THE SOCIAL FUNCTION OF MAHR IN UPPER MANDAILING, SUMATRA
DONALD J. TUGBY
University of Qwcnsland
IN ISLAMIC canon law the manner in which property is inherited is rigidly I defined. Furthermore, the Islamic system of ethics defines the social roles of members of the nuclear family. Therefore, there are certain features peculiar to Islamization as a process of social change. We should expect to find re peatedly a reversion to the model for the social structure which is implicit in Islamic canon law and ethics. This article reports a modest start on the testing of this hypothesis. The aim of the article is to analyze the social effects in the Islamized society of Upper Mandailing of the adoption of one provision of canon law, namely, that about a payment (mahr) made by a man to any woman he marries. No attempt is made to provide a diachronic analysis of the total process of Islamization; instead, a synchronic comparative analysis is made of alternative ways in which the introduced institution of mahr is currently dealt with in Upper Mandailing society.'
Mandailing is the southernmost part of the Propinsi Sumatera Utara (Province of North Sumatra) in the Republic of Indonesia. The area may be divided into two parts: a northern part, Lower Mandailing (Mandailing Djai), and a southern part, Upper Mandailing (Mandailing Djulu). The population of Upper Mandailing is approximately 47,000, of which about eight percent are Ulu, about two percent belong to some group foreign to the area such as Javanese, Menangkabau, Northern Batak, Chinese, Indian or Pakistani and the remainder are the people we shall call Upper Mandailingers.
The Upper Mandailingers are rice farmers who grow rubber, coffee, cinnamon, and cloves as cash crops. They live in villages of from 20 to 500 houses. Each household consists of a nuclear family with possible accretions such as an aged parent or a younger sibling of the male household head.
Each village has its own mosque and the Upper Mandailingers all regard themselves as Muslims. Some were forcibly converted to Islam about 1810 when the Paderis, a revivalist sect of Menangkabau, staged a military invasion of Mandailing. The Dutch, who had not previously entered Upper Mandailing, were called on by the indigenous leaders (radjas) for help. The Dutch drove the Paderi military forces from the area, occupied it with their own and appointed a civil administrator (Controleur) in Upper Mandailing in 1835, but the Paderis continued their teaching. Today, because of their adherence to religious formalism, the Upper Mandailingers are known as religious fanatics by their now easier-going neighbors.
The pre-Islamic social structure and religion of Upper Mandailing was probably similar to that of the Bataks of northern Tapanuli. In spite of Islamization it has been assumed by scholars that it has remained the same. Thus the part of the social structure which concerns us here has been succinctly described by ter Haar (1948:65) as having as its characteristic unit a “localized, exogamous, patrilocal clan or subclan inhabiting its own territory.” Ter Haar goes on to say: “Running through the pattern of relationship of the ruling local clan to non-clan members living in the local community is the special relation of the clans supplying women to the clans which receive them. . . . Each clan has a fixed relation to another clan, which results in the principle that all the girls of a clan are married out to the men of another. The woman-supplying clan is called . . . moru2 in the south (i.e. in Mandailing). The woman-receiving clan is dubbed the boru or beru. It is important to note however that the relation is not mutual. This produces the complex known as asymmetrical marriage.”
This is a statement of the ideal-typical pattern of a portion of Upper Mandailing social structure, but it does not accord with the social facts of today. The concepts of woman-giving and woman-receiving units are still an effective element in the Upper Mandailing conceptualization of the social structure, but the units in woman-giving and woman-receiving relations are very much smaller than clans; they are nuclear families or small lineages. The members of a group of siblings may marry women of different clans, their sons likewise.
There are no large units in permanent woman-giving/woman-receiving relationships. The jural unity of the lineage is a function of the ownership of the land in common by members of the lineage. In the last two or three generations land has rarely remained undivided for more than one generation. A reduction in the size of the effective lineage has occurred, then, pari passu with the fragmentation of land.
The political and social significance of an asymmetrical marriage system is manifested in the nature and direction of the prestations from woman-giving and woman-receiving groups to their respective partners. In the indigenous adat system in Upper Mandailing there were and are two payments expressed in money terms, the great gold (sere na godang) and the little gold (sere na menek). The direction of payment is from a woman-receiving group to its woman-giving group. However, the great gold is never paid. It remains ideally as a debt in perpetuity; as the Mandailingers say, to one’s children and one’s children’s children. The existence of the debt and the relative subservience which is its corollary is symbolized by the personal services which a man will render for his father-in-law and by the relatively menial services which woman-receivers carry out for woman-givers on ceremonial occasions. The lit tie gold, on the other hand, is paid, usually in cash, by the father of the bridegroom to the father of the bride before the adat wedding. It is used mainly for buying finery for the bride.
The political and social significance of an asymmetrical marriage system is manifested in the nature and direction of the prestations from woman-giving and woman-receiving groups to their respective partners. In the indigenous adat system in Upper Mandailing there were and are two payments expressed in money terms, the great gold (sere na godang) and the little gold (sere na menek). The direction of payment is from a woman-receiving group to its woman-giving group. However, the great gold is never paid. It remains ideally as a debt in perpetuity; as the Mandailingers say, to one’s children and one’s children’s children. The existence of the debt and the relative subservience which is its corollary is symbolized by the personal services which a man will render for his father-in-law and by the relatively menial services which woman-receivers carry out for woman-givers on ceremonial occasions. The lit tie gold, on the other hand, is paid, usually in cash, by the father of the bridegroom to the father of the bride before the adat wedding. It is used mainly for buying finery for the bride.
In the course of Islamization the institution of mahr, a payment which according to canon law a man must undertake to make to a woman whom he marries, had to be added to existing social practices or redefined in terms of existing social practices oriented to the same set of aims. The problem for the Upper Mandailingers was and is the maintenance of logical consistency in the social definition of mahr. This is a problem which can be solved in a number of ways. After outlining the conditions associated with the payment of mahr and with the indigenous adat payments we shall analyze the social consequences of the alternative definitions.
MARRIAGE PAYMENTS
In Islamic canon law, mahr3 is a compulsory settlement4 payable by the husband to the wife to whom it belongs absolutely. It is an inalienable and imprescriptible right forming part of the contract of marriage whether specified or not. The husband cannot resile from it once consummation has taken place. But the wife can make a gift of her mahr to her husband, and if she does so, he and his heirs are free from the debt. Rlahr may remain as a debt, but it becomes payable immediately on divorce. According to a strict interpretation of Sjafite law, all mahr is prompt, i.e., payable immediately on marriage. The Mandailingers, however, appear to believe that all mahr may be deferred, i.e., payable at any time after marriage and even inherited as a debt. In fact, prompt mahr is payable on demand by the wife, but this clause is frequently obscured in Upper Mandailing.
Nevertheless, these general conditions associated with mahr are widely known. Mandailingers demonstrate their appreciation of the imprescriptible nature of mahr by saying that if mahr is not paid during the life of a man, it must be paid in the after life (Achirat). Women sometimes absolve their husbands from the debt immediately prior to the death of either party. But this is not always done and in some cases cannot be done for reasons beyond the control of the parties, e.g., accidental death. There are one or two cases of the payment of the mahr due to a widow by her son on behalf of his dead father; this accords with the nature of mahr as an unsecured debt which may be charged against the property of a dead husband. Since in normal Upper Mandailing practice sons inherit the property of their father, it is understandable that they should pay the mahr of their mother.
The payment of mahr is, then, universal. The adat payment of the great gold is always specified in terms of the measures for gold, fail and pa, and ideally varies according to the matrilineal ancestry of the bride. The little gold is also called fine gold (sere nu Zamol), a euphemism for cash. Outside the context of adat ceremonial it is known as the money which disappears (epeng na mago mago), or as cloud money (uang ombun), or vulgarly as heat money (uang angus). This money is paid to the bride’s father in cash. It is supposed to be used for the purchase of an outfit of clothes and ornaments for the bride, but in certain circumstances the bride’s father may make use of it for his own purposes. As far as the donor is concerned, then, this money “disappears.” Either the great gold or the money which disappears may be designated as mahr.
There are therefore at least three possibilities:
(1) The great gold is designated as mahr; the money which disappears is paid
(2) The great gold remains as a debt in adat; the money which disappears is desig-
(3) The great gold remains as a debt in adat; the money which disappears is paid
The adoption of one or other of these alternatives affects the intergroup relationships of the wife-givers and wife-receivers and the social position of the wife.
DESIGNATION OF THE GREAT COLD AS MAHR
The adoption of this first alternative emasculates the woman-giving/woman-receiving relationship insofar as this turns on the notion of the debt of wife-receiving to wife-giving group. Mahr is payable solely by the husband and solely to the wife. Hence the jural basis in adat of the group relationship of the wife-givers and wife-receivers has been removed and the interpersonal relationship of husband and wife which should unfold to reveal the group relationship of larger scale does not do so. The entailments of the marriage are confined jurally-and within the framework of canon law rather than adat-primarily to intranuclear family relationships. But although this right of re ceipt of mahr is a jus in personam, the claim may be made against the estate of the husband and insofar as the latter has rights in common in the property of his minimal lineage, the members of the latter are also involved.
Hence the lien which a widow appears to exercise over the use of the property of her late husband-she is normally allowed the use of the property until her death-is not solely dependent on the ties of sentiment between mother and son. It is paralleled in canon law by the widow’s right of retention of the property of her late husband of which she is in legal occupation at the time of his death as a security against the payment of her mahr. This right does not confer any title to the property, which she cannot alienate, and the right expires should her mahr be paid; her position depends therefore upon the nature and amount of the mahr and the possibility or impossibility of its being paid.
The lowest mahr which is specified in terms of the great gold is one tail plus one pa. At current gold values, this is worth about Rp. 1500,* quite beyond the reach of the average village farmer, since this normally represents about half the value of the wet rice fields of the lineage, of which no individual is the sole owner. A mahr of this kind will not normally be paid during the lifetime of the husband and, therefore, a widow who has not absolved her husband from the debt is in a strong position in canon law in relation to her right of retention of
her late husband’s property after his death.
During the lifetime of the husband, however, a high mahr does not in itself lead to stability of marriage, though it may conduce to difficulty of divorce. A husband can divorce his wife by a single pronouncement of repudiation (talak sada); divorce only becomes irrevocable after the expiration of a period of approximately three months following the pronouncement (iddat), during which cohabitation is not allowed. Pronouncements may be made on one occasion or singly on different occasions. But after three pronouncements the couple can not remarry until the woman has contracted a valid consummated marriage with a third party and been duly divorced. A single or double pronouncement or each of two successive single pronouncements may be cancelled by uttering a formula of reconciliation before the expiration of iddat. If there is a high mahr the husband tends to make no pronouncement of repudiation but effects a separation. The mahr is not now exigible, as it normally would be after the expiration of iddat, but the position is obscured by doubt as to whether the husband intends to utter the formula of repudiation or has already done so followed by a formula of reconciliation. He may take the latter course without reference to his wife or even in her absence. By maintaining uncertainty in this matter a husband may delay payment of the mahr for months, even for years. In the meantime the wife is not legally free to remarry, but the husband may legally marry another wife. Women in this situation are called hanging or dependent widow (djando margantung). Usually their only remedy is to forfeit their mahr.
DESIGNATION OF THE MONEY WHICH DISAPPEARS AS MAHR
If the second alternative for the specification of mahr is adopted, the wornan-giving/woman-receiving relationship epitomized in the notion of debt of the great gold remains intact. The allotment of the money which disappears for different purposes is a matter for discussion between the bride and her father. There is a dissonance, however, between the ideal-typical pattern of father-daughter relations, the jural conditions associated with mahr and the tacit recognition that all parties endeavor to make the most of the situation for themselves. It is better, older informants say, if the girl’s father determines the amount of her mahr, it is fine, good (elok), if the matter of its payment is determined by discussion between the girl’s father and the father of her suitor.
The mahr itself belongs absolutely to the girl-on this point all informants are adamant-but it can be used by her father with her permission. The divid ing line between determination of amount and retention therefore becomes a fine one. Fathers who can bring pressure to bear upon their daughters may well be able to retain a portion of the mahr and at least avoid paying the costs of the marriage ceremonies out of their own pocket. In some villages this is the normal practice. Nevertheless it is universally acknowledged that fathers who connive to obtain a portion of their daughter’s mahr deserve denigration and they are themselves ashamed should this be discovered. The contents of the bride’s marriage portion are in fact checked against the money given to the bride’s father by the members of the lineage of the groom when the marriage portion is brought to the groom’s father’s house for the adat wedding ceremony. Normally, it is a matter of pride for the bride’s father to augment the portion rather than otherwise. The designation of the money which disappears as mahr therefore acts as a check upon the avariciousness of the bride’s father.
Where a suitor is pressing, a girl who wishes to make the most of the situation may demand large prewedding presents, usually a gold necklace and less valuable earrings and bracelets, which may or may not be counted against the payment of mahr. This is made clear and put in writing, a necessary precaution since, it is said, many girls want the clothes and ornaments but not the man.
Having obtained the former they may well attempt to resile from the implied contract to marry by running away; this they may do after the wedding, but the mahr is recoverable if consummation has not taken place.
Using the mahr to buy the marriage portion of the bride is seen as a good arrangement from the man’s point of view, since it frees him at least temporarily from the necessity of buying the clothes which his wife would be able to demand as a right of maintenance under the contract of marriage.
A gold necklace worth about Rp.300.00 to Rp.500.00 normally forms part of a marriage portion. This acts as a permanent, tangible and readily exchangeable asset which provides a wife with a certain security in case of divorce. In the course of time the necklace comes to be regarded as a family asset which may be sold to tide the family over sickness or other emergency. If it is sold for this purpose, a man, being responsible for the support of his family, is deemed to be morally in debt to his wife since he has made use of her mahr.
Occasionally, therefore, a mahr paid in this form may be said to be conducive to the stability of marriage. In case of divorce, since the mahr has already been paid, the question of its forfeit by the wife does not arise, nor is it recoverable by the husband once consummation has taken place. In this sense, designation of the money which disappears as mahr and payment of a large portion in the form of a necklace does not contribute towards the prevention of divorce.
Since this is in accordance with the adat notion of woman-giving/woman-receiving relationships, if such a debt is not compounded by the members of a man’s lineage at the time of the wedding, it tends to persist. Where a debt exists, a social tie is strengthened. For example, the woman-giving/woman-receiving intergroup relationship only exists by virtue of the debt of the great gold and is broken off should the debt be paid; while a woman’s link with her brothers is strengthened if she does not take the share of her dead father’s property to which she is entitled in canon law. In the same way a deferred mahr strengthens the moral tie between husband and wife.
SEPARATE SPECIFICATION OF THE MAHR
If this third alternative is adopted, the great gold remains as a debt in adat, and the money which disappears is paid in cash or kind. Adat law payments and canon law payments are thus segregated. The mahr is usually specified in cash and if paid is used for the purchase of gold ornaments. The money which disappears goes to the bride’s father and he may use it either to set off his own ceremonial costs or for the purchase of clothes for the bride, or both. Under this system the mahr may remain as a debt since it is not involved in the necessarily prompt payment of the money which disappears. Since the mahr in question is deferred mahr, or partially so, it may be high. Both high and low mahr are found under this system, the former almost always when a true run away marriage to a market town outside the area takes place. In a “lovematch” of this kind, the girl sets her own mahr, often of the order of Rp.50.00.
On the return to the village the negotiations with the bride’s father are only in terms of the money which disappears. On the other hand, if a suitor is eager and a girl does not consent to run away, she may specify a large mahr of the order of Rp.2000.00 which she uses to buy gold ornaments. In marriages contracted by wealthier merchants there is usually a mahr of this type. From the merchant’s point of view the designation of the mahr in this way avoids his presenting the ornaments merely as gifts. In other than merchant circles, the specification of a large prompt mahr and a small money which disappears has a different function-it differentiates clearly between the money which the bride’s father may put to his own use and that used to buy clothes and ornaments for the bride, thus making the whole matter certain (tonlu). Socially and psychologically this last is an important function. Socially, because according to canon law certainty and clarity in matters concerning payments are desirable, and psychologically because the Upper Mandailingers live in a world whose future is theologically defined as uncertain and they are themselves insecure. As a reaction against this feeling they make every effort to avoid uncertainty and ambiguity in interpersonal action. It is not a fault (salah) for the bride’s father to pocket the money which disappears, as its name suggests, but he cannot do the same with his daughter’s mahr. Hence certain persons, it is said, merely ask for money without specifying whether this is mahr or great gold or little gold. This is quite legitimate, in fact almost praiseworthy-if one can get the money-it is merely an aspect of seeking (djalaki).
DISCUSSION
The existence of these alternatives for the specification of mahr is indicative of the conflict between the accentuation of larger group relationships versus those of smaller scale. In the last 100 years there has been a trend towards the reduction in scale of the units conceived to be in woman-giving/woman-receiving relation, from clans to clan segments, from clan segments to minor and minimal lineages. There has been a concomitant loss of permanency.
A man’s true tulang (a classificatory kinship term used for both mother’s brother and father-in-law) is not his true mother’s brother, but his true father-in-law. It is with the latter that woman-giving/woman-receiving relationships are activated. The specification of the great gold as mahr provides the ultimate stage in this process of jural re-ordering in reducing the woman-giving/woman-receiving relationship to the level of the nuclear family.
The social position of married women appears to have been enhanced by the introduction of the institution of mahr. The ability to move from adat to canon law and vice versa in defining social positions and responsibilities which is characteristic of Upper Mandailing has its counterpart within Islam generally in the normal practice of shifting from one school of law to another as convenient. The result, as far as women are concerned, is that the conditions associated with the payment of deferred mahr provide a jural basis for accretion of women to the lineages of their husbands. That is to say a woman becomes a quasi-member of her husband’s lineage by virtue of the debt which is owed to her. In terms of a social tie to the lineage of her husband, which is founded upon economic considerations, she is placed in a similar position to the women who are members of that lineage by birth. The continuity of the social membership of the latter in their lineage is conditional upon their foregoing their right of inheriting a share in the lineage property. The institution of mahr does not stabilize marriage, but it provides assurance of security in widowhood; where the mahr is paid the assurance is thereby weakened.
The designation of the money which disappears as mahr defeats the true intention of the institution of mahr which is usually defined as being to enhance the security of married women. The money which disappears is essentially a consideration for the bride’s father; its designation as mahr reduces the latter to its original pre-Islamic status as a bride-price.’ The payment of all the mahr promptly probably accounts for the fact that some widows are turned out of their late husband’s houses by their sons.
The stability of the marriage itself, given the necessary condition of the birth of children, depends on the capacity for adjustment of the two parties, but mainly on that of the wife. In spite of the provision of mahr which is intended, and is seen by Mandailingers to be intended, as a method of enhancing the status and security of the wife, her position depends upon forebearance, both in relations with her lineage of origin (and the activation of her rights of inheritance in the property of that lineage) and her lineage of accretion (i.e. the lineage of her husband). A woman-giving group exercises a greater controlling interest over the female as against the male children of the women which it gives. On the other hand, a woman-receiving group ideally exercises an option over the nubile women of its woman-giving group. Thus women have an indeterminate social position; they are like counters in a social game.
The stability of the marriage itself, given the necessary condition of the birth of children, depends on the capacity for adjustment of the two parties, but mainly on that of the wife. In spite of the provision of mahr which is intended, and is seen by Mandailingers to be intended, as a method of enhancing the status and security of the wife, her position depends upon forebearance, both in relations with her lineage of origin (and the activation of her rights of inheritance in the property of that lineage) and her lineage of accretion (i.e. the lineage of her husband). A woman-giving group exercises a greater controlling interest over the female as against the male children of the women which it gives. On the other hand, a woman-receiving group ideally exercises an option over the nubile women of its woman-giving group. Thus women have an indeterminate social position; they are like counters in a social game.
Since women also lack any significant control over resources, they capitalize on their cathectic relations with husbands and sons in order to maintain their influence and status.
CONCLUSION
When the institution of mahr is adopted in any society it is particularly likely to become an effective determinant of the form of parts of the social structure. The timing of the payment in relation to the duration of any particular marriage has a certain flexibility, by virtue of which alternative types of specification are possible. Deferment is structurally significant in a negative way in that it allows the social experimentation in which the Upper Mandailingers are clearly indulging. But the definition of the payment as being made from a specific man to a specific woman is unalterable. This dyadic pattern becomes the prototype of the jural definition of marriage and obscures group relationships of larger scale which also turn upon marriage.
Although it is recognized nowadays that functional disequilibrium of the parts may exist in any social system, it is also asserted that logical consistency in the definition of the parts occurs throughout the system. When a new social practice is introduced into a society, then, it is usually redefined in terms of the existing social practices which are related to the same set of aims as the introduced practice. But such a spurious logical consistency does not neces-
sarily induce functional harmony. The respective social entailments of the old and new practices may differ sharply (if they do not so differ then the new practice probably constitutes only a cultural embellishment). Social changes take place, often, but not necessarily, in a direction which reestablishes functional harmony.
Three of the more obvious ways in which a social group can treat newly introduced practices are to add them to, adapt them to, or integrate them with existing practices. The first alternative is unusual (the independent specification of mahr is relatively rare). The other two alternatives may appear superficially to avoid any gross social change. But the structural concomitants of the institution of mahr are so rigidly determined that they will prevail in the
long run. They are tending to do so today in Upper Mandailing as knowledge about modern Islam increases. The social roles of the members of the nuclear family are being redefined in a manner consonant with a structural concomitant to the payment of mahr, namely, the concept of marriage as primarily a dyadic social relationship. At the same time the concept of lineages in woman giving/woman-receiving relationships is becoming socially more and more unreal. Finally we may note that, as a further consequence of this separation of the ideal and actual in social behavior, the social rituals which reaffirmed the tegroup relationship are either dying out or changing their function.
NOTES
1. The fieldwork upon which this article is based was carried out in Upper Mandailing for almost two years during 1955 and 1956. The author wishes to acknowledge the financial support from the Australian National University which made this fieldwork possible.
2. All the terms first presented in italic in this article are terms used in the current, spoken
Upper Mandailing language.
3. We shall not reiterate all the conditions associated with the payment of mahr which are
as valid in Upper Mandailing as elsewhere in the Islamic world where Sjafite law is predominant, but confine attention to those conditions which are significantly expressed in Upper Mandailing eocial practice.
4. Mahr is usually described as dower. It is incidental to the definition of mahr that should it
not be paid to a woman during the lifetime of her husband she may claim it from his estate.
Moreover, if the mahr is paid from her deceased husband’s estate it is not returnable; it belongs to the woman absolutely. It is a compulsory settlement which is presumed in the contract of marriage.
5. At the official rate of exchange about $132.00, at the blackmarket rate (1956) $48.00.
6. In Arabia, prior to Islam, on marriage the husband made a gift to the wife, sadaq, and a gift to her parents, mahr. See, for example, Fyzee (1955:llO).
REFERENCES CITED
FYZEE, ASAP A. A.
1955 Outlines of Muhammadan law. London, Oxford University Press.
HAAR, B. TEB
1948 Adat law in Indonesia. New York, Institute of Pacific Relations.
source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1959.61.4.02a00080/pdf
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