London, Dec. 5: A judge in Saudi Arabia has provoked controversy within the strictly Islamic kingdom by ruling in favour of a transsexual, whose scandalised family tried to strip him of half his inheritance after he became a woman.

In a case that has sparked frenzied interest in the kingdom, the son of an extremely wealthy Saudi was sued by his relatives after they discovered that he had secretly spent part of his father?s estate on an operation to change his sex.

Furious at the perceived disgrace he had brought on their family, his sisters pointed out that under the country?s inheritance laws he was entitled to only half as much money as when he was a man.

Now, however, the action has been dropped after a judge in Jeddah ruled that since he was male when he received the inheritance, he was entitled to keep it in full. In future, he will be treated under inheritance law as a woman.

Although the ruling does not challenge Saudi men?s superior status in law, the spectacle of the conservative judiciary grappling with legal issues of transsexuality has caused a furore in a country where sex is still a taboo subject.

Ever since ?Ahmad?, as he is known, first confided anonymously to the popular Saudi women?s magazine, Sayidaty ? which translates as ?My lady? ? his story has dominated talk in the coffee shops of Jeddah and capital Riyadh.

Some of the country?s most eminent religious scholars have also weighed in, some vexed merely by the concept of gender ambiguity. ?There is no mention in the Quran of a ?she-male?,? Sheikh Ahmad Abdul Qadir Al-Maabi, a specialist in inheritance law, told Sayidaty. ?The features of both sexes cannot be in one person. How could a child?s sex not be known immediately at birth when the signs are obvious??

According to Sayidaty, which chronicled Ahmad?s story in detail, he was aware from a young age that he felt more akin to his sisters than to his brother. Bullied at secondary school and fed up with persistent parental advice to ?toughen up?, he persuaded his father to send him abroad for education. At university in America he developed ?female bodily features? and began to dress in women?s clothes.

After American doctors told him, ?You?re a female, not a male,? he considered a sex-change operation. When he asked his father for the necessary money, however, the outraged patriarch said that he would not recognise him as his daughter ? and would cut him out of his inheritance altogether. His father died shortly afterwards and, after receiving his full inheritance, Ahmad returned to America where he pressed on with the operation.