ter would have to remain single (also Peters 1978,
337).
The inheritance question of elderly single women
is structurally different from that of married women.
In the case of a single woman without means of her
own, her brothers are legally obliged to provide for
her. In a sense, a brother’s contributions to his sis-
ter are hard to distinguish from a gradual pay-off of
her inheritance share. If tensions arise, these tend to
be expressed in terms of maintenance rather than in
terms of inheritance. Elderly single women usually
hold strong usufruct rights to their father’s house.
Especially when it became increasingly common
for married sons to move soon after marriage into
a house of their own, the most convenient solution
often was for an elderly unmarried daughter to
remain in her father’s house.
One particularly interesting case is women inher-
iting gold, as it often argued that rural women tend
to inherit gold rather than land. However, it may
not be so much the nature of the property that is at
stake, but the relation between testator and heir.
Gold is, after all, mostly inherited from mothers.
Because of the often strong bonds between a
mother and her daughter it is rather common for
a woman to support her daughter through (pre-
mortem) donating some of her gold to her. And
even if she does not do so in her lifetime, this close
mother-daughter tie gives women a particular
claim on their mother’s estate, which often consists
of gold. In that sense it seems more difficult to dis-
inherit women from gold than from any other type
of property.
The multiple meanings and
power effects of inheriting
property
Much of the literature on women and inheritance
in the Arab world assumes that claiming inheri-
tance rights is an indication of gendered power. Yet
inheriting property has multiple meanings and
divergent power effects. If women from this area
often refrained from claiming their inheritance
rights, this was not necessarily an expression of
their subordination, nor was claiming their rights
in the estate an indication of power. Some women
received (part of) their share automatically because
they were from an urban wealthy family back-
ground, where men would raise their own status by
“giving” to their sisters. Their inheriting was first
and foremost an expression of their class position,
rather than of gendered power. Others inherited
because their husbands put great pressure on them
to claim their share. Rather than an indication of
arab states 301power, under such circumstances inheriting prop-
erty may well undermine a woman’s position.
These women were not only likely to lose kin sup-
port, but, as a result, would also often find them-
selves in a weaker position in regard to their
husband and his kin. Then there were women,
in particular daughters without brothers, who
claimed their share because they were in a highly
vulnerable situation. On the other hand, when
daughters renounced their rights to the estate, they
often did so as in order to underline their close kin’s
obligations toward them, expecting to gain more
from giving up their rights to the estate than from
claiming them. This implies that legal texts, even if
not implemented, are still important. For it is the
widespread awareness of women’s rights to inherit
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