Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 July 1898 — WEDDINGS OF AFGHANS. [ARTICLE]

WEDDINGS OF AFGHANS.

They Are Simple, Yet the Incidental . Ceremonies Last for Three Days. Just as every tribe of Afghanistan has its different forms of internal government and its different modes of living, so has each its own peculiar marriage customs, though the actual essentials of the marriage ceremony, being founded on the Mohammedan law, are in every case the same, and are of the simplest nature. All that is necessary to constitute a marriage is that either herself or by proxy a girl should, before two witnesses, declare her willingness to accept a certain man as her husband, and the man should do the same with regard to the girl. The customs connected with the marriage are, however, many and wearisome, generally occupying three whole days and the greater part of the nights, too; for easterns, when they are going through any ceremony, religious or social, turn night into day more markedly even than do we In the west. In one tribe, at least, there Is a decided remnant of the ancient marriage by capture, in others there is less, the girl merely affecting unwillingness, until asked for the seventh time whether she will accept the young man to whom she has perhaps been engaged for years and whom it would be the greatest disgrace for her not to marry. In one tribe she is supposed three times during the ceremonies to be overcome with a passion of weeping, from which she is only pacified by the loving sympathy of her mother and other female relations, who, though they have taken the greatest trouble and spent as much as, sometimes more than, they could afford over the match, wall and lament the coming departure of a daughter or sister, whom they are only too glad to have settled for life. Marriage according to Mohammedan law Is a civil, not a religious rite; and In almost all the tribes—indeed, among all Mohammedans—the engagement Is nearly If not quite as binding as the marriage, which, owing to disagreements as to dowry, is often delayed for years until some decision can be arrived at, though the families concerned would never dream of breaking off the engagement.