ENGLISH BOOKS  | ARABIC BOOKS

Marriage at the village

The beginning of March was the favorable moment to marry once the months of great cold over and with the start of spring in the fields.

The young man chose his fiancée and his father asked a man of religion to ask the girls' parents their consent towards the projected union.

This preliminary formality filled, the parents proceeded to the engagement and the young man was then authorized to send a ring to the girl. The reciprocal commitment, thus undertaken and blessed by the man of religion, was held for sacred; to shy away from this commitment was regarded as a blow to the honor of both the engaged.

In the margin of these "official" steps, a whole stir took place in the back rooms of both homes. A marriage is a delicate business that is negotiated with tact: if the suitor was not rich enough or too old, he would then dash to offer his parents-in-law a pair of ox, or to add a new wing to his house, etc. if the fiancée was not pretty enough nor robust, she would dissimulate these "defaults " by a well furnished trousseau, a provided dowry…