ill to a large extent in control. The
husband goes to live in the wife's village; thus the women in each
group are a compact unity, while the men are strangers to each other
and enter as unorganised individuals. This is the real basis of the
woman's power. In other tribes where the old custom has changed women
occupy a distinctly inferior position, and under the influence of
Islam the idea of secluding adult women has been for centuries
spreading and increasing in force.

Male kinship prevails among the Arabs, but the late Professor
Robertson Smith discovered abundant evidence that mother-right was
practised in ancient Arabia.[164] We find a decisive example of its
favourable influence on the position of women in the custom of
_beena_[165] marriage. Under such a system the wife was not only freed
from any subjection involved by the payment of a bride-price (which
always places her more or less under the authority of her husband),
but she was the owner of the tent and household property, and thus
enjoyed the liberty which ownership always entails. This explains how
she was able to free herself at pleasure from her husband, who was
really nothing but a temporary lover.[166] Ibn Batua in the fourteenth
century found that the women of Zebid were perfectly ready to marry
strangers. The husband might depart when he pleased, but his wife in
that case could never be induced to follow him. She bade him a
friendly adieu and took upon herself the whole charge of any child of
the marriage. The women in the Jahiliya[167] had the right to dismiss
their husbands, and the form of dismissal was this: "If they lived in
a tent they turned it round, so that if the door faced east it now
faced west, and when the man saw this he knew that he was dismissed
and did not enter." The tent belonged to the woman; the husband was
received there and at her good pleasure.[168]

A further striking example of mother-right is furnished by the Mariana
Islands, where the position of women was distinctly superior.

"Even when the man had contributed an equal share of property on
marriage, the wife dictated everything and the man could
undertake nothing without her approval; but if the woman
committed an offence, the man was held responsible and suffered
the punishment. The women could speak in the assembly, they held
property, and if a woman asked anything of a man, he gave it up
without a murmur. If a wife was unfaithful, the