Note 37 — Chapter I · THE PATRIARCHAL THEORY

Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage; Wilken, Das Matriarchat bei den alten Arabern, a work suggested by Smith's "Animal Worship and Animal Tribes," Journal of Philology, IX, 75-100. These writers have found among these Semitic tribes the system of kinship through the mother in actual use, with traces of polyandry, exogamy, and the totem gens; and Wilken believes that he finds evidences of early promiscuity. See especially Kohler, Ueber das vorislamitische Recht der Araber, ZVR., VIII, 238-61; and Friedrichs, Das Eherecht des Islam, ibid., VII, 240-84, especially 255 ff., who shows that the Mohammedan house-father exercises great authority over his wife, yet she has her own property and receives a dower. At present, relationship in Arabia is generally counted in the male line; and therefore, Westermarck, Human Marriage, 102, note 4, regards the conclusion of Smith that originally the system of female kinship exclusively prevailed as "a mere hypothesis."