Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/257

 thee, if thou givest me this pallium of Herat, or this horse, or this camel," etc. It is then a sort of divorce by mutual consent, and the two part as good friends.

Lastly, there is obligatory divorce, pronounced by the Cadi, on the plaint of the woman, when the husband is impotent, when in spite of these matrimonial conventions he tries to compel the woman to quit the house of her parents, or when he has corrected her with excessive brutality. Then the divorced wife goes away, taking her dowry with her.

Taken altogether, these customs, while conforming to the spirit of the Koran, have in a certain measure improved the position of the married woman. This is because progress is the law of the social as well as the organic world; more or less slowly, more or less quickly, it ends by modifying in practice even theocratic legislations, which are the most rigid of all. But the old customs are still found almost intact in certain districts of Arabia which have remained more or less completely isolated. Thus in nearly all Arab countries there is one especial reason which justifies immediate repudiation of the marriage, and that is the absence of virginity, when it has been affirmed in the agreements preceding the union. But in Yemen this circumstance justifies far more than mere repudiation; it excuses the murder of the bride; it is a practical return to the old law preserved in the Bible ordering the guilty woman to be stoned.

After the manner of all barbarous legislations, that of Mahomet has corrected, or at least tried to restrain, certain especially ferocious customs; but, on the other hand, it has given the force of law to some particularly crying abuses, and has thus rendered them more difficult of redress. This is generally the case. In all barbarous societies the subjection of woman is more or less severe; customs or coarse laws have regulated the savagery of the first anarchic ages; they have doubtless set up a barrier against primitive ferocity, they have interdicted certain absolutely terrible abuses of force, but they have only replaced these by a