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may therefore be set aside, but adds that the reconciliation should be consecrated by giving a feast to a number of devout poor (peujamèë paki), and this is generally done.
The ʿiddah.The ʿiddah is just as little understood by the laity as the rujuʿ. It is known indeed that a woman cannot marry again immediately after a divorce, but as a rule she seldom wants to do so. Where there is any doubt, the teungku's advice is again sought and he decides that according to the adat of Acheh three months and ten days must be allowed to elapse except in case of pregnancy[1]. The use of intermediaries to make reunion possible is practically nonexistent and is known only to such as have studied the kitabs or books of the law.
Where the ground of divorce is incompatability of temper, it is almost always the woman who urges her husband to the final step of giving the three taleuëʾ. If he is slow to yield, she imprisons him in the house, generally in the inner room, until he meets her wishes by giving her the "three pieces of betelnut." He might easily set himself free from this temporary confinement, but most men are ashamed of the diabolical outcry raised on such occasions by their wives, who sum up all their evil characteristics, real or imaginary, in the most unflattering form in the hearing of the whole gampōng.
Khulʿ.Should the measures of compulsion adopted by the woman prove fruitless, she may have recourse to the remedy known in the Arabic law-books as khulʿ, which consists in the purchase of the ṭalaq by the wife from her husband[2]. In such a contract even a single ṭalāq is irrevocable[3], as is implied in the very idea of purchase. In Acheh this
- ↑ After the death of the husband an ʿiddah is also observed in Acheh lasting 4 months and 10 days. This is quite in accordance with Mohammedan law.
- ↑ Called těbus talak by the Malays. It is occasionally resorted to in the Peninsula, but is not a general practice. (Translator).
- ↑ This again seems not to have been understood by Van den Berg. On p. 484 of his Afwijkingen appears a note, wherein he expresses surprise at Winter's applying the term khulʿ to the temporary divorce of a wife brought into practice by the princes of Java, when they wish to wed a concubine with child. If he employed the ordinary single divorce, the prince, who always has four wives, would not be able at once to marry another, but would have to await the conclusion of the ʿiddah and the period (rujuʿ) allowed for recall. On the other hand if he gave his wife a three-fold divorce, although he might then immediately wed another, he could not remarry the divorced one later on, as he wishes to do. He therefore selects the khulʿ method as the only one which combines the power of eventual remarriage with immediate separation. Some teachers even hold that the khulʿ can take place more than three times without preventing a renewal of the marriage, and the princes of the Native States adhere to this dictum.
