ABSTRACT
Islamic law distinguishes between guardianship over the person and guardianship over property. Guardianship over property concerns especially administration of the inheritances of minor heirs. Guardianship terminates when the minor reaches puberty. In dozens of cases, women were appointed guardians over children not their own; such women were either blood-relations of various degrees or strangers. There appear to be various causes of a woman's renunciation of her right to guardianship of her children or of her deprivation of that right. The alertness of the qadis to the status of women as natural guardians should probably be attributed in no small measure to the presence of the welfare officer in court. The qadis sometimes sought support for the appointment of a guardian, at one and the same time, in substantive elements of both legal systems, the religious and secular, though based on utterly different philosophies.
