“Religious battles like those at Badr and Uhad had increased the number of widows and orphans whose husbands and fathers respectively were slain in the way of Allah (SWT). Muslims were told that if they could not do justice to them they might marry such of these women whom they liked and thereby make them their family members, solving their social and financial problems. The maximum number of wives was not to exceed four and the condition for having more than one wife was equal treatment, because widows and orphans married for the sake of sympathy could have been ill treated due to their poverty and helplessness. At the same time the difficulty of treating all wives equally was pointed out 4:129. It may be noted that it is not an order to have more than one wife, it is only a permission. Before this verse was revealed many people had an unrestricted number of wives, therefore it was not that the number of wives was raised from one to four, actually it was restricted to four.”