Page 196 - Arabian Studies (V)

184 Arabian Studies V
11. The basic part of this was set forth in Command Council Decree 127,
7 October 1976. This and later revisions were published in al-Thawrah
newspaper, San‘a’ on 28 July 1976 and 11 October 1976.
Government intervention in marriage practices is not a modern pheno­
menon only. Both Imam Yahya and Imam Ahmad issued reforms of
marriage practices and payments.
12. This is reflected in the proverb published by al-Akwa*: Ibn al-ukht
'aduww al-khal. Isma‘il ‘Ali al-Akwa*, al-Amthal al-Yamaniyah, Cairo,
1968, 1, 15.
Indeed, in families where division was long postponed, the son often
demanded his mother’s portion only after her death.
13. This family is part of a larger group of related families said to have a
common ancestor after whom the quarter is named. No one could produce
genealogies relating these families of five different patronyms to the
common ancestor.
14. Maklaf is a common word for woman. It suggests woman’s place as
female relative and protected member of the family and community, unlike
hurmah which suggests woman’s roles as wife, sexual properly, and men’s
jealously guarded honour.
15. Z’s resentment had considerable roots. Z informed me with some
pride that A had hoped to marry her but had to abandon this since he was
already married to her aunt. Z in fact is married to the son of A’s sister and
is in constant conflict with her husband’s sister, B, wife of A’s son. Z’s
marriage is more in line with A’s interests than with her mother’s and Z’s
father never liked the marriage. The exchange marriage of D and V was
also mediated by A.
16. This is the most formal manner of referring to X’s property and
occurred in four of the six lists I have seen. In the other two lists, once X’s
property was listed jointly with her husband’s as ‘B and his father-in-law
(‘ammuh) and his brother (sinwuh)\ and in a roughly scribbled draft
separately as ‘B’ and under that ‘for his wife (li-zawjatuh)'.
17. In most of the lists no separate mention was made, but in two lists,
the property came under the brother’s name but as a separate total ‘for his
sisters’ (//- ’l-kara ’im)
18. The importance of the choice of a woman’s spouse by her parents is
clear: in order for the woman’s husband (or her son) to extract her portion
from her brother, he must be at least the equal of her natal family. This is
precisely what all traditional treatises on marriage prescribed—equality of
status (kafa'ah).
19. Tantalising indications of the antiquity of these patterns in South
Arabia and the close relation between women’s acquisition of property,
veiling and social hierarchy occur in the speeches of the NajranI martyr­
dom. Such dramatisations do not represent historical documentation, but
the sentiments expressed are so true to type! Consider the speech (as trans­
lated by Irfan Shahid) of Ruhayma, the major female Christian martyr:

When she received the word, she made haste and went out to the market
in the middle of the city, she, the woman whose face no one had ever