Page 183 - Arabian Studies (V)

Women’s Inheritance of Land in Highland Yemen 171
separate house and the widow assumed the direction of this house­
hold.
A woman was truly poised to control the property she might
claim as inheritance if she had no brothers. In order to maintain the
family property and care for the parents in old age, the daughter
had to stay at home and a husband married into the house. The
problem raised by this female direction of the family property and
threat of the eventual loss of the land to children named after a
father from another family house, may be in part avoided by
finding the woman a husband from the ‘asabah, if not from the
very property owning group, or in the case of two inheriting
daughters, for the one who remains in the household. This is not
always possible, if, for example, a son suddenly predeceases his
father after the daughters have been married, or more obviously, in
small patronymic groups.
The most powerful woman in the community was such a figure.
She was one of two surviving daughters and the one who stayed at
home (X in the diagram). The fates of both these women (X and Y)
reflect the peculiar tensions surrounding the inheritance of land by
women.
The patronymic group of the women was a very small one: in the
ascending generation there were only two brothers, the father of X I
and Y and his brother.13 X’s uncle, who predeceased her father, left
one son (A) and four daughters. All four of these women were
married into important families in the community. Their land
remains with A, who gives them a cash sum for it on the festivals.
X’s older sister, Y, was married to A, her ibn al-'amm. X’s older
brother had lived to maturity but died suddenly a short time before
he was to be married. In the case of X, no man of the same family
was there to marry her. Her husband, B, came from a family of the
same quarter but one without a great deal of land. B came into the
household with the status of what was described as a shaqi, a hired
labourer, which, it was also said, was virtually X’s position until
the death of her father.
In this family the property was divided soon after the death of
X’s father. The notables of the community supervised the division
and rather favoured A, or so maintains a daughter of X, Z. She
believes that they favoured him both because he was a powerful
man, and because in her words, the men of the community are all
against al-maklaf, women.14 Be this as it may, the resentment
of Z is understandable given the fact that even by Islamic law, A—
whom she addresses as 'ammt—was entitled to the one-third of the
'asabah (agnates) and the one-third legally the property of his wife,
his bint al-'amm.,5 In this case, however, the daughter who had

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