Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/405

 may therefore be set aside, but adds that the reconciliation should be consecrated by giving a feast to a number of devout poor (peujamèë paki), and this is generally done.

The ʿiddah is just as little understood by the laity as the rujuʿ. It is known indeed that a woman cannot marry again immediately after a divorce, but as a rule she seldom wants to do so. Where there is any doubt, the teungku's advice is again sought and he decides that according to the adat of Acheh three months and ten days must be allowed to elapse except in case of pregnancy. The use of intermediaries to make reunion possible is practically nonexistent and is known only to such as have studied the kitabs or books of the law.

Where the ground of divorce is incompatability of temper, it is almost always the woman who urges her husband to the final step of giving the three taleuëʾ. If he is slow to yield, she imprisons him in the house, generally in the inner room, until he meets her wishes by giving her the "three pieces of betelnut." He might easily set himself free from this temporary confinement, but most men are ashamed of the diabolical outcry raised on such occasions by their wives, who sum up all their evil characteristics, real or imaginary, in the most unflattering form in the hearing of the whole gampōng.

Should the measures of compulsion adopted by the woman prove fruitless, she may have recourse to the remedy known in the Arabic law-books as khulʿ, which consists in the purchase of the ṭalaq by the wife from her husband. In such a contract even a single ṭalāq is irrevocable, as is implied in the very idea of purchase. In Acheh this