Marriage: the prompt dower.

What women receive when they marry is the starting point of this chapter. Here I will return to the four women introduced in chapter 2 and discuss their marriage stories in greater detail, adding some of the stories of their daughters and granddaughters for the sake of historical comparison. In the Jabal Nablus region, the prompt dower is registered in two very different ways, either as ‘regular prompt dower’, with the registered sum bearing at least some resemblance to what is given, or as ‘token dower’, when a very small sum is recorded (often 1 JD), creating a complete break between the amount stated in the contracts and the gifts received. These two dower patterns will be discussed successively, with particular attention paid to the divergent meanings registering a token dower can have for different categories of women. Next, the sometimes detailed registration of household goods in the contracts is considered and shifts in the nature of the gifts are discussed. The dower will then be contextualised within the process of socio-economic change by relating the value of the dower to the transfer of property from fathers to sons. Before summarising the historical trends in women's access to property through the dower I will briefly discuss ‘intifada marriages’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]