Bride wealth

Bride price, best called bridewealth, also known as bride token, is money, property, or other form of wealth paid by a groom or his family to the parents of the woman he has just married or is just about to marry. Bride price can be compared to dowry, which is paid to the groom, or used by the bride to help establish the new household and dower, which is property settled on the bride herself by the groom at the time of marriage.

Some cultures may practice both dowry and bride price simultaneously. Many cultures practiced bride pricing prior to existing records.

Bridewealth is commonly paid in a currency that is not generally used for other types of exchange. According to French anthropologist Philippe Rospabé, its payment does therefore not entail the purchase of a woman, as was thought in the early twentieth century. Instead, it is a purely symbolic gesture acknowledging (but never paying off) the husband's permanent debt to the wife's parents.

Dowry exists in societies where capital is more important than manual work. For instance, in Middle Age Europe, a wife had to bring a dowry - land, cattle and money. Bridewealth exists in societies where manual work is more important than capital. In South-Saharan Africa, land was abundant, there were few or no domesticated animals, manual work was therefore important, and therefore bridewealth dominated.

An evolutionary psychology explanation for dowry and bride price is that bride price is common in polygynous societies which have a relative scarcity of available women. In monogamous societies where women have little personal wealth, dowry is instead common since there is a relative scarcity of wealthy men who can choose from many potential women when marrying.

The Code of Hammurabi mentions bride price in various laws as an established custom. It is not the payment of the bride price that is prescribed, but the regulation of various aspects:

The Hebrew Bible mention the practice of paying a bride price to the father of a minor girl. Exodus 22:16–17 says:

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