[733] Among the early Arabians the woman as well as the man had entire freedom of divorce. The _nikâh al-mot'a_, or temporary contract-marriage, amounted merely to a restriction of the woman's power of divorce during the short term of agreement: SMITH, _Kinship and Marriage_, 59 ff., 65 ff.; KREMER, _Kulturgeschichte des Orients_, I. 538; WILKEN, _Das Matriarchat_, 18, 9 ff.: _ap. Ammianus Marcellinus_, Book XIV, sec. iv, 4, YONGE'S trans. (London, 1887), 11. By the later Arabian law, after the rise of wife-capture and wife-purchase, divorce became the sole privilege of the husband; and the same is true under the still later law. _Cf._ in general, HELLWALD, _Die mensch. Familie_, chaps. xxii, xxiii; KOHLER, "Ueber das vorislamitische Recht der Araber," _ZVR._, VIII, 244, 248, 257; FRIEDRICHS, "Das Eherecht des Islam," _ibid._, VII, 263-69.
[734] REHME, "Ueber das Recht der Amaxosa," _ZVR._, X, 38, 39; _cf._ POST, _Afrikanische Jurisprudenz_, I, 436. FRITSCH, _Die Eingeborenen Süd-Afrikas_, 113, says that in cases of very cruel treatment the wife may abandon the husband and return to her family; to get her back the husband has to make an after-payment.
Divorce is a simple matter among the Point Barrow Eskimo. "As well as we could judge," writes Murdoch, "the marriage bond was regarded simply as a contract ...; and, without any formal ceremony of divorce, easily dissolved in the same way on account of incompatibility of temper or even on account of temporary disagreements."[735] Among the Santee Dakotas, where mother-right is said to prevail, "a wife's mother can take her from the husband and give her to another man." With "the Cegiha, if the husband is kind, the mother-in-law never interferes." But when he is "unkind the wife takes herself back, saying to him, 'I have had you for my husband long enough; depart.'" When the man has beaten the woman several times or been otherwise cruel, sometimes her father or elder brother says to him: "You have made her suffer; you shall not have her for a wife any longer." When a woman who has been warned against a man by her relatives repents and wishes to dissolve the marriage, her male kindred as a punishment say to her: "Not so; still have him for your husband; remain with him always."[736]
