among the women since an unpopular decision
would reduce the authority of the leader. The lead-
er’s control gives those whose conflicts she arbi-
trates incentives to follow her legislation, as she
may withhold resources or contracts from those
who do not.
Men are able to overturn women’s decisions,
especially those related to marriage and sexual mis-
conduct of women. According to customary law
codes, women have been given in marriage as blood
compensation in the resolution of conflicts, or to
alleviate a family’s economic distress caused by
high bride-price. If a woman’s sexual conduct
comes into question, customary law allows and
sometimes encourages honor killings. Men legislate
decisions that affect both the men’s and the
women’s spheres of the family, such as reputation
or economic situation. In other words, women
have legislative control as long as the conflicts are
within their jurisdiction only.
This view of women’s authority is based in docu-
mented examples as well as in tropes in Afghan folk
stories and poetry. However, over 25 years of war
and displacement have left women’s spheres and
networks in tatters. Customary law is a continually
evolving process and much of women’s power of
decision and control of resources has been lost due
to the continual unrest and fear the war situation
created. More displaced women are forced into
types of seclusion they were unused to in their vil-
lages: they have to wear a bughra(burqa≠) in the
streets around their homes and they are cut off
from their social networks. With the breakdown of
women’s social networks and spheres men gain
more control over women’s legislative power.
Bibliography
A. Ahmed, Millennium and charisma among Pathans. A
critical essay in social anthropology, London 1976.
F. Barth, Political leadership among Swat Pathans, Lon-
don 1965.
H. Christensen, The reconstructions of Afghanistan. A
chance for rural Afghan women, Geneva 1990.
M. M. Ismati, The position and role of Afghan women in
Afghanistan, Kabul 1987.
P. Kakar, Tribal law of Pashtunwali and women’s legisla-
tive authority, in P. Bearman and F. Vogel (ed.), Afghan
legal history project, Harvard University Press (forth-
coming).
E. Knabe, Afghan women. Does their role change?, in
L. Dupree and L. Albert (eds.), Afghanistan in the
1970s, New York 1974, 144–66.
N. Lindisfarne (Tapper), Bartered brides. Politics, gender
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Palwasha L. Kakarthe caucasus 415The CaucasusFrom the tenth to the nineteenth centuries, a dual
system of customary law (≠àda) and Sharì≠a devel-
oped in the Caucasus. The absence of a state system
and state law favored the lasting preservation of
≠àda in North Caucasus. Three kinds of customary
law can be distinguished: pre-reformation custom-
ary law (fifteenth to mid-nineteenth century),
reformed customary law (second half of nineteenth
to early twentieth century), and customary law of
the Soviet and post-Soviet period (1920 to the
1990s).
The pre-reformation North Caucasian custom-
ary law can be described as an unwritten law com-
bined with a community control system. The
exception is Daghestan where systematization of
≠àda was carried out in the fifteenth to eighteenth
centuries and customary law was written down in
Arabic.
The reformed customary law developed after the
Russian-Caucasian war, under the influence of the
active policy of the Russian Empire in the Cau-
casus, legal reforms in the Russian Empire between
1860 and the 1910s, and the incorporation of the
North Caucasian peoples into Russian state power
and law system. ≠âda was codified and made an ele-
ment of Russian state law applicable in North
Caucasus. Governmental verification of compli-
ance with ≠àdacourt decisions (Kabardian mende-
tyr, Turkic tere, Ossetian tarhon lagior tarhoni
lagtae, Russian mediatorskiy, posrednicheskiy, or
treteiskiy[arbitral]) and a system of fines for non-
compliance were introduced. Legal procedure was
still verbal, while the ≠àda court decisions began to
be written down throughout North Caucasus.
The ≠àdadecision included the following: com-
position of the court, names, ages, and social status
of the judges; a brief description of the case; the
amount of compensation; conditions and terms of
payment; and arrangement of the conciliatory
feast. The document was signed by every judge.
Rights and duties to the communal authorities
and the court under ≠àdalaw were unequal. Factors
that influenced the application of the ≠àda norms
were: class hierarchy (Kabardian uork habze, code
of honor of princes and uzdens), age and sex of the
participants in the conflict, and the extent of
the influence of Islam and Sharì≠a on ≠àda within
the specific society.
Expansion of ≠àdawithin the ethnic communities
of the Caucasus was conditioned by the degree of
Islamization and establishment of legal standards
of Islam (Sharì≠a) in all areas of the civil and crimi-
nal legislation. The Sharì≠a was implemented most