Death and Inheritance

Death and Inheritance

Folk music and instruments

Life Cycle in Afghanistan
Birth and Childhood
Marriage
Death and Inheritance
Sports and Games
Diet
Dress and ornaments

The inward looking society

Islam demands ritual purity in death as in life. The body of a man or a woman buried without proper Muslim rites will, according to belief, be horribly mangled and its bones crushed by its own grave, thereby robbing the soul of a body for the call on Judgment Day.' Before the Prophet Mohammad, Allah changed dead men into turtles, elephants, and monkeys; the belief probably relates to extremely early Hindu influences.

When a man approaches death, lamentations (sugwari, Dari; wir, Pashto) begin. Although a few may quietly read the Qor'an, most women scream, moan, cry, and tear their hair and clothing, even though the dying man may demand peace and quiet. Neighbors send in food and money as well as sympathy. Death, like life, becomes a public act.

After a man's death, his close male relatives wash his corpse, often assisted by a mullah, who offers prayers to Allah and proclaims the dead man to have been a good Muslim while alive. The mullah intones:

'"Inna 'lillahi wa 'inna 'iLlayhi raji'un" ("We come from God, to God we return.").

Rosewater (ab-i-gulab) is sprinkled on the corpse. The burial must take place before sundown, never at night. If a man dies at night, he will be buried as soon as possible after sunrise.

Six close relatives and/or friends transport the body, on a charpayi, dressed in new white clothing, head and feet covered (rarely bare), with big toes tied together, to a mosque, where a mullah says the jenazah (Prayer for the Dead) in Arabic. Sometimes, the mullah recites the jenazah at the graveside instead of at the mosque. At other times the body remains at home (often the practice in urban society today) and the friends and relatives of the deceased gather at the masjid (mosque) for the jenazah.

Slightly different ceremonies are held for women. A dead woman is washed by her woman relatives in the female quarters.

Traditionally (and still the practice outside the more modernized sections of the major cities), a person meeting a funeral profession should follow for forty paces, saying the Prayer for the Dead.

Graves (qabr) should be about six feet deep, and, in some areas, have an L-shape called lahad. Orientation varies, but usually the feet point toward Mecca, so that on Judgment Day, the body can sit up facing the Holy City. At other times, the feet point toward the south, the head north, and the face toward Mecca. To allow the dead person to sit up in his grave at the Last Judgment, the chamber is about two feet high, and sometimes higher. Wealthy families line the graves, with baked brick, but many non-literates shudder at this practice, feeling the resurrected body will have too difficult a struggle to escape the grave.

In other areas corpses are laid on their right side in a north—south orientation with the face turned toward Mecca. A mat is placed over the corpse, the chief mourners throw in a, few handfuls of dirt, then the hole is filled and rocks piled on top. Where wood is available (e.g., Koh Daman), lattice-work railings often enclose the graves. Modern head and foot markers in Nunistan and surrounding areas look suspiciously like stylized hangovers of the anthropomorphic grave effigies carved during Kafir times.

In some areas, particularly among the Pushtun groups, women are discriminated against even in death. A man's foot and head stones sit perpendicular to the body line, a woman's parallel.

Mourners place small pottery or stone lamps on the grave. Occasionally the head stones will hold niches for the lamps or for candles, particularly if the deceased had been a holy man or a respected figure in the community. Another interesting custom, again mainly Pushtun, involves the white cloth used to lower the body into the grave. A narrow strip of the cloth is tied over the grave from head to foot. When the strip breaks, the soul escapes to purgatory, to be joined by the body on Judgment Day. The damned souls of improperly buried persons can kill humans or enslave other souls, and can at times be controlled by the practitioners of black magic.

One Afghan graveyard custom is economically harmful. Villagers and nomads collect any combustible plants (e.g., camel grass, tamanisk) for cooking and winter fuel. They never remove any vegetation from a graveyard, however, because they believe someone in their immediate family will die, or a malevolent jinn, long imprisoned in the root of the plant, will escape.

Nomads bury their dead along their routes of migration, and cover the graves with cairns.

The living still have several obligations to the dead, however. Depending on the family, for up to a year after the burial, friends and relatives gather on Thursday evenings at the home of the deceased for a pilau. Thursday evening is early Friday (Jum'a) by Afghan reckoning, so the custom is called Jurn'aragi. In addition, wealthier families will hire their own personal mullah to pray for the soul of the deceased for a year. On the fourteenth day after the interment, close relatives and friends return to the grave, light the lamps or bring new ones, and return home to a big pilau. A similar visit and ritual is held on the fortieth day (ruz-i-chel or cheliel or Salwaikhti).

The one-year anniversary of a death (sali in Persian, tlin in Pashto) is celebrated at home, and friends drop in for a final memorial ceremony. Often the mourning women (mothers, wives, and daughters of the deceased), who have been wearing the white of mourning for the past year, visit the grave and ask the corpse to release them from mourning so that they may wear colored clothing again.

A 1950 (distinct from the 1967 marriage law) law banning ostentatious life-crisis ceremonies prohibits many of the expensive aspects of birth, circumcision, marriage, and burial rituals. The law limits the funeral ceremony from eight to twelve A.M. in a masjid on the day of death, or the following day. The law further attempts to prevent wailing, scratching of faces, and other wasteful and painful practices by mourning women. No khyrat (large amounts of shared food) can be given to the poor during the ceremonies, and parties at the various post-burial ceremonies (fourteen days, forty days, and one year) are forbidden. The rising urban middle class largely ignores the letter of the law, and villagers and nomads continue to go into debt if necessary to meet their traditional ritual obligations.

One Western custom has crept into the urban funeral ceremonies: the wearing of a black armband or tie.

Life must go on and the inheritance system guarantees continuity. The ratio of inheritance of land and money is two to one, in favor of males. Girls, however, usually get much of the household goods. The eldest son sometimes receives the farm intact to prevent a continual splitting-up into smaller parcels of land. A ten-jerib (five-acre) farm would otherwise be cut into infinitesimal slices in. several generations.

Younger sons now often receive cash instead of land, or several brothers will jointly work the land and share its proceeds. The dowry of unmarried girls is held in escrow by elder brothers until they marry. The residue of the dowry of a widow goes to her sons and daughters in the usual two to one ratio, for the dowry had been property jointly held with the husband.