Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/308

 272 Marriage Customs of the Bedu and Fellahin.

The Bedawi of the present day receives a proposal for the hand of his daughter in some such phrase as "Thou hast come to buy of me my hver." The price among the better classes, especially in towns, has now come to be rather of the nature of a marriage settlement, and much of it accrues to the bride herself. Not wholly, however, as will be seen. This prematrimonial pledge, of which we read as far back as in the history of the negotiations by Eliezer on behalf of Isaac, was in some sense a pledge of security for the woman, but it was, in large degree, an actual purchase. Women had a definite value, especially in the desert. The Bedu, unlike the Semitic town-dwellers, have very few children. The conditions of life are hard, food of the scantiest, and girl-children succumb to their hardships more readily than boys. To this day, the bridal price of a woman varies not only according to her rank and appearance, but also according to the district to which she belongs. It was this scarcity and costliness that led to the necessity for the capture of women. Of this there are still certain symbolic traces. The last time it occurred in fact was after the withdrawal of the French in 1798. As a general rule, the person of a woman is always respected, — among the Moslems.

It is to the humane teaching of the prophet Mohammed that the Arab woman owes the removal of many of her disabilities, and he specially required the fair treatment of captured wives, — insisting upon the equality of all believers. The old Arab poetry is full of contempt for the children of such marriages, and Mohammed did not succeed in estab- lishing the principle in his own day, when to be called the " descendant of a slave " was the last insult which could be offered to the haughty sons of the desert. Time, however, brings its revenges; now, in the towns, some of the noblest Arab families of our own day are proud of the traces of obvious admixture of Abyssinian or Nubian blood, as evidence of long descent and prosperity, — of relationship with those who