6 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



quote from another author : "The women in the Jahiliya, 

 or some of them, had the right to dismiss their 

 husbands, and the form of dismissal was this. If they 

 lived in a tent they turned it round, so that if the door 

 faced east it now faced west, and when the man saw 

 this he knew that he was dismissed and did not enter.'' 

 "The tent, therefore," he comments, " belonged to the 

 woman, the husband was received in her tent and at 

 her good pleasure." And he points out that this 

 agrees with the account given by Ammianus Mar- 

 cellinus of Saracen marriages. " According to 

 Ammianus, marriage is a temporary contract for which 

 the wife receives a price. After the fixed term she 

 can depart if she so chooses, and ' to give the union an 

 appearance of marriage the wife offers her spouse a 

 spear and a tent by way of dowry.' ' Here it is 

 probable, as Robertson Smith supposes, that what is 

 meant is that the husband occupies the wife's tent and 

 is liable to serve in war with her people, so long as he 

 remains with her. At the end of the term, whether he 

 depart or she dismiss him, he leaves behind the spear 

 and tent, just as the Roman dos returned to the wife 

 upon divorce. 1 This kind of union for a term is said 

 to have been recognised by Mohammed, though it is 

 irregular by Moslem law. It was apparently intended 

 to give security to the husband, who usually made a 

 gift to the wife as the price of consent. It was a 

 purely personal contract between him and her, without 

 any intervention by the kin on either side ; and it 

 seems to have grown out of an earlier stage in which 

 the woman, dwelling amid her own people, received 

 and dismissed her lovers at pleasure. Even to-day a 

 1 Robertson Smith, Kinship, 64 sqq. 



