Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

Figure 11.3 Marriage relations of the Abu Tair family
generation, where wives were brought in from (and given to) other villages and
families, and the succeeding generation, where exchange marriage and in-village
marriage offered conservative alternatives.
When we asked Khadija about her mahr she laughed and started on a tale of
how her groom’s family had demanded forty rashshadiya more. Her husband’s
half-sister was a strapping girl whereas Khadija was only eleven when she married.
Khadija was born just after the end of Ottoman rule – her mother told
her she was pregnant when the Turks were defeated (inkasar Turkiya) – implying
Khadija married about 1930. As Khadija’s daughter-in-law pointed out, ‘they
wanted women for work in those days’. So the husband’s family demanded and
got the extra forty rashshadiya. Khadija’s trousseau (jihaz) was composed of
two black dresses, two slips (tannura), a headdress (hatta), two silver bracelets,
and a sahara/matwi. Khadija laughed, noting that the bride exchanged for her
(badilati) had received a much larger chest than she had. And to add insult to
injury her brother Rashid took the money given to her by the guests at the wedding
(al-nuqut). We asked whether this were to make up for the extra that he had to
give for his wife; the answer was yes, that was roughly it.
Her husband’s family was one of the smaller in the village. See Figure 11.3.
‘Ifnan Abu Tair, Khadija’s husband’s father, had married three wives: Fatima
Salamat al-‘Ali of Hawwara who bore Ibrahim and Mahmud (Khadija’s husband),
Amina Muhammad al-‘Abid of the Tannash of Hawwara (who appears either
to have been divorced or to have died without surviving children), and Miriam
al-Dhib from Judaita who bore Muhammad, Fatima and Khadra (Khadija’s
badila). 33 At the time Khadija married, her husband Mahmud, she said, had
separated from his brothers. Earlier he had organized the cultivation of land
of both his brothers as his brother Ibrahim had died young, leaving children
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Hawwara