HRANA- What is a dowry? In Islamic culture and jurisprudence, a dowry is property that the husband commits to the wife at the time of concluding a marriage contract, which he must pay her upon her demand. This property can be cash, coins, gold, real estate, or even non-material items like Quranic education or arranging a pilgrimage trip, provided that it has a defined financial or spiritual value. According to the laws of Iran and Islamic Sharia, the dowry is considered a legal and religious right of women that, upon the formal conclusion of the marriage contract, becomes the husband’s obligation and the wife’s property. In the Quran, dowry is called ṣadaq, meaning gift and offering, and is intended to be a symbol of affection, honesty, and sincerity. Its primary aim was to show respect for the woman and provide financial security for her. However, over time, it has undergone cultural and economic changes and seems to have deviated from its original position and meaning.
In June 2022, the Research Center of the Islamic Consultative Assembly conducted a public opinion poll. The subject of this survey was regarding dowry and people’s opinion about legal intervention in it; in a society where dowries equal to the age of women have been frequently observed, and headlines such as “The Problem of Heavy and Strange Dowries” appear in the media. Also, if researchers search in cyberspace, they will encounter headlines about the impact of heavy dowries on couples’ divorces. But in this survey, only 36.6% of citizens said that dowry is very important or quite important in their lives. Also, only 8.6% of citizens believed that heavy dowries lead to stronger families—dowries that have led many men to prison and incarceration. In Dey 1403 (January 2025), the head of the board of trustees of the Diyat Headquarters of the country stated, “At present, we have 2,367 individuals imprisoned across the country due to dowry and alimony debts,” adding that of this number, 1,910 are dowry debtors and 457 are alimony debtors. (1) A figure that may seem low at first glance, but according to Jowzi, a lawyer and former judge, “Official statistics on dowry-related prisoners must be analyzed more carefully because most of these detentions end quickly upon the submission of a request for insolvency or a financial guarantee.” (2)
Dowries—especially coin-based ones—have existed for years between couples and have been a matter of dispute. When coin prices rise, the dispute intensifies. Heavy dowries that are either on demand, where the husband must pay them even if financially unable, or based on capability, where the husband is obligated to pay only when he is financially able. These heavy dowries are one of the main causes of divorce in Iranian society. (3) Women who, after marriage, initiate enforcement of their dowry and grooms who then realize the wife’s aim was not cohabitation, but to claim the dowry.
The issue starts with “who has given and who has taken.” But once the marriage is formalized, the so-called gift becomes something the wife receives from the husband. If he cannot afford to pay it, and the dowry is on-demand, the husband ends up in detention and prison. But the issue is not that simple. The profiteers and those who generate income from this situation are not just women. Registry offices and the government are also among the dowry profiteers, especially in the case of heavy dowries, through something called the dowry registration fee.
Let us first consider the women. Comments such as “women are making a business out of dowry” are often made. One media outlet headlines, “Unveiling the Business of Virgin Girls Collecting Dowries,” and another, quoting the Vice President of the Judiciary and Legal Committee of Parliament, refers to the transformation of dowry into a “shop for some women’s business,” advising people to marry those of equal status and accept dowries suitable to their financial means. However, the fundamental point here is that, given the current laws in Iran, many of the marriage rights are structured in favor of men. In this context, dowry becomes a guarantee for protecting the woman’s rights within a marital relationship. That is, today, considering the civil laws of Iran, dowry is not merely a financial security for women—it is, in practice, a point of reliance for maintaining the family unit and discouraging men from seeking divorce or demanding the dowry be waived in exchange for divorce; as the well-known expression goes: “Keep the dowry, give me my freedom.” In the event of the husband’s death, considering Iran’s inheritance laws where the wife receives only a small portion of the inheritance, the dowry becomes the only financial right of the woman that has payment priority. (4) In reality, dowry here acts as a guarantee—a guarantee to preserve family life and dignity within it. But why are dowries becoming so heavy? One of the causes of the rise in heavy dowries, according to many sociologists, is the lack of social and economic security for women in Iran. Women who have limited access to the labor market, restricted job opportunities, and inadequate social support may, in such a situation, see dowry as a type of “marriage insurance.” That is, if the marriage fails, they can use the dowry to compensate for their loss. In fact, women use this financial right in critical situations like divorce to preserve their dignity, status, and independence after the end of the shared life.
Nonetheless, despite all this, it can still be said that the business of dowry by women is a real phenomenon. Evidence and reports show that some women enter marriage with the intent of exploiting men and obtaining large dowries. In such cases, marriage becomes merely a tool to acquire property and financial benefits. Of course, proving such intent in court is very difficult, and most judges act based on existing evidence and legal procedures. In recent years, there have also been reports of sham or short-term marriages where the main goal was to receive the dowry and quickly separate. This trend has coincided with a rise in divorce cases and dowry enforcement. Each time coin prices rise, dowry prisoners and dowries put into enforcement increase. This issue is not exclusive to the multi-million toman coins of recent years either. In Azar 1397 (December 2018), when the dollar rose above 12,000 tomans and gold coins reached 4 million tomans, the Diyat Headquarters of the country announced that the number of prisoners accused of dowry debt increased by more than 40% in 1397 (2018). Also, according to the head of the Diyat Headquarters in the same year, the number of dowry debtors in prison doubled between 1393 and 1397 (2014–2018). During this period, the price of each full gold coin increased more than 3.1 times. (5) These numbers must be scrutinized. They show that with rising coin prices, the number of enforced dowries increases, and as a result, the number of dowry-related prisoners grows. That is, as people become poorer, with the rise in dollar and coin prices and the increasing cost of living, more women reach the conclusion that they must enforce their dowries to secure themselves financially in unstable economic conditions. No one denies the existence of dowry profiteers. But considering these numbers and statistics, it seems the main culprit is not the citizens, but the country’s economic environment. An economic atmosphere that worsens by the day—leading to family breakdowns due to poverty and deprivation on one hand, and incentivizing some opportunistic women to enforce dowries as a financial guarantee for an uncertain economic future on the other.
Of course, it seems that beyond unequal laws between women and men, the country’s deteriorating economic conditions, and opportunistic women, there is another responsible party—media and cyberspace. In recent years, cyberspace has played a key role in shaping public attitudes toward dowry. Posting pictures of marriage contracts with strange dowries like “one copy of the Holy Quran, one flower, and 1,369 full Bahar-e Azadi gold coins,” or “several tons of iron” has sparked a kind of competition or show-off culture in society. Additionally, the portrayal of stories about women who, after just a few months of marriage, managed to receive hefty dowries and earn large incomes has created the notion that marriage can be a tool for financial exploitation. Of course, one can argue that misinterpretation or exaggeration also occurs in the news. But it seems that these sensational headlines and the show-off culture—once limited to families and neighborhoods and now expanded to social media—have also become a factor in making dowries stranger and the figures larger. These dowries, in turn, become a motive for dowry profiteers who, by leveraging this environment, demand astronomical dowries. The outcome is women chasing dowries, men trying to pay them from inside or outside prison, and marriages that become so bitter, and women so damaged by them, that they declare: “Keep the dowry, give me my freedom!”
As previously mentioned, another dowry profiteer is the registry offices and the government. This may be surprising at first. But the dowry registration fee charged by official marriage and divorce registrars has become another way to extract money from couples wanting to formalize their marriage. This fee applies to dowries over 14 coins, calculated as follows: up to 100 coins, 0.4% of the value; from 100 to 200 coins, 2% of the value; and for more than 200 coins, 15% of the value. This fee is paid by both the bride and groom. The money goes to the registry office registering the marriage. A portion of it is paid as a registration service fee, another part is paid as tax or the government’s share into the state treasury, and another portion remains with the registrar as compensation. Previously, the dowry registration fee charged by registrars was based on legal tariffs and was a small fee collected from the couple for registration services. But with the addition of this new dowry registration fee, the income of registrars who record high dowries has multiplied. One argument for this registration fee is that it’s meant to control high dowries—that is, the couple might avoid proposing high dowries due to the high registration cost. But the problem is that this fee, in addition to imposing extra financial pressure during marriage, causes some families to avoid registering the dowry they agreed upon, which ends up harming women. In effect, this registration fee, like the dowry issue itself, has created a business that benefits both the government treasury and the registrars and has not, in practice, achieved its aim of reducing registered dowries.
Based on what emerges from statistics and news, dowry in Iran is no longer a simple religious tradition or agreement between spouses and families. It has become a mirror in which one can see a crisis-ridden economy, unjust legal structures, gender gaps, and sensationalist media culture all at once. The issue of dowry is no longer a private matter between a man and a woman. It is intertwined with government intervention, profiteering by registrars, legal silence, structural poverty, and psychological manipulation through cyberspace. On one side of the story are women who, in the absence of financial and social security, use dowry as their last legal and human support. On the other side are men who have become and continue to become victims of exploitation, profiteering, economic hardship, and legal shortcomings. In reality, dowry has both victims and profiteers. It attracts both those who exploit it with malicious intent and those who seek it to defend their lives and future. In these circumstances, if change is to occur, it must involve reforming legal structures, recognizing economic realities, strengthening social insurance for women, making legal processes transparent, and public education on family rights. Dowry was never meant to be a weapon, a blank check, or a tool of exploitation. Until these legal and economic issues are resolved, the story of dowry will persist—with its victims, its profiteers, and the women who count on it for their future.
References:
“Who Has Ever Given or Taken a Dowry?/Strange Statistics of Dowry and Alimony Prisoners in the Country,” Khabar Online, 15 Dey 1403 (January 5, 2025).
“Statistics of Dowry Prisoners; A Closer Look at the Reality,” Mehr News Agency, 11 Khordad 1404 (May 31, 2025).
“Heavy Dowries Are Among the Main Causes of Divorce in Society,” Mehr News Agency, 30 Azar 1403 (December 21, 2024).
“Women; The Right to Divorce and the Removal of Dowry,” Pegan Bani-Hashemi, BBC Persian, 17 Khordad 1397 (June 7, 2018).
“Consequences of the 4-Million Toman Coin; 40 Percent Increase in Dowry Prisoners in Iran,” Euronews, November 26, 2018 (5 Azar 1397).
Written by Mahtab Alinezhad
Originally published in Khat-e Solh (Peace Mark) monthly magazine on June 22, 2025.