It was in a relatively recent epoch that paternal filiation was established among the Arabs. In the time of the prophet the prohibitions of marriage were still on the maternal side,[1047] and in all ages the collateral kinship with uncles and aunts has been considered very close in Arabia.[1048]
Among the Hebrews, individual property was instituted in very early times, for it is alluded to in Genesis.[1049] But various customs show clearly the ancient existence of communal clans. Thus the inheritance, especially the paternal inheritance, must remain in the clan. Marriage in the tribe is obligatory for daughters: “Let them marry to whom they think best; only to the family of the tribe of their father shall they marry. So shall not the inheritance of the children of Israel remove from tribe to tribe; for every one of the children of Israel shall keep himself to the inheritance of the tribe of his fathers.”[1050]
Moses instituted three classes of heirs: first the children, then the agnates, and then the members of the clan or gentiles.[1051] The Hebrew father did not inherit from his son, nor the grandfather from his grandson, which seems to indicate an ancient epoch, when the children did not yet belong to the clan of their father.
For a long time among the Hebrews the german sister was distinguished from the uterine sister; the kinship with this last was considered much closer. In primitive Judæa a man could marry the first, but not the second. To the King of Egypt and to Abimelech, who reproached Abraham for having passed Sarah off as his sister, the patriarch replies: “For indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife.” In the same way Tamar could become the wife of Amnon, for she was only his paternal sister.[1052] The father of Moses and Aaron married his father’s sister, who was not legally his relation.[1053] Abraham himself could marry his paternal sister, and his brother Nabor took to wife his fraternal niece, the daughter of his brother.[1054] But by degrees paternal kinship was recognised by the same title as maternal kinship, and Leviticus advances as far as to expressly forbid marriage with father’s sisters as well as with mother’s sisters,[1055] “whether they be born at home or abroad.” Doubtless all these indications have their value; they are, however, only indications, and it is especially in placing them by the side of similar facts observed amongst other peoples where the existence of the maternal family and the familial clan is indisputable, that we are inclined to accord to them the same significance. In short, it is clear that the Hebrews early adopted paternal filiation and the patriarchate.
The memory of a distant epoch of confused kinship and of free sexual unions had, however, remained in Semitic tradition. Sanchoniathon, indeed, in his History of Phœnicia, says that the first men bore the name of their mother, because then the women yielded themselves without shame to the first comer.[1056] Among the Berbers familial evolution is much easier to follow than with the Semites, and its lower phases are more evident.
III. The Family among the Berbers.
During late years the meaning of the word “Berber” has become considerably widened. We are now inclined to consider as varieties of the same very old race the men of Cro-Magnon, the ancient inhabitants of the cave of Mentone, the ancient Vascons, the Cantabrians, Iberians, Guanchos, Kabyles, Berbers, and Touaregs, etc. All these peoples are thought to belong to one great human type, which we may call Berber, and of which numerous representatives still exist. Anterior to all Asiatic migration, and from the time of the stone age, this race seems to have occupied the south of Gaul and Spain, the Canary Isles, and Northern Africa. At the present day the most important epigonic groups of the Berber race are the Kabyles and the Touaregs of the Sahara. Several writers of antiquity have told us how the family of the ancient Berbers was formerly instituted, and we know de visu what it is among contemporary Berbers. We are therefore able to give a rough outline of it.
The general characteristics of the Berber family seem to have been a privileged position accorded to women and maternal filiation, with tendencies even to the matriarchate. Speaking of the Cantabrians, Strabo writes: “Among the Cantabrians usage requires that the husband shall bring a dower to his wife, and the daughters inherit, being charged with the marriage of their brothers, which constitutes a kind of gynecocracy.”[1057] The word gynecocracy is surely too strong. We have here probably an account of a custom which still exists in Japan, and which existed quite recently in Basque countries, that of leaving to the first-born, whether boy or girl, the administration of the inalienable patrimony of the family, and of obliging his or her wedded partner to take the name and abode of the family. This is what M. le Play has formerly called the family-stock; but this family-stock may, and doubtless must, have co-existed primitively with maternal filiation.
This last is still in force among the Touaregs of the Sahara, and I have previously spoken of the great independence which their women enjoy, and especially the rich and noble ladies. At Rhât, for example, by inheritances and by the accumulation of productions, it has come to pass that nearly the whole of the real property has fallen into the hands of the women.[1058] We know that in ancient Egypt, where the Berbers were largely represented, the women also enjoyed a very similar position. As a consequence of this régime, the rights and pretensions of the Berber ladies have become so inconvenient for the men, that many of them prefer to marry slaves.[1059] The family among the Touaregs will surely evolve, as it formerly did in Egypt, and as it has done with the Kabyles, where the most rigorous patriarchate has at length replaced the ancient maternal family. In Kabyle, however, traces of the ancient organisation, anterior to Rome and to Islamism, still exist. The Kabyle village has, in its tribe, a political personality which strongly recalls the clan. Many customs, indeed, are evident survivals of an ancient communal organisation. Thus, with the Kabyles, mutual assistance between fellow-citizens is a strict duty. Even in a foreign land the fellow-citizen must be helped, at the risk of all interests and at the peril of one’s life. Whoever fails in this duty incurs public contempt; he is even punished with a fine, and made responsible for the losses suffered by the deserted compatriot. Even the Kabyle of another tribe must, at need, be succoured, or his tribe may bring a plaint before the djemâa of the tribe to which the egoist belongs, and the latter is punished or reprimanded.
In a Kabyle village, when an individual erects a building, he has a right to the assistance of all the inhabitants. In the same way the greater part of the field labour is performed by mutual assistance.[1060] But all this refers to the men; for women there remains no trace either of the maternal family or of the more or less serious advantages which it generally confers on wives and mothers. One custom, however, and one only, still recalls ancient manners; this is “the right of rebellion,” of which I have spoken elsewhere.