ABSTRACT
According to the customary law prevailing before Islam, marriage was the sale of a woman, in return for whom her father or guardian received a dower. The amount of the dower due to the woman depends on the type of dower, the type of marriage, on whether the marriage has been consumated, and the like. Nearly 60" of the national total of marriages was concluded without deferred dower. On the national average, the prompt dower was about three times as large as the deferred dower, but there were differences as to the ratio of the two kinds of dower between and within the various types of settlement. The fact that the problem remained on the agenda of the qadis for years suggests that propagandists' activities against excessive dower bore no real fruit. It is doubtful whether the qadis were in fact capable of solving this problem.
