the other with bent knee. This is convenient, for
they always serve at the table and need to get up
easily, and is also considered a sign of female mod-
esty. Dishes are first served to guests and men.
The host and hostess meet the first guests to-
gether. Later guests are welcomed by one of them
while the other entertains the guests who came ear-
lier. When guests leave, hosts usher them to the
gate. If there are grown sons in the household, they
escort guests to a bus or home to ensure that they
arrive safely.
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Nodira Khaitbaevna AzimovaThe Gulf and YemenThe hospitality of the Arabs is so famed as to
seem sometimes stereotypical, yet the centrality of
hospitality to women’s lives is evident in ethno-
graphic accounts of the Arabian Peninsula. While
the gulf and yemen 229there are important regional variations, a common
thread is that hospitality is often understood in a
religious frame. Extending food and drink to a
guest who arrives at one’s home is held to be a reli-
gious obligation incumbent upon a pious Muslim.
A miserly woman (bakhìla) is not only a bad person
in an everyday sense, but one whose lack of gen-
erosity (karàma) will be punished in the afterlife.
The offering and receiving of generous hospitality
is fundamental to one’s recognition in the social
world; people who refuse to engage sociably with
others are viewed with suspicion.
Engaging with others through the exchange of
generous hospitality is a central way in which a
woman maintains ties with kin, neighbors, and
friends, ties that are vital to her quotidian social
support. Visiting is also part of the important polit-
ical work that women do for their families; through
their practices of sociability, they maintain and
keep viable ties between families. While visiting is,
for many women on the Arabian Peninsula, a daily
practice, extending and accepting hospitality is par-
ticularly important at key life cycle events, particu-
larly birth, marriage, and death and key dates in
the religious calendar. Yet while the everyday
exchange of hospitality and generosity is vitally
important to the production of a sense of commu-
nity, it is often competitive, and indexes hierarchical
relationships.Greetings and words
Hospitality begins with vibrant greetings. A less
than effusive greeting may be read as a snub. Verbal
greetings in Zabid are accompanied by the ex-
change of kisses on hands, shoulders, or cheeks,
varying according to the age and status of the women
(Meneley 1996, 99–107). In contrast, women in the
Omani village of Hamra greet with handshakes
rather than kisses (Eickelman 1984, 124–5). In the
Omani oasis town of Bahla, an initial greeting pro-
vides a phatic entrance to initiate the social visit.
Not to exchange words in everyday conversation
during social visits in Bahla would be as rude as not
offering or accepting hospitality (Limbert 2002).
Women’s visits appear in the ethnographic litera-
ture as times of the exchange of gregarious conver-
sation: in the Omani village of Hamra (Eickelman
1984); in the Iraqi village of al-Nahla (Fernea
1969); among the elite women of Jeddah (Altorki
1986) and the people of ≠Unayzah (Altorki and
Cole 1989); and in the Yemeni cities of Sana≠a (vom
Bruck 2002), ≠Amran (Dorsky 1986) and Zabid
(Meneley 1996). A notable exception is Wikan’s
account of Sohari women’s silence during visits
(1982).