Marriage ceremonies in Morocco / by Edward Westermarck.

  • Westermarck, Edward, 1862-1939.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Marriage ceremonies in Morocco / by Edward Westermarck. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    72/446 (page 54)
    domestic happiness. Li had bent fammu 'ayyid men gelmu, “ He who marries the daughter of his father’s brother celebrates his feast with a sheep from his own flock ” — he knows the sheep he slaughters. Or : whilst marrying a strange woman is like drinking water from an earthenware bottle, marriage with a cousin is like a drink from a dish—you are aware of what you drink. Such a marriage also gives the husband greater power over his wife, since, if she runs away, her father or brother will bring her back ; and it has the further advantage that she cannot curse her husband by cursing his ancestors without implicating herself in the curse. It confers religious merit on a man to marry his cousin —by doing so he will not be punished on the day of the Resurrection ; and at the same time it is a kind of duty. Li ytrfed zebbalat3 n-niis ytrfed dyalu, “ He who carries away the dunghills of the people carries away his own ”—it is not right of a man to leave his own cousin unmarried by taking another woman for wife. Yet cousin-marriages are also considered to have their drawbacks. At Fez I was told that they easily lead to quarrels between the husband’s and wife’s families, both of whom want to interfere in the married life of the couple ;1 hence, when girls who want to marry visit the tomb of Sidi Mbarak ben Ababu outside the gate Bib 1-Gisa, they address the saint with the 1 The poet of the Mu'allakat gives in his testament the following advice to his children :—“Do not marry in your own family, for domestic enmity arises therefrom’* (Kitdb al-aganl, ix. 185, quoted by Goldziher, loc. cit. p. 26). As Wellhausen (/or. cit. p. 437) observes, the enmity spoken of in this passage probably means “ Zwisten zwischen den Familien des Mannes und der Frau, die durch Einmischung der Schwiegereltern hervorgerufen werden.”