Kabyles, mutual assistance between fellow-citizens is a strict duty. Even in a foreign land the fellow-citizen must be helped, at the risk of all interests and at the peril of one's life. Whoever fails in this duty incurs public contempt; he is even punished with a fine, and made responsible for the losses suffered by the deserted compatriot. Even the Kabyle of another tribe must, at need, be succoured, or his tribe may bring a plaint before the djemâa of the tribe to which the egoist belongs, and the latter is punished or reprimanded.
In a Kabyle village, when an individual erects a building, he has a right to the assistance of all the inhabitants. In the same way the greater part of the field labour is performed by mutual assistance.[1] But all this refers to the men; for woman there remains no trace either of the maternal family or of the more or less serious advantages which it generally confers on wives and mothers. One custom, however, and one only, still recalls ancient manners; this is "the right of rebellion," of which I have spoken elsewhere.
We are acquainted with the date at which the last seal was placed on the subjection of the Kabyle woman. It was only a hundred and twenty years ago that the men refused henceforth a legal position to women in the succession of males.[2] At present the Kabyle woman, whether married or not, no longer inherits.[3]
The Kabyle Kanouns admit six categories of heirs: 1st, the açeb or universal heirs—that is to say, all the male descent, the direct line through males, and all the collaterals descending through males of the paternal branch; 2nd, the ascendants through males on the paternal side—the father, grandfather, and great-grandfather; 3rd, the uterine brother, heir to a legal portion; 4th, the master and the freed man, açeb heirs of each other; 5th, the karouba—that is to say, the community having its assembly of major citizens, the djemâa, and being a civil personage;[4] 6th, the ensemble of the karoubas, constituting the village. However, the collaterals
