Page 199 - Arabian Studies (V)

Women’s Inheritance of Land in Highland Yemen 187
for dividing an estate at VA per cent of the value of the estate, but I have
not seen written evidence of this. If a fully witnessed division is made, there
arc also many payments required for local political figures and witnesses as
well as for the man who writes the documents. Many country people, if
they arc in agreement, prefer to divide the property quietly and informally I
so as to avoid those who crowd round—al-mutahawwishin in local Arabic.
29. This privileged position is reflected in Zaydl tradition by the fact
that no woman need veil before the Imam (or the hakim), that women in
distress and flight from their families could seek refuge and redress with a
hakim, and the right of the hakim or Imam to marry women who have no
guardians, who have converted or lost their family ties through hijrah.
(Compare Rossi, op. cit., 15, for such a right of hijrah. I have observed one :
such case during my time in Yemen and heard of several others where a
woman sought refuge from her family with a hakim. In all the cases of
which I heard the woman sought refuge from a marriage she refused to
countenance.)