The Wisdom of History

The enslavement of woman began in history with the appearance of the age of private property. This age, which witnessed the triumph of the individual self over the tribal self, and man's assertion of his existence in the tools he invented and in the land over which he alone gained mastery after it had been held in common by the tribe, also witnessed the despotism of primitive man and his monopoly — to the exclusion of woman — of the ownership of land, slaves, women, and children.

For primitive man believed that the land he owned would perpetuate his memory after death. He dies, and it remains.

And it was necessary that his children inherit it after him, to tend it with plowing and care, and thereby offer the dues of worship to the spirits of the ancestors lying beneath its layers or hovering in its sky.

And because males are more capable than females of protecting the land and plowing it, he saw it as wisdom to bequeath it to his male children and to deprive the daughters, who pass by marriage into a strange family. Thus he would satisfy the spirits of the ancestors, which refuse to pass into strange hands, in a strange tribe.

The deprivation of woman of inheritance rested on a naive primitive belief. And this tradition held sway over many tribes and peoples in various environments and ages.

But it began to evolve and fade among the nations that rose above the primitive level. Ancient Egypt cast it off, because it denied the people the right of private property and confined it to the state — that is, to the king and the priests — and since the individual's wealth was limited to small money incomes, he found no difficulty in dividing it equally among his children, male and female. The Egyptian laws made man and woman equal in rights — indeed gave her precedence over him in many of them — so that it has been said that among peoples ancient or modern there is none that granted women such rights as the ancient Egyptians granted their women.

On this pattern went Sparta, which embraced the system of mother-right and gave woman a freedom equal to man's.

It was natural that woman should enjoy the best share of freedom and rights under Roman law, in which the sum of the nations' experience culminated; for the people of Rome, reared on the civic virtues and comprehending the meaning of nationhood, respected woman in consideration of her usefulness to the state and her importance in building the family, managing the home, and assisting the man in his agricultural and other labors. This standing which woman attained in society led to the raising of her standing in law and the amendment of the statutes concerning her, until from the second century A.D. she became man's equal in the rights of inheritance, guardianship, and divorce, while retaining the right to receive a dowry from her father.

Such was woman's position in the lands that came under Roman rule and Roman legislation — the lands of the Mediterranean coast, of which our own land forms a part.

But in the Arabian Peninsula, the tribes until the sixth century were still in the primitive state — in their political and social condition and in their treatment of woman. When the Messenger Muhammad was sent to them at the opening of the seventh century, he saw around him a tribal society that lived by raiding and gave weight to none but warriors; that sanctioned the burying alive of infant daughters and denied them any share of inheritance, and was bound by no clear laws in matters of marriage and divorce. So he forbade the burying alive, regulated woman's relation to husband and family, and instituted the special legislation of marriage and divorce, setting out in detail the provisions of dower, inheritance, ownership, maintenance, and custody.

It was not within the Messenger's power to raise woman at a single stroke from her primitive station to the degree of equality that the Roman woman had attained after generations of evolution. Had he appeared in another environment, that would have been possible. But the wisdom of history denies sudden transition.

Centuries and epochs passed. Ages of advancement were followed by ages of darkness and regression, by which woman's standing was affected — until there came the modern European renaissance, which crowned its achievements with the declaration of the rights of man and the proclamation that human beings are equal in rights, whatever their races and classes, be they women or men.

In this country, which inherits from the civilizations of peoples past and present, and which witnesses in the position of the modern Lebanese woman a rapid evolution qualifying her to equal man in the rights of work and of the vote, thinkers hold that, in keeping with the principle of balance and harmony, several laws concerning woman must be reexamined — the most important of them the law of inheritance. For it is not reasonable that woman should be given justice in one respect and not another, or that her evolution in principle should lag behind her evolution in fact.

It is the duty of the progressive elements not to keep silent about woman's right in this regard, and to press the responsible bodies to study the draft law submitted to them on the subject.

Woman's equality with man in the law of inheritance has a great moral value alongside its material value, for it is among the most important factors that restore her confidence in herself and compel society to regard her as a complete human being.