The Biblical attitude has been succinctly described by Rabbi Epstein...

The Biblical attitude has been succinctly described by Rabbi Epstein: “The continuous and unbroken tradition since the Biblical days gives the female members of the household, wife and daughters, no right of succession to the family estate. In the more primitive scheme of succession, the female members of the family were considered part of the estate and as remote from the legal personality of an heir as the slave.

Whereas by Mosaic enactment the daughters were admitted to succession in the event of no male issue remained, the wife was not recognized as heir even in such conditions.”[^3] Why were the female members of the family considered part of the family estate? Rabbi Epstein has the answer: “They are owned --before marriage, by the father; after marriage, by the husband.”[^4] The Biblical rules of inheritance are outlined in Numbers 27:1-11.

A wife is given no share in her husband’s estate, while he is her first heir, even before her sons. A daughter can inherit only if no male heirs exist. A mother is not an heir at all while the father is. Widows and daughters, in case male children remained, were at the mercy of the male heirs for provision. That is why widows and orphan girls were among the most destitute members of the Jewish society. Christianity has followed suit for a long time.

Both the ecclesiastical and civil laws of Christendom barred daughters from sharing with their brothers their patrimony. Besides, wives were deprived of any inheritance rights. These iniquitous laws survived till late in the last century.[^5] Among the pagan Arabs before Islam, inheritance rights were confined exclusively to the male relatives.

The Qur’an abolished all these unjust customs and gave all the female relatives inheritance shares: “From what is left by parents and those nearest related there is a share for men and a share for women, whether the property be small or large --a determinate share.”(4:7) Muslim mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters had received inheritance rights thirteen hundred years before Europe recognized that these rights even existed.

The division of inheritance is a vast subject with an enormous amount of details (4:7,11,12,176). The general rule is that the female share is half the male’s except the cases in which the mother receives equal share to that of the father. This general rule if taken in isolation from other legislations concerning men and women may seem unfair.