11 - Marriage and the market

Summary

In this chapter it becomes clear that women play the major part not only in choosing brides for their kinsmen and acquaintances, but in carrying out the marriage rituals. This is because a girl's change in status has far-reaching implications for her female network, but a man's relationships are not affected by his marriage to nearly such an important extent. This is not to say that they remain the same but that his relations with men and with women too are governed more by his achievements in the public sphere, and his position in the labour market, than by his ascribed status. It is noteworthy, in this connection, that in the countryside, where a man's marriage means that he can set up a household which is viable in terms of labour resources, it also implies a new independence of his kin. Significantly, men participate very actively in rural weddings.

After an account of a townsman's betrothal to a ksar-girl, I discuss town marriages of various kinds, concentrating on the significance of dower as the mark of Arab status and economic autonomy. Dower entitles a man to replace his wife's kin with his own. For this reason, soldiers are generally unacceptable as husbands and affines, because a girl and her kin do not know whether, marrying a soldier, she is actually acquiring a respectable kin-group or simply being deprived of her own, for she will inevitably leave the area.