Page 178 - Arabian Studies (V)

166 Arabian Studies V
Put the other way round, the understandings underlying the tradi­
tional marriage contract and a woman’s leverage to negotiate in
marriage depend upon her retaining a claim on the resources of her
natal family. In this sense a woman’s share in the family estate may
be more a promise or a symbol of her status and place in the family
than a marketable asset she can freely manipulate.
This point may become clearer if we examine the types of
payment made to a woman during her married life. So long as a
woman’s father is alive, it is he who makes the largest payments
Other male relatives may also visit and offer gifts on the festivals,
but their gifts are usually much smaller sums. The payments
referred to are offered on the holidays (the €asb at-‘Id) and, more
significantly, on the occasion of a woman’s childbirths, especially
after the birth of a first male child. Before the increase in the
monetarisation of the economy, these festival payments were often
a part of the family meat, and those after childbirth are still largely
paid in kind, one-half, that is, of the woman’s special food during
the forty day period after childbirth.
The inter-relation of all the payments (marital, ritual, and that
given on inheritance) may be illustrated by remarks made about
legislation introduced in 1976, designed to limit the sums paid to
the bride and to her guardian and the costs and extent of the
marriage ceremony.11 Most women in the community argued that if
the government sought to reduce the qimah (the price or value) of a
woman, it ought first to lower the price of clothing, grain and
meat. Several older men complained that if the husband’s family
were to pay so little, how could a father be expected to give his
daughter a full ziyarah every time she bore a child? As these remarks
suggest, the payment made to the father is not some free purchase
price for the girl. This is especially obvious once we ascend the
social ladder to those families able to dower their girls at marriage
and also to provide these payments throughout the course of the
! woman’s life. Even among relatively simple people, a woman’s
father may in time return to his daughter more than he received as
short (the part of the payment that goes to the father, as opposed to
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the mahr which goes directly to the bride), but significantly, in
instalments as the woman’s position in the marital household grows
stronger. A woman’s childbirths may be moments of considerable
tension between the paternal and the marital households, for they
are the times when the father may intervene directly in the marital
household. He is paying for his daughter, and if the husband, or
the husband’s family is not treating her (that is, his honour) well,
then he will do what he can for her.
A not entirely successful example of such negotiation occurred

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