had been delivered of a still-born child. Some years later, the girl, grown tall, came to pay a visit to her mother. Caïs discovered her, while her mother was plaiting her hair and ornamenting it with cowries. "I arrived," the father is made to say, speaking to Mahomet, "and I said, 'Who is this young girl?' 'She is yours,' replied the mother, weeping, and she related how she had formerly saved her. I waited till the emotion of the mother was calmed; then one day I led away the girl; I dug a grave and I made her lie down in it. She cried, 'Father, what do you intend to do with me?' Then I covered her with earth. She cried again, 'Father, do you wish to bury me? Are you going away, and will you abandon me?' But I continued to heap earth on her until her cries were stifled. That was the only time it has happened to me to feel pity in burying a daughter."[1]
Such customs, combined with the sale to strangers of girls carried off in razzias, and the polygamy of the rich men, must assuredly have profoundly disturbed the numerical proportion of the sexes, and have rendered polyandry almost a necessity, which, besides, could not excite any scruple with the ancient Arabs, whose morals were very licentious. Thus the captured women often remained common to a group of relatives.[2] In the fifth century the Syrio-Roman law had even to forbid the contracts of fraternity, by which all was held in common, including the wives and children.[3]
That fraternal polyandry, called Thibetan, may have existed in Arabia, the passage of Strabo, which I have previously quoted in regard to promiscuity, would suffice to establish; but Arab writers expressly attest it, and notably Bokhâri (vi. 127), according to whom the number of polyandrous husbands was not allowed to exceed ten; besides this, various customs of more modern date, as, for example, the passing of the widow, by heritage, to the relatives of the husband, seem to arise from it. Moreover, even at the present day in Arabia, the father cannot give his daughter to another if the son of his brother demands her, and the latter has the right to obtain her at a lower price;[4] this is the right of pre-emption applied to the woman.
It seems, indeed, as if these were the vestiges of an
