To my (limited) understanding of early Islamic history, it seems that almost every possible prohibition/principle of law was projected back in time, and attributed either to Muhammad or to a very early caliph. Bulliet's book Islam: The View from the Edge shows how hadiths attribute to Muhammad statements about almost everything, including things he is unlikely to have cared about; for instance, few people in the Arabian Peninsula probably wondered whether it was possible to be a good muslim while practicising horse sacrifice. On the other hand, when Islam started to penetrate in Central Asia and in nomadic people, it became an important concern. Similarly, it seems possible that the concern with temporary marriage stemmed from its prevalence in pre-Islamic customs, especially in the former Sasanian Empire. The Babylonian Talmud, for instance, mentioned this practice. It is therefore probable that the Shi'a/Sunni modern disagreement on this is due to differences in geographical implantations, which were later reinforced by exegetical discourse.

While my knowledge of temporary marriage in Islam is very limited and not relevant specifically to the middle east, Ibn Battuta wrote in his travels to the Maldives (1343-45) that temporary marriage was very common among the people there, and that he himself married and fathered a child there with a local woman. The way he put it, travelers who stayed at the Maldives for a period of time sometimes took local wives only for the duration of their stay. This is unfortunately not directly applicable to the customs of people living under the caliphs; the Maldives were/are an independent entity for most of their history.