Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

substantial say in the control of land as property when they were widows with
sons. Thus, Khadija was to be offered and to decline a legal part in her husband’s
land but was to achieve status and economic security as mother of her deceased
husband’s sons. While these patterns were the general ones, given the roulette of
demography, women, in the absence of surviving male competitors for an estate,
did appear in the registers as legal owners of plough land.
Muhammad Khair Khalil Mustafa Taha al-Shar‘
Muhammad Khair also hails from a long-established smaller family of Hawwara
not unlike that of the Jammal or the ‘Ifnan considered above. A house
valued at 1,600 guruş was registered in the name of Mustafa Taha in 1883 but
it was only in 1892 that Mustafa, his brother Ahmad, and cousin ‘Awad bought
one share of land from Na’il Gharaiba. 37 The family was to cultivate their land
with the Gharaiba half of the village in 1933.
Taha al-Shar‘ had married a lady of the Jiddi family from Samma in the
Wustiya who after Taha’s death remarried a man in Kufr ‘Awan. See Figure 11.4.
Marital exchange with Samma was to continue in the next two generations.
Taha’s son Mustafa first married Hamiya al-Dilh, from Tibna. According to
Muhammad Khair, Hamiya had first been married to Shahada al-Shar‘, uncle of
Mustafa, to whom she had borne ‘Awad and Amina. To Mustafa Hamiya bore
Hasan, Khalil, Hilala and Amina. Mustafa then took a wife from Samma, Ghurra
Sulaiman Jiddi, who bore Sulaiman, Tamam, Salima and Hamda. Besides these
first two wives Mustafa again married a third wife, ‘A’isha ‘Abdullah al-Gharaiba
of Hawwara who bore Muhammad Abu Khamis and Fatima. In 1922 Mustafa
married yet again giving his daughter Tamam from his second wife Ghurra to
Muhammad Ahmad Abu Zahir of al-Taiba in the Wustiya for Muhammad’s sister
Ghazala. By 1931 Ghazala had left Mustafa. Mustafa went to court noting that
he had been married nine years earlier and that his wife Ghazala had borne a
son Husain, aged one year and two months. Six weeks earlier his wife had left
without reason; he demanded that she return, be obedient in her wifely duties,
and pay the legal costs of the suit. Ghazala countered that the marriage formed
part of an exchange so no mahr had been fixed. She demanded that his appeal
be rejected and that he pay the appropriate mahr (mahr al-mithl), 100 Palestinian
liras. Mustafa answered that the mahr of his wife was 130 Ottoman liras as was
the mahr of his daughter. He confirmed that nothing had been paid, but each wife
was in exchange for the other, so he was not obliged to pay a mahr for her. The
judge ruled that the petitioner did not pay his wife a mahr and that according
to clause 33 of the Family Code, the wife is not obliged to obey her husband if
no mahr has been paid. Mustafa lost the case, 7 March 1931. 38
On the 25th of March Tamam came to court noting that she had been married
on 2 November 1924 for 130 Ottoman liras. She had children but her husband
Muhammad Ahmad Abu Zahir of al-Tayba did not pay her a mahr since ‘he
gave his sister Ghazala to my father’. She demands that he pay her the value of
the mahr and the maintenance (nafaqa) due as well as the court fees. She claims
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Hawwara