General Supervisor

than not the eldest man of the family used to make the marriage decision on
behalf of their sons and daughters. The opinion of the young man or lady did
not used to be taken in the marriage decision, and often the young lady knew
that at her wedding night (Al-Khateeb, 1981).
Owing to the fact that marriage in the Saudi community is not merely a relation
between two individuals but a tie between two families, internal marriage, i.e.
marriage from within the tribe or clan, especially marriage with the father’s
brother’s daughter (cross-cousin marriage) used to be the prevailing and
preferred kind of marriage.
The dowry in the traditional Saudi community was characterized by simplicity
and lack of complication. A girl’s dowry varies according to the social standard
of the girl’s family, and from pastoral, rural, and urban areas. In pastoral areas, a
girl’s dowry did not used to be more than one or two she-camels and a zuliyya (a
carpet) while the dowry of the tribe’s sheiks’ daughter was a farda (a golden rein
worn from the nose to the hair), a hindiyya (a kind of golden pound necklace),
and a number of cattle heads that can exceed twenty (Al-Khateeb, 1981).
In rural areas, a girl’s dowry used to be a zuliyya (a carpet), some silver bracelets,
a brazier, a clothing box, or money between 5 and 10 Saudi riyals. However,
a girl’s dowry in urban areas used to be mostly in money, consisting in some
Saudi riyals, some French francs, and some cloth and cloaks. The dowry goes
up and down with the girl’s family’s position.
One of the characteristic phenomena in the traditional Saudi community was
the rate of fertility. Girls were prepared from early puberty to believe that their
main role in life was to be a mother and a housewife. This was the main function
for which she was created, so she tended to give birth to a lot of children.
A woman used to spend most of her period of fertility between 15 and 50
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continuously giving birth to children, which meant that she normally would
give birth to from 10 to 15 children. Breast feeding used to be woman’s only
natural means of contraception. In spite of the high rate of birth, child mortality
rate was high. Women used to give birth to 10 or 12 children, but only 3 or
4 children survived. In the traditional Saudi community, the rate of abortion
used to be very high for many reasons: the many jobs that women used to be
overburdened with, shortage of food, lack of rest between one pregnancy and
another, and decreasing medical services. Unfortunately, there are no statistics
to evidence this. However, most of the informants that I met with from the
pastoral, rural, and urban communities confirm this (Al-Khateeb, 1997).
The Saudi community theoretically believes that the main role of the woman is
reduced to being a mother and a housewife. In reality, poverty and starvation
prevailing in the traditional Saudi community before the advent of oil, pushed
both woman and man to work hard together to provide for the needs of their
family. In all of the pastoral, rural, and urban communities, woman used to
permanently work from daybreak to sunset to provide for the needs of her
family (Al-Khateeb, 1997).
Factors of change in the Saudi community
The Kingdom witnessed several factors of change, which can be classified
under two main factors: internal and external.
First: Internal factors
The Kingdom witnessed several factors of internal change, namely the political
and economic factors, which impacted the social structure in the Kingdom.
1. Political factor
The political factor, which consisted in the unification of all the regions in
the Arabian Peninsula under the same government of the Kingdom of Saudi
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