Family

Although great variation exists between ethnic groups and groups practicing different modes of subsistence, families of virtually all Afghan groups are characterized by their patrilineal organization, low incidence of polygyny, even lower incidence of divorce, and relatively high birth rate. In patrilineal kinship descent is traced through males, and almost all property is inherited through men. People in patrilineal societies recognize that they are related to the mother and her relatives, but ties with these kin are somewhat different. Major property is not transmitted through them, and relationships with them tend to be primarily affective rather than economic or political. For example, anthropologist Bernt Glatzer observed that among Durrani Pashtun nomads in the western part of the country, patrilineally related kin provide social security and political support, but relations with them may be strained. They are competitors for authority in the kin group and in inheritance. He remarks that as property is passed patrilineally, so are feuds about previous inheritance. Relations with maternal kin and affines tend to be marked by "cordiality and helpfulness," for these relatives are not competitors in the political or economic arenas unless they are also members of the same patrilineage. Barfield explains the low incidence of polygyny among the Arabs he studied both as a result of Arab women's vocal opposition to the practice and as a possible consequence of sedentarization.
The smallest kinship unit is the household﷓the basic unit of production and reproduction. Households may consist of a nuclear family (a woman and her children or a married couple and their children), an extended family (a multigenerational family unit), a fraternal joint family (two or more brothers with their wives and children), or a compound family (two or more cowives and their husband).

The nuclear family is the most commonly reported household unit. It is the predominant household form among the Hazaras of Bamian, the Durrani Pashtun nomads in western Afghanistan, and the Kirghiz in Wakhan. Among the Durrani nomads who have traditionally lived a pastoralist existence, herds are owned only by the household and individuals. Nuclear families are usually headed by the senior male. The Kirghiz household head is usually the senior male, but households may be headed by a widow if she has young unmarried or married sons and daughters. In Kirghiz households an important decision requires consensus among all adult household members. The head does not impose her or his will. The head is responsible for representing the household in public, executing agreed﷓upon decisions, and managing the family's affairs. 

The Hazara household head is the husband (or wife, in the event of the husband's death). Hazaras may form compound families, in which case the senior wife succeeds to the husband's position until the oldest son reaches maturity. Relations within the nuclear family may be quite intense. Louis Dupree notes that fathers and daughters bond closely; they exhibit much love and concern for each other. Sisters and brothers are often emotionally intimate. These patterns of relationships are common in other parts of the Middle East and South Asia and are owing to complex psychological and social factors.

Nancy Tapper, an anthropologist who has studied Durrani Pashtun women, found the extended family to be both the ideal and common household form of the Durrani in the Saripul region of Jowzjan Province. In other parts of the country, extended households often fission after the father's death. The married brothers then go their own way in a limited fashion, often retaining some property in common. If an extended family consisting of aged parents and two or more married sons and their families does not split at the father's death, it becomes a fraternal joint family. Such families rarely last more than 10 years without separating to form nuclear families. Reports from Afghanistan in 1985 indicated that in urban areas, particularly in Kabul, nuclear family households were becoming rarer. With the great influx of country relatives fleeing rural fighting, many nuclear families found it necessary to share dwellings with country kin.

The next most inclusive unit of kinship is the agnatic (patrilineal) minimal lineage. This consists of relatives descended from a common ancestor and may include several to a large number of households. Minimal lineages exhibit great variation. Among the Kirghiz, for example, this unit is relatively stable, while among the Ghilzai Pashtuns it is quite fluid. The Kirghiz minimal lineage is an independent political actor and is the most significant agnatic kin unit. Its members form a corporate unit sharing camping grounds and pasturage. The political power of the Kirghiz minimal lineage depends on its ownership of property and the willingness of its members to cooperate as a group. The lineage head is the senior male of one of the component households whose personal qualities make him an obvious candidate. His choice is based on consensus by other lineage household heads. His duties include mediation of disputes within his lineage and between his and other lineages. He has no authority, however, to enforce his decisions. 

Ghilzai lineages are diverse; some are organized with an institutionalized leadership position, while others coalesce around a charismatic male relative. Groups of related households unite and divide, depending upon which ancestor they choose to trace their ancestry. Lineage members have mutual obligations to assist each other and mutual liabilities. They are all fair game for retaliation should a feud erupt with another lineage or should a relative commit a crime. 

Kin groups expand to become ever more inclusive. The next level above the minimal lineage is the maximal lineage, followed by the tribe and, finally, by the entire ethnic group. All these units are extensions of the nuclear family. All are based on real or reputed agnatic kinship. Tribes segment into smaller, sometimes mutually hostile, units, such as minimal or maximal lineages, depending on the purpose for which the unit is needed. Such smaller units are termed segmentary lineages. The principle of segmentation is succinctly summed up by the Arab proverb, "I against my brother. My brother and I against my cousin. My cousin, my brother, and I against the world." The potential for tension with agnatic kin is expressed in the Afghan adage, "Do you have an enemy? I have a cousin."
Competition for the same mates and inheritance of property cause much of the hostility between close agnates. Longtime Middle East specialist John Gulick explains kin relations in the Middle East as an expression of the "peril and refuge mentality." He observes that the kin who provide a person with social, emotional, and, if necessary, armed support are also competitors for the same resources. In the case of women, the same brothers and father with whom they are so close and who are their protectors are also their executioners, should the males doubt the daughter's or sister's chastity. These are also the relatives who know the person best and to whom he or she is consequently most vulnerable.

Kin relations are expressed spatially in agnatic local descent groups, i.e., a region, town, village, hamlet, or camp whose residents are agnatically related. Local descent groups appear among many Afghan ethnic groups. Anthropologists Canfield and Anderson have described these groups in detail among the Hazaras and Ghilzai (respectively). Among the Hazaras qawm indicates a shared territory as well as shared agnatic descent. Qawmi form residential units of various sizes and agnatic inclusiveness﷓from a small hamlet consisting of a handful of related households to a large piece of territory embracing the entire ethnic group. The Hazaras' local descent group is capable of assimilating a man who intermarries into the group. They also allow certain "interlopers," Canfield reports, to live among them, e.g., sayyids or craftsmen. Unlike the Hazaras, Ghilzai Pashtuns do not tolerate unrelated people in their kin communities. Should an impoverished Ghilzai man find it necessary to sell his patrimonial land, he should first sell to his closest neighbors (as should a Hazara). Among the Ghilzai, however, kin apply sanctions to punish relatives who sell to non-kin.

Property is, of course, inherited patrilineally. Islam specifies the heirs' share in the deceased relative's property. The wife receives one﷓third of her sons' share, sons receive equal shares, and daughters receive half as much as a brother. This policy is seldom followed in Afghanistan. In practice, daughters rarely inherit anything from their fathers, and widows are cared for in other ways. Daughters in many Muslim countries dare not claim their inheritance for fear of losing their brothers' future financial, social, and emotional support. Many Afghan groups accord special shares to the eldest and youngest sons, so that inheritance among brothers is unequal. Among the Kirghiz, for example, the oldest son usually inherits the father's prestige, political standing, and pasturelands, while the youngest son inherits the family yurt and most of the herd at the time of the father's death. By the early 1970s the government had forced families in some areas, such as Bamian, to follow Muslim regulations more carefully. By the late 1970s the Kirghiz of Wakhan elected to follow religious inheritance prescription. Other areas continued to follow tribal custom instead of Muslim injunction. 

Heirs may receive their inheritance at the time of their relative's death or may come into their share before his death, i.e., anticipatory inheritance. Many pastoral groups practice anticipatory inheritance. They give their children animals as presents on important occasions either to instill in them a feel for animal care or to test the child's ability in animal husbandry. In addition, a man may receive his patrimony upon marriage in the form of cash or animals or both. Women may also be given animals upon marriage, although this is often an informal gift. Not all pastoralist groups share this custom. The pastoral Afghan Arabs, for example, do not practice anticipatory inheritance.

Marriages are generally arranged between families, not by the two young people themselves. In arranging a marriage families take several factors into account: sectarian membership, ethnic group, family status, kin relationship, economic benefits, the children's happiness and welfare, and (in obtaining a bride) industriousness and ability to cooperate with the groom's female relations. In much of Afghanistan and the Middle East, the preferred mate is a close relative.

Pashtuns of the Nahrin area, for example, prefer to marry their children to close cousins related through either the mother or father. Most marriages occur within the lineage, and among those marriages outside the minimal lineage, most occur between members of the local descent group. The Kirghiz of Wakhan denied to Shahrani any preference for cousin marriage. He observed their behavior and found, however, that Kirghiz in fact tend to marry first cousins (either related through the mother or father), members of the same minimal lineage, and members of related minimal lineages. Canfield reports that the Hazaras he studied also preferred first cousin marriage with sister exchange to avoid payment of a brideprice. Sister exchange refers to the custom of two men agreeing to marry each others' classificatory or actual sisters, often to avoid paying a large bride﷓price.

Bride-price is the transfer of a sum of money and/or property from the groom's family to the bride's family in order to obtain sole rights to the bride's economic, sexual, and reproductive services. The custom is common worldwide among patrilineal, male-dominated societies. Islam does not prescribe a bride-price, but it enjoins Muslims to give the mahr-property and/or money bestowed upon the bride herself for her own personal use-to ensure her immediate financial welfare in the event of divorce. The bride-price in most Muslim societies far transcends the simple Quranic injunction, and in many cases the bride does not actually receive any portion of the bride-price.
Barfield notes that the Afghan Arabs' and their neighbors' bride-prices vary by ethnic group. They are paid in cash unless otherwise negotiated. Among Arabs, the groom must pay for two enormous feasts (engagement and wedding), in addition to the large bride-price. Barfield comments that Turkmen brides require the largest bride-price because "Turkmen bride-prices reflect the high value of female labor in carpet production where a wife has a skill of direct cash value." He also reports a much higher level of polygyny, presumably for economic reasons, among Turkmen men. 

The often exorbitant cost of marriage has long been of concern to the central government. Abdur Rahman, Habibullah, and Amanullah all attempted to abolish the high bride-prices. In 1924 Amanullah also instituted measures to allow women to choose their own mates. These reforms were not popular. In October 1978 the Taraki regime issued Decree No. 7. Its main purpose was to reduce indebtedness caused by bride-price and to improve women's status. The decree had three parts: prohibition of bride-price in excess of a mahr of 300 afghanis (for value of the afghani-see Glossary), provisions of complete freedom of choice of marriage partner, and fixation of the minimum age at marriage at 16 for women and 18 for men. In addition, it imposed the penalty of imprisonment for three months to three years for violation of the decree. This decree, very similar to Amanullah's 1924 measure, was also extremely unpopular. Women viewed themselves as devalued if they were "given away free." Men feared losing their honor if they no longer had legal control over their daughters and sisters. Nancy Tapper comments that brideprice is deeply embedded in the surrounding cultural matrix and that such a great change would disrupt many parts of the culture. In return, Marxists would argue that the parts of the culture disrupted by reduction of bride-price are better off being disrupted. There were indications in late 1985 that most Afghans ignored Decree No. 7, as they had previous decrees.

Because of high bride-prices, men must work for five to 10 years in order to garner sufficient economic resources to obtain a bride. Women, therefore, are usually much younger than their husbands. Brides are usually in their mid-to late teens, while grooms are in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties. Under these circumstances, cases of widowhood might be expected to be common. Many groups make provision for this eventuality by practicing levirate marriage. The Durrani that Beattie studied, the Kirghiz, and the Hazaras all practice this form of marriage.

This page maintained by Luke Griffin and last updated on 01/14/2002 .