from southern part of India (more specifically of Karnataka) which also ranks higher in the same cousin marriage (as per wikipedia).
dghf 7y ago
> (This used to happen in Europe, but during the middle ages the church banned cousin marriages for political reasons: it stopped the nobility consolidating too much power.) Not so much banned it, as restricted it: dispensations were fairly common among the nobility and royalty, who could afford the fees charged by the Church for the privilege. And not just cousin marriage, either: marriages between uncle and niece were hardly unknown. For an example somewhat after the Middle Ages, have a look at the family tree of Charles II of Spain [0]: his father and mother were uncle and niece, as were his paternal great-grandparents and his maternal great-great-grandparents. He was descended in 14 different ways from Philip I and Joanna of Castile, at a remove of five, six or seven generations. Of his 16 great-great-great-grandmothers, Anna of Bohemia and Hungary was four of them (and also four of his 32 great-great-great-great-grandmothers). And so on. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_Spain#Ancestry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_Spain#Ancestry
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  I remember reading that the Church in the middle ages was pitted against tribalism. So they tried to make rules to weaken it. One of those was recognizing free consent to marry over betrothals arranged by their families.
- iguy 7y ago
  Royalty are special and weird, and a drop in the bucket. Overall the ban was pretty successful, it created a world where a few Hapsburgs behaved this way, instead of every guy in a village with three cows to his name. Their family trees are weird and alien to us because we live in this new world. Whereas I don't think many of his subjects thought that Saddam Hussein's family tree was freak-show material.
barry-cotter 7y ago
Cousin marriage isn’t a specifically Pakistani thing. At the levels it occurs at in the Pakistani community it is basically a Muslim thing though. The only non-Muslim country that falls in the Muslim range is India which has about the same population prevalence as Turkey. Given the much higher prevalence in Pakistan I’d guess that’s almost entirely due to India’s large Muslim population. See the image on page 3 of this pdf. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ghazi_Tadmouri/publication/26878532_Consanguinity_and_reproductive_health_among_Arabs/links/0912f513666fbd3699000000/Consanguinity-and-reproductive-health-among-Arabs.pdf?origin=publication_detail https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ghazi_Tadmouri/publicat... Consanguinity and reproductive health among Arabs

iguy 7y ago

It was certainly common for a long time in many places, and still is across what's now the muslim world (although I think it long predates Islam). But I'm not sure dowry tradition is quite the right marker, IIRC it's much less common in Hindu tradition (where the pattern was larger caste groups instead). But it's certainly a way of concentrating power in the family. And presumably, for a very long time, having lots of grandsons of undivided loyalty was important in conflicts with the neighbouring family/tribe... worth the individual fitness cost (and the extra miscarriages etc -- many of these strange illnesses would of course have killed the child).

masklinn 7y ago
> still is across what's now the muslim world (although I think it long predates Islam). It can trivially be seen to have little to do with islam in examples like the House of Habsburg, and the famously ignominous end of the Spanish line. Or orthodox jews (the endogamous set is wider than just a family, but you still see lots of rare genetic conditions crop up, and some jewish communities don't even stray outside of it e.g. Mashhadi jews). Though it does look related to Arabization. While first-degree cousin marriage has gotten quite a bit rarer used to be extremely common across the globe, and aside from the middle-east it also remains legal throughout eurasia (except for a few eastern european countries and notably china where it's entirely banned and india where it's dependent on culture and religion) and south america > IIRC it's much less common in Hindu tradition It's less common but hardly non-existent: according to Shrikant Kuntla, Srinivas Goli, T.V. Sekher, Riddhi Doshi via wikipedia[0] rate of consanguinous marriage is 25% of indian muslims, 15% for indian hindu, and under 10% for other indians. State / culture presents a much wider spread, from 1.2% in Himachal Pradesh to 38% in Tamil Nadu. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage#India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage#India
- iguy 7y ago
  Well, royalty are special and weird, and a drop in the bucket, and prove little. My point was that it was a widespread pre-islamic custom, not one which arrived with the book; the geographical correlation with islam is because (as cstross says) it was largely stamped out in Europe a thousand years ago. It's my understanding that cousin-marriage was rare among european Jews, but a bit more common elsewhere. (Not sure if as high as the surrounding peoples, not sure.) There are indeed rare and interesting genetic conditions in some Jewish groups, but that's another story. (Am surprised by Tamil Nadu's 38%, thanks. But certainly north-indians take dowry pretty seriously, while avoiding cousins.)
  - masklinn 7y ago
    > (Am surprised by Tamil Nadu's 38%, thanks. But certainly north-indians take dowry pretty seriously, while avoiding cousins.) Yes, India seems extremely split between the north and the south, northern cultures have disapproved of it or forbidden it forever while southern states much less so.
    - iguy 7y ago
      I wonder how this happened... do you know if it's known? Could it be one of the relics of Buddhism adopted by the ~ Gupta revival, and never made it down south?
- Aaron_Putnam 7y ago
  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/11723308/First-cousin-marriages-in-Pakistani-communities-leading-to-appalling-disabilities-among-children.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/11723308/Fi... While British Pakistanis are responsible for 3% of all births, they account for 30% of British children born with a genetic illness. Cousin marriages in the UK are 1/200 for White couples, but 2/3 for Pakistani couples. The solution is to ban cousin marriages. It is unfair on the rest of society to have to shoulder the burden of excess healthcare costs, caused by the outdated and harmful cultural practices of immigrants.
sateesh 7y ago
* IIRC it's much less common in Hindu tradition (where the pattern was larger caste groups instead). In Hindu families too it was not that uncommon at all, though this trend has declined in the current generation marriages.
- iguy 7y ago
  Can you say where this is from? TIL that there's a strong N/S pattern, wikipedia says 0.1 in Delhi in 1980, but an astonishing 38% in TN.
  - sateesh 7y ago
    My observation is from southern part of India (more specifically of Karnataka) which also ranks higher in the same cousin marriage (as per wikipedia).

dghf 7y ago

> (This used to happen in Europe, but during the middle ages the church banned cousin marriages for political reasons: it stopped the nobility consolidating too much power.) Not so much banned it, as restricted it: dispensations were fairly common among the nobility and royalty, who could afford the fees charged by the Church for the privilege. And not just cousin marriage, either: marriages between uncle and niece were hardly unknown. For an example somewhat after the Middle Ages, have a look at the family tree of Charles II of Spain [0]: his father and mother were uncle and niece, as were his paternal great-grandparents and his maternal great-great-grandparents. He was descended in 14 different ways from Philip I and Joanna of Castile, at a remove of five, six or seven generations. Of his 16 great-great-great-grandmothers, Anna of Bohemia and Hungary was four of them (and also four of his 32 great-great-great-great-grandmothers). And so on. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_Spain#Ancestry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_Spain#Ancestry

Gibbon1 7y ago
I remember reading that the Church in the middle ages was pitted against tribalism. So they tried to make rules to weaken it. One of those was recognizing free consent to marry over betrothals arranged by their families.
iguy 7y ago
Royalty are special and weird, and a drop in the bucket. Overall the ban was pretty successful, it created a world where a few Hapsburgs behaved this way, instead of every guy in a village with three cows to his name. Their family trees are weird and alien to us because we live in this new world. Whereas I don't think many of his subjects thought that Saddam Hussein's family tree was freak-show material.

barry-cotter 7y ago

Cousin marriage isn’t a specifically Pakistani thing. At the levels it occurs at in the Pakistani community it is basically a Muslim thing though. The only non-Muslim country that falls in the Muslim range is India which has about the same population prevalence as Turkey. Given the much higher prevalence in Pakistan I’d guess that’s almost entirely due to India’s large Muslim population. See the image on page 3 of this pdf. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ghazi_Tadmouri/publication/26878532_Consanguinity_and_reproductive_health_among_Arabs/links/0912f513666fbd3699000000/Consanguinity-and-reproductive-health-among-Arabs.pdf?origin=publication_detail https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ghazi_Tadmouri/publicat... Consanguinity and reproductive health among Arabs