Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/403

 cases from breaking the marriage tie for the many trifling reasons which in other places, as in Java for instance, give rise to such separations.

Neither momentary anger nor the cooling down of first love, but violent and irreconcilable differences between the pair form the cause of most cases of taleuëʾ which occur in Acheh.

The law, as we know, prescribes after a single ṭalāq a period (ʿiddah) during which the woman may not marry, and during which the husband may, if he please, reconsider his decision. This latter privilege the man enjoys only after the first and second time he has pronounced divorce against a given wife; the third divorce is irrevocable. After a first and second divorce, if the man has not made timely use of his right of recall (rujuʾ) a new marriage can still be concluded between the pair by mutual consent. When divorce has been pronounced three times against the same woman by her husband, this method of reunion becomes impossible, and they can only remarry if the wife has meantime been wedded to another man and separated again from him. In districts where the ṭalāq is extensively resorted to, it frequently happens that both parties desire reunion even after three divorces. In such cases a middleman is employed, who for a certain fee enters into a marriage with the divorced woman, and then at once divorces her again to give his principal the chance of remarrying her.

This device, however, can be made use of twice only, for after 3 × 3 divorces the marriage is irrevocably and for ever dissolved.

As may easily be supposed from the comparative rarity of divorce in Acheh, the lay-folk are but little conversant with the rules controlling this subject, of which only a few of the main principles have been sketched above. In Java on the other hand, most of the people are tolerably familiar, through experience amongst their own surroundings, both with what we have described above and with many other similar technicalities as well.

As a result of the fact that the ṭalāq as applied in Acheh is not an