Note 733 — Chapter V · EARLY HISTORY OF DIVORCE

Among the early Arabians the woman as well as the man had entire freedom of divorce. The nikâh al-mot'a, or temporary contract-marriage, amounted merely to a restriction of the woman's power of divorce during the short term of agreement: Smith, Kinship and Marriage, 59 ff., 65 ff.; Kremer, Kulturgeschichte des Orients, I. 538; Wilken, Das Matriarchat, 18, 9 ff.: ap. Ammianus Marcellinus, Book XIV, sec. iv, 4, Yonge's trans. (London, 1887), 11. By the later Arabian law, after the rise of wife-capture and wife-purchase, divorce became the sole privilege of the husband; and the same is true under the still later law. Cf. in general, Hellwald, Die mensch. Familie, chaps. xxii, xxiii; Kohler, "Ueber das vorislamitische Recht der Araber," ZVR., VIII, 244, 248, 257; Friedrichs, "Das Eherecht des Islam," ibid., VII, 263-69.