Kinship and marriage in early Arabia / by W. Robertson Smith.

  • William Robertson Smith
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Kinship and marriage in early Arabia / by W. Robertson Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    24/364 (page 4)
    bracing the descendants of one of the great ancestor’s sons and taking its name from him. These tribes were again divided and subdivided on the same prin- ciple, and so at length that extreme state of division was reached which we find in the peninsula at the time of the prophet. Between a nation, a tribe, a sept or sub-tribe and a family there is no difference, on this theory, except in size and distance from the common ancestor. As time rolls on the sons of a household become heads of separate families, the families grow into septs, and finally the septs become great tribes or even nations embracing several tribes. It is proper to observe here that in the earliest times of which we have cognisance the ultimate kindred group, which in the last resort acted together against all other groups, was never a single family or homestead (ddr), and that the group-bond was, for its own purposes, stronger than the family or household bond. Thus if a man was guilty of homicide within his own group, the act was murder and his nearest relatives did not attempt to protect him from the consequences, but the whole group usually stood by a manslayer who had killed an outsider, even though the slain was of a brother group. In such a case they might recognise that some atonement was necessary, but they interested themselves to make for their kinsman the best terms they could. This observation, it will readily be seen, does not square well with the theory that the kindred group is only the family