INHERITANCE OF AN ALLY Another custom...

INHERITANCE OF AN ALLY Another custom, which was common among the pre-Islamic Arabs and was abolished by the Qur'an, was that of alliance. Two persons unrelated to each other, used to enter into an alliance, committing to each other by oath: "Your blood is my blood; any aggression against you will be an aggression against me; you will inherit from me and I from you".

According to this alliance, both of them defended each other during their lifetime, and whosoever died first the other took his property. WIFE, A PART OF INHERITANCE Sometimes the pre-Islamic Arabs counted a widow to be a part of her deceased husband's property and appropriated her accordingly. If the deceased had a son from another wife, he could throw a piece of cloth on the widow as a mark of acquiring her. Then he could dispose her at his will and pleasure.

He had the option of either marrying her himself, or giving her in marriage to someone else and taking her dower. This custom, which was not peculiar to the Arabs, was abolished by the Qur'an. In regard to inheritance, many aspects of the ancient Indian, Japanese, Roman, Greek and Iranian laws also were objectionable and discriminating. For lack of space we cannot reproduce all that has been written by the experts in this respect.

INHERITANCE OF WOMAN DURING THE SASANIAN PERIOD The late Saeed Nafisi in his book, 'Social History of Iran from the Sasanian times to the end of the Umayyad period", writes: "Another interesting feature of the Sasanian culture was that, when a boy reached the age of puberty, his father married him to one of his own numerous wives. During that period, woman had no legal personality. The father and the husband had vast powers over her property.

It was the duty of the father or the head of the family to marry a girl when she reached the age of 15 But the age of marriage for the boys was 20. After being married, a girl was not entitled to receive any inheritance from her father or guardian. She had no right to choose her husband herself, but she could contract an unlawful marriage if her father failed to marry her when she reached the age of puberty. In that event also she did not inherit from her father.

The number of women a man could marry was unlimited. The Greek sources mention cases, where a man had several hundred women in his house. The Zoroastrian religious books show that the rules of marriage during the Sasanian period were complex and confused.