These strange customs amongst the Arabs must surely date from old pre-Islamite ages, and we may class them with other antique customs, as, for example, marriage for a term, called _mot’a_ marriage, which was in use with the Arabs until the time of Mahomet, and which doubtless they imported later into Persia, where it exists in our own day. And again, in the kingdom of Omân, in the fourteenth century, the Sultan could still grant to a woman, indeed to any woman he pleased, the permission to have lovers according to her fancy, and her relations had no right to interfere.[164] The partial marriage of the Hassinyeh Arabs is therefore not so surprising as it seems at first sight when isolated from other practices of the same kind. And it must be confessed that, immoral as it may appear to us, it is superior to the other modes of primitive conjugal association in use among the greater number of savage peoples. Doubtless it denotes an extreme of moral grossness, but at the same time it shows a certain respect for feminine independence, contrasting strongly with the animal subjection imposed on women in the greater number of societies of little or no civilisation. The situation of the woman who is owned and treated as a simple domestic animal, hired out or lent to strangers or to friends, according to the caprice of her master, but not allowed, at the peril of her life, to be unfaithful to her owner without his leave, is surely far more abject still. I shall not dwell any more on these mere sketches of marriage, free and transient unions broken as soon as made, experimental marriages, three-quarter marriages, and marriages for a term, all of which show the very slight importance attached to sexual union by man in a low stage of development. And yet we must not refuse the name of marriage to these ephemeral and incomplete unions, since they are arranged by means of serious contracts which have been well discussed beforehand, and by agreements entered into at least between the husband and the relatives of the wife. The men of the horde or tribe do not, however, profess a very strict respect for these marriages; the husband is often uneasy in the enjoyment of his feminine property, and although legally obtained, he must always be ready to defend it. Among the Bochimans, says Liechtenstein, with whom marriage is reduced to its most simple expression, “the strongest man often carries off the wife of the weakest,” because it is the proper thing for him to do, since he is called “the lion.” In fact, these abuses of strength exist, more or less, in all countries and all races; but among the Redskins of America and the Esquimaux it seems that public opinion ratifies them, and that might has morally become right. “When a Toski,” says Hooper, “desires the wife of another man, he simply fights with her husband.”