MOTHERRIGHT 321 



Islam is not necessarily a religion of high civilisation. 

 It has made extensive conquests in Africa by reason of 

 its power of adaptation to lower stages of culture. By 

 Mohammedan law kinship is reckoned through both 

 lines ; but such preponderant importance is attached to 

 the paternal side that semi-civilised African popu- 

 lations professing Islam may for our purpose be 

 regarded as patrilineal. Just as among patrilineal 

 peoples where fatherright is carried out to its logical 

 term, great importance is attributed to the purity of 

 Mohammedan women. On the other hand the law, 

 by the aid of the physiological ignorance of the early 

 doctors who framed it, stretches beyond all probability 

 the presumption of legitimacy in its doctrine of the 

 possibility of very lengthened gestations. A famous 

 Ma^hribin saint named Sidi Nail left his home and 

 went on pilgrimage to Mecca where he abode for two 

 years and a half. At length he returned to find that 

 his wife Cheliha had only a short time before given 

 birth to a son. Even the credulity of the faithful, 

 supported by the law, has had the greatest difficulty 

 in digesting the legitimacy of this child. Yet the 

 saint himself seems to have accepted him, and his son- 

 ship has been duly attested by heaven ; for it is 

 especially among his descendants that the gift of 

 miracles possessed by Sidi Nail has been perpetuated. 1 

 In the same way the Bayazi, an heretical sect of 

 which the bulk of the Arab population of Zanzibar 

 consists, allow legitimacy to children born within two 

 years after the husband's death. The Shafei, another 

 sect, extend the period to four years. 2 Mohammedan 

 law, exaggerated by these heretical sects, seems indeed 



1 Rev. Hist. Rel xli. 315. 2 Burton, Zanzibar, i. 403. 



