ABSTRACT
The Kadara are one of many 'pagan' tribes in the southern half of Zaria Province whose traditional institutions of marriage excluded divorce. In 1934 the Muhammadan practice of Idda was imposed on these tribes by laws of the Zaria Native Authority and the British Provincial Administration. This chapter discusses some effects of the new rule as observed among the Northern Kadara in 1950 and 1959. Idda is a period of continence lasting three months which Maliki law requires before a free woman may remarry after leaving her husband. Legal and customary procedures offer deserted primary husbands equal chances of recovering their wives. By permitting unrestricted 'remarriage', the Idda rule transfers full initiative to arrange such unions from the parental generation, who represent lineage, ritual group, and community interests, to the generation of the spouses themselves.
