although better off in some respects than the women of barbarous
nations, are still in the deepest need of education and elevation,
since they stand in a position midway between the barbarous and the
civilized. How few of the hundreds of thousands of women in Syria know
how to read! How few are the schools ever established here for teaching
women! Any one who denies the degradation and ignorance of Syrian women,
would deny the existence of the noonday sun. Do not men shun even an
allusion to women, and if obliged to speak of them, do they not
accompany the remark with "a jellak Allah," as if they were speaking of
a brute beast, or some filthy object? Are they not treated among us very
much as among the barbarians? To what do they pay the most attention? Is
it not to ornament and dress, and refining about styles of tatooing with
the "henna" and "kohl?" What do they know about the training of
children, domestic economy and neatness of person, and the care of the
sick? How many abominable superstitions do they follow, although
forbidden by their own religions? Are not the journals and diaries of
travellers full of descriptions of the state of our women? Does not
every one, familiar with the state of society and the family among us,
know all these things, and mourn over them, and demand a reform? Would
that I might awaken among the women the desire to learn, that thus they
might be worthy of higher honor and esteem!
"Woman should be instructed in _religion_. This is one of her highest
rights and privileges and her bounden duty.
"She should be taught in her own vernacular tongue, so as to be able to
express herself correctly, and use pure language. Woman should learn to
_write_.
"She should be taught to _read_. How is it possible for woman to
remember all her duties, religious and secular, through mere oral
instruction? But a written book, is a teacher always with her, and in
every place and circumstance. It addresses her without a voice, rebukes
her without fear or shame, answers without sullenness and complaint. She
consults it when she wishes, without anxiety and embarrassment, and
banishes it if not faithful or satisfactory, or even burns it without
crime!
"Why forbid woman the use of the only means she can have of sending her
views and feelings where the voice cannot reach? _Now_ when a woman
wishes to write a letter, she must go, closely veiled to the street, and
hire a professional scribe to write for her, a letter which she cannot
read, and which may utterly misrepresent her!
"Woman should also have instruction in the _training of children_. The
right training of children is not a natural instinct. It is an art, and
a lost art among us. It must be learned from the experience and
observation of those who have lived before us; and where do we now find
the woman who knows how to give proper care to the bodies and souls of
her children?"
Mr. Bistany then speaks of the importance of teaching woman domestic
economy, sewing, cooking, and the care of the sick, as well as
geography, arithmetic, and history, giving as reasons for the foregoing
remarks, that the education of woman will benefit herself, her husband,
her children and her country.
"How can she be an intelligent wife, a kind companion, a wise
counsellor, a faithful spouse, aiding her husband, lightening his
sufferings, training his children, and caring for his home, without
education? Without education, her taste is corrupt. She will seek only
outward ornament, and dress, and painting, as if unsatisfied with her
Creator's work; becoming a mere doll to be gazed at, or a trap to catch
the men. She will believe in countless superstitions, such as the Evil
Eye, the howling of dogs, the crying of foxes, etc., which are too well
known to need mention here. He who would examine this subject, should
consult that huge unwritten book, that famous volume called "Ketab en
Nissa," the "Book of the Women," a work which has no existence among
civilized women; or ask the old wives who have read it, and taught it in
their schools of superstition.
"Let him who would know the evils of neglecting to educate woman, look
at the ignorant, untaught woman in her language and dress, her conduct
at home and abroad; her notions, thoughts, and caprices on religion and
the world; her morals, inclinations and tastes; her house, her husband,
her children and acquaintances, when she rejoices or mourns, when sick
or well; and he will agree with us that an uneducated woman is a great
evil in the world, not to say the greatest evil possible to be imagined.
"In the reformation of a nation, then, the first step in the ladder is
the education of the women from their childhood. And those who neglect
the women and girls, and expect the elevation of the people by the mere
training of men and boys, are like one walking with one foot on the
earth, and the other in the clouds! They fail in accomplishing their
purpose and are barely able, by the utmost energy, to repair that which
woman has corrupted and destroyed. They build a wall, and woman tears
down a castle. They elevate boys one degree, and women depress them many
degrees.
"Perhaps I have now said enough on a subject never before written upon
by any of our ancestors of the sons of the Arabs. My object has been to
prove the importance of the education of woman, based on the maxim,
that, 'she who rocks the cradle with her right hand, moves the world
with her arm.'"
The next article I have translated from Mr. Bistany's Semi-monthly
Magazine, called the "Jenan," for July, 1870. It was written by an Arab
_woman_ of Aleppo, the Sitt Mariana Merrash. She writes with great power
and eloquence in the Arabic; and her brother, Francis Effendi, is one of
the most powerful writers of modern Syria. The paper of the Sitt Mariana
is long, and the introduction is most ornate and flowery. She writes on
the condition of woman among the Arabs, and refutes an ancient Arab
slander against women that they are cowardly and avaricious, because
they will not fight, and carefully hoard the household stores. She then
proceeds:--
"Wo to us Syrian women, if we do not know enough to distinguish and seek
after those qualities which will elevate and refine our minds, and give
breadth to our thoughts, and enable us to take a proper position in
society! We ought to attract sensible persons to us by the charm of our
cultivation and refinement, not by the mere phantom of beauty and
personal ornament. Into what gulfs of stupidity have we plunged! Do we
not know that the reign of beauty is short, and not enough of itself to
be worthy of regard? And even supposing that it were enough of itself,
in the public estimation, to make us attractive and desirable, do we not
know assuredly that after beauty has faded, we should fall at once into
a panic of anxiety and grief, since none would then look at us save with
the eye of contempt and ridicule, to say nothing of the vain attempts at
producing artificial beauty which certain foolish women make, as if they
were deaf to the insults and abuse heaped upon them? Shall we settle
down in indolence, and never once think of what is our highest advantage
and our chiefest good? Shall we forever run after gay attire and
ornament? Let us arise and run the race of mental culture and literary
adornment, and not listen for a moment to those who insult us by denying
the appropriateness of learning to women, and the capacity of women for
learning!
"Were we not made of the same clay as men? Even if we are of weaker
texture, we have the same susceptibility which they have to receive
impressions from what is taught to us. If it is good, we receive good as
readily as they; and if evil, then evil. Of what use is a crown of gold
on the brow of ignorance, and what loveliness is there in a jewelled
star on the neck of coarseness and brutality, or in a diamond necklace
over a heart of stupidity and ignorance? The great poet Mutanebbi has
given us an apothegm of great power on this very subject. He says:
'Fukr el jehûl bela okl ila adab,
Fukr el hamar bela ras ila resen,'
'A senseless fool's need of instruction is like a headless donkey's
need of a halter.'
"Let us then gird ourselves with wisdom and understanding, and robe
ourselves with true politeness and meekness, and be crowned with the
flowers of the 'jenan' (gardens) of knowledge (a pun on the name of the
magazine) now opened to us. Let us pluck the fruits of wisdom, lifting
up our heads in gratulation and true pride, and remain no longer in that
cowardice and avarice which were imputed to the women of the Arabs
before us!"
The next article I shall translate, is a paper on the Training of
Children in the East, by an Arab woman of Alexandria, Egypt, the Sitt
Wustina Mesirra, wife of Selim Effendi el Hamawy. It was printed in the
"Jenan" for Jan., 1871. After a long and eloquent poetical introduction,
this lady says:--
"Let us put off the robes of sloth and inertness, and put on the dress
of zeal and earnestness. We belong to the nineteenth century, which
exceeds all the ages of mankind in light and knowledge. Why shall we not
show to men the need of giving us the highest education, that we may at
the least contribute to _their_ happiness and advantage, and rightly
train our children and babes, not to say that we may pluck the fruits of
science, and the best knowledge for ourselves? Let them say to us, you
are weak and lacking in knowledge. I reply, by perseverance and
patience, we shall attain our object.
"Inasmuch as every one who reaches mature years, must pass by the road
of childhood and youth, everything pertaining to the period of childhood
becomes interesting and important, and I beg permission to say a word on
the training of children.
"When it pleased God to give us our first child, I determined to train
it according to the old approved modes which I had learned from my
family relatives and fellow-countrywomen. So I took the baby boy soon
after his birth, and put him in a narrow cradle provided with a tin tube
running down through a perforation in the little bed, binding and tying
him down, and wrapping and girding him about from his shoulders to his
heels, so that he was stiff and unmovable, excepting his head, which
rolled and wriggled about from right to left, with the rocking of the
cradle, this rocking being deemed necessary for the purpose of inducing
sleep and silence in the child. My lord and husband protested against
this treatment, proving to me the evil effects of this wrapping and
rocking, by many and weighty reasons, and even said that it would injure
the little ones for life, even if they survived the outrageous abuse
they were subjected to. I was astonished, and said, how can this be? We
were all trained and treated in this manner, and yet lived and grew up
in the best possible style. All our countrymen have been brought up in
this way, and none of them that I know of have ever been injured in the
way you suggest. He gave it up, and allowed me to go on in the old way,
until something happened which suddenly checked the babe in his progress
in health and happiness. He began to throw up his milk after nursing,
and to grow ill, giving signs of brain disease, and then my lord said,
you must now give up these customs and take my counsel. So, on the spur
of the moment, I accepted his advice and gave up the cradle. I unrolled
the bindings and wrappings and gave up myself to putting things in due
order. I clothed my child with garments adapted to his age and
circumstances, and to the time and place, and regulated the times of his
eating and play by day, and kept him awake as much as might be, so that
he and his parents could sleep at night. I soon saw a wonderful change
in his health and vigor, though I experienced no little trouble from my
efforts to wean him from the rocking of the cradle to which he was
accustomed. My favorable experience in this matter, led me to use my
influence to induce the daughters of my race, and my own family
relatives, to give up practices which are alike profitless, laborious
and injurious to health. My husband also aided me in getting books on
the training of children, and I studied the true system of training,
learning much of what is profitable to the mothers and fathers of my
country in preserving the health of their children in mind and body. The
binding and wrapping of babes in the cradle prevents their free and
natural movements, and the natural growth of the body, and injures their
health."
The next paper is from the pen of Khalil Effendi, editor of the Turkish
official journal of Beirût. It appeared in the columns of the "Hadikat
el Akhbar" of January, 1867. It represents the leading views of a large
class of the more enlightened Syrians with regard to education, and by
way of preface to the Effendi's remarks, I will make a brief historical
statement.
The Arab race were in ancient times celebrated for their schools of
learning, and although the arts and sciences taught in the great
University under the Khalifs of Baghdad, were chiefly drawn from Greece,
yet in poetry, logic and law the old Arab writers long held a proud
preëminence. But since the foundation of the present Ottoman Empire, the
Arabs have been under a foreign yoke, subject to every form of
oppression and wrong, and for generations hardly a poet worth the name
has appeared excepting Sheikh Nasif el Yazijy. Schools have been
discouraged, and learning, which migrated with the Arabs into Spain, has
never returned to its Eastern home. There are in every Moslem town and
city common schools, for every Moslem boy must be taught to read the
Koran; but with the exception of the Egyptian school of the Jamea el
Azhar in Cairo, there had not been up to 1867 for years even a high
school under native auspices, in the Arabic-speaking world. But what the
Turks have discouraged and the Arab Moslems have failed to do, is now
being done among the nominal Christian sects, and chiefly by foreign
educators. During the past thirty years a great work in educating the
Arab race in Syria has been done by the American Missionaries. Their
Seminary in Abeih, on Mount Lebanon, has trained multitudes of young
men, who are now scattered all over Syria and the East, and are making
their influence felt. Other schools have sprung up, and the result is,
that the young men and women of Syria are now talking about the "Asur el
Jedid," or "New Age of Syria," by which they mean an age of education
and light and advancement. The Arabic journal, above referred to, is
owned by the Turkish government, or rather subsidized by it, and its
editor is a talented young Greek of considerable poetic ability. It is
not often that he ventures to speak out boldly on such a theme as
education, but the pressure from the people upon the Governor-General
was so great at the time, that he gave permission to the editor to utter
his mind. I translate what he wrote, quite literally.
"There can be no doubt that the strength of every people and the source
of their happiness, rest upon the diffusion of knowledge among them.
Science has been in every age the foundation of wealth and national
progress, and since science and the arts are the forerunners of popular
civilization, and the good of the masses and their elevation in the
scale of intellectual and physical growth, therefore primary education
is the necessary preparation for all scientific progress. And in view of
this, the providence of our most exalted government has been turned to
the accomplishment of what has been done successfully in other lands, in
the multiplication of schools and colleges. And none can be ignorant of
the great progress of science and education, under His August Imperial
Excellency the Sultan, in Syria, where schools and printing presses have
multiplied, especially in the city of Beirût and its vicinity. For in
Beirût and Mount Lebanon, there are nearly two thousand male pupils,
large and small, in Boarding Schools, learning the Arabic branches and
foreign languages, and especially the French language, which is more
widely spread than any other. The most noted of these schools are the
French Lazarist School at Ain Tura in Lebanon, the American Seminary in
Abeih, the Jesuit School at Ghuzir, and the Greek School at Suk el
Ghurb, the most of the pupils being from the cities of Syria. Then there
are in Beirût the Greek School, the school of the Greek Catholic
Patriarch, the Native National College of Mr. Betrus el Bistany, and
there are also nearly a thousand _girls_ in the French Lazarist School,
the Prussian Protestant Deaconesses, the American Female Seminary and
Mrs. Thompson's British Syrian School, and other female schools. And
here we must mention that all of these schools, (excepting the Druze
Seminary,) are in the hands of _Christians_, and the Mohammedans of
Beirût have not a single school other than a common school, although in
Damascus and Tripoli they have High Schools which are most successful,
and many of their children in Beirût, are learning in Christian schools,
a fact which we take as a proof of their anxiety to attain useful
knowledge, although they have not as yet done aught to found schools of
their own. And though the placing of their children in Christian schools
is a proof of the love and fellowship between these two sects in this
glorious Imperial Age, we cannot but say that it would be far more
befitting to the honor and dignity of the Mussulmen to open schools for
their own children as the other sects are doing. And lately the Imperial
Governor of Syria has been urging them to this step, and they are now
planning the opening of such a school, which will be a means of great
benefit and glory to Islam."
The editor then states that the great want of Syria is a school where a
high _practical_ education can be given, and says:--
"We now publish the glad tidings to the sons of Syria that such a
College has just been opened in Syria, in the city of Beirût, by the
liberality of good men in America and England, and called the "Syria
Protestant College." It is to accommodate eventually one thousand
pupils, will have a large library and scientific apparatus, including a
telescope for viewing the stars, besides cabinets of Natural History,
Botany, Geology and Mineralogy. It will teach all Science and Art, Law
and Medicine, and we doubt not will meet the great want of our native
land."
Five years have passed since the above was written. Since that time the
number of pupils in the various schools in Beirût has trebled, and new
educational edifices of stately proportions are being built or are
already finished, in every part of the city. It may be safely said that
the finest structures in Beirût are those built for educational
purposes. The Latins have the Sisters of Charity building of immense
proportions, the Jesuit establishment, the Maronite schools, and the
French Sisters of Nazareth Seminary, which is to be one of the most
commanding edifices of the East. The Greeks have their large High
School, and the Papal-Greeks, or Greek-Catholics their lofty College.
The Moslems have built with funds drawn from the treasury of the
municipality, a magnificent building for their Reshidiyeh, while the
Protestants have the imposing edifices occupied by the American Female
Seminary, the British Syrian Schools, the Prussian Deaconesses
Institute, and most extensive and impressive of all, the new edifices of
the Syrian Protestant College at Ras Beirût.
As another illustration of public sentiment in Syria with regard to
evangelical work, I will translate another paragraph from this official
newspaper:
"We have been writing of the progress of the Press in Syria, and of
Arabic literature in Europe, but we have another fact to mention which
will no doubt fill the sons of our country with astonishment. You know
well the efforts which were put forth some time since in the printing of
the Old and New Testaments in various editions in the Arabic language,
in the Press of the American Mission in Beirût. This work is under the
direction of the distinguished scholar Dr. Van Dyck, who labored
assiduously in the completion of the translation of the Bible from the
Hebrew and Greek languages, which was commenced by the compassionated of
God, Dr. Eli Smith. They had printed from time to time large editions of
this Bible with great labor and expense, and sold them out, and then
were obliged to set up the types again for a new edition. But Dr. Van
Dyck thought it best, in order to find relief from the vast expenditure
of time and money necessary to reset the types, to prepare for every
page of the Bible a plate of copper, on whose face the letters should be
engraved. He therefore proceeded to New York, and undertook in
co-operation, with certain men skilled in the electrotyping art, to make
plates exactly corresponding to the pages of the Holy Book, and he has
sent to us a specimen page taken from the first plate of the vowelled
Testament, and on comparison with the page printed here, we find it an
exact copy of the Beirût edition which is printed in the same type with
our journal. We regard it as far clearer and better than the sheets
printed from movable types, and we congratulate Dr. Van Dyck, and wish
him all success in this enterprise."
Such statements as these derive their value from the fact that they
appear in the official paper of a Mohammedan government, and are a
testimony to the value of the Word of God.
The next article is a literal translation of an address delivered in
June, 1867, at the Annual Examination of the Beirût Female Seminary.
This Seminary was the first school in Syria for girls, which was
established on the paying principle, and in the year 1867 its income
from Syrian girls who paid their own board and tuition was about fifteen
hundred dollars in gold. It commenced with six pupils, and now has fifty
boarders. A crowded assembly attended the examination in the year above
mentioned, and at its close, several native gentlemen made addresses in
Arabic. The most remarkable address was made by a Greek Priest, Ghubrin
Jebara, the Archimandrite and agent of the Patriarch. When it is
remembered that in the days of Bird, Goodell and Fisk, the Greek clergy
were among the most bitter enemies of the missionaries, it will be seen
that this address indicates a great change in Syria. Turning to the
great congregation of three or four hundred people who were assembled in
the American Chapel, Greeks, Maronites, Mohammedans, Catholics and
Protestants, he said:
"You know my friends, into what a sad state our land and people had
fallen, morally, socially and intellectually. We had no schools, no
books, no means of instruction, when God in His Providence awakened the
zeal of good men far across two seas in distant America, of which many
of us had never heard, to leave home and friends and country to spend
their lives among us, yes even among such as I am. In the name of my
countrymen in Syria, I would this day thank these men, and those who
sent them. They have given us the Arabic Bible, numerous good books,
founded schools and seminaries, and trained our children and youth. But
for the American Missionaries the Word of God would have well nigh died
out of the Arabic language. But now through the labors of the lamented
Eli Smith and Dr. Van Dyck, they have given us a translation so pure, so
exact, so clear and so classical as to be acceptable to all classes and
all sects. But for their labors, education would still be where it was
centuries ago, and our children would still have continued to grow up
like wild beasts. Is there any one among us so bigoted, so ungrateful,
as not to appreciate these benevolent labors; so blind as not to see
their fruits? True, other European Missionaries have come here from
France and Italy, and we will not deny their good intentions. But what
have they brought us? And what have they taught? A little French. They
tell us how far Lyons is from Paris, and where Napoleon first lived,
and then they forbid the Word of God, and scatter broadcast the writings
of the accursed infidel Voltaire. But these Americans have come
thousands of miles, from a land than which there is no happier on earth,
to dwell among such as we are, yes, I repeat it, such as I am, to
translate God's word, to give us schools and good books, and a goodly
example, and I thank them for it. I thank them and all who are laboring
for us. I would thank Mr. Mikhaiel Araman, the Principal of this Female
Seminary, who is a son of our land, and Miss Rufka Gregory, the
Preceptress, who is a daughter of our own people, for the wonderful
progress we have witnessed during these three days among the daughters
of our own city and country, in the best kind of knowledge. Allah grant
prosperity to this Seminary, and all its teachers and pupils, peace and
happiness to all here present to-day and long life to our Sultan Abdul
Aziz."
As my object in giving these extracts from Arab writers and orators of
the present day, is to give some idea of the change going on in Syrian
public sentiment with regard to education, the dignity of woman, and the
abolition of superstitious social usages, I cannot do better than to
translate from the official journal of Daûd Pasha, late governor of Mt.
Lebanon, an article on the customs of the Lebanon population. This paper
was styled "Le Liban," and printed both in Arabic and French in July,
1867. It gives us a glimpse of the civilizing and Christianizing
influences which are at work in Syria.
"In Mount Lebanon there exist certain customs, which had their origin
in kindly feeling and sympathy, but have now passed beyond the limits of
propriety, and lost their original meaning. For example, when one falls
sick, his relatives and friends at once begin to pour in upon him. The
whole population of the town will come crowding into the house, each one
speaking to the sick a word of comfort and encouragement, and then
sitting down in the sick room. The poor invalid must respond to all
these salutations, and even be expected to rise in bed and bow to his
loving friends. Then the whole company must speak a word to the family,
to the wife and children, assuring them that the disease is but slight,
and the sick man will speedily recover. Then they crowd into the sick
room (and _such_ a crowd it is!) and the family and servants are kept
running to supply them with cigars and narghîlehs, by means of which
they fill the room with a dense and suffocating smoke. Meantime, they
talk all at once and in a loud voice, and the air soon becomes impure
and suffocating, and all these things as a matter of course injure the
sick man, and he becomes worse. Then the childish doctors of the town
are summoned, and in they come with grave faces, and a great show of
wisdom, and each one begins to recount the names of all the medicines he
has heard of, and describes their effects in working miraculous cures.
Then they enter into ignorant disputes on learned subjects, and talk of
the art of medicine of which they know nothing save what they have
learned by hearsay. One will insist that this medicine is the best,
because his father used it with great benefit just before he died, and
another will urge the claims of another medicine, of a directly opposite
character, and opinions will clash, and all in the presence of the sick
man, who thus becomes agitated and alarmed. He takes first one medicine
and then its opposite, and then he summons other doctors and consults
his relatives. Then all the old women of the neighborhood take him in
hand and set at naught all that the doctors have advised, give him
medicines of whose properties they are wholly ignorant, and thus they
hasten the final departure of their friend on his long last journey. And
if he should die, the whole population of the town assembles at once at
the house and the relatives, friends, and people from other villages
come thronging in. They fill the house with their screams and wails of
mourning. They recount the virtues of the departed with groans and
shrieks, and lamentations in measured stanzas. This all resembles the
customs of the old Greeks and Romans who hired male and female mourners
to do their weeping for them. After this, they proceed at once to bear
the corpse to the grave, without one thought as to proving whether there
be yet life remaining or not, not leaving it even twelve hours, and
never twenty-four hours. It is well known that this custom is most
brutal and perilous, for they may suppose a living man to be dead, and
bury him alive, as has, no doubt, often been done. Immediately after the
burial, the crowd return to the house of the deceased, where a sumptuous
table awaits them, and all the relatives, friends, and strangers eat
their fill. After eight days, the wailing, assembling, crowding, and
eating are repeated, for the consolation of the distracted relatives.
And these crowds and turbulent proceedings occur, not simply at Syrian
funerals, but also at marriages and births, in case the child born is a
_boy_, for the Syrians are fond of exhibiting their joy and sorrow. But
it should be remembered, that just as in civilized lands, all these
demonstrations of joy and sorrow are tempered by moderation and wisdom,
and subdued by silent acquiescence in the Divine will, so in uncivilized
lands, they are the occasion for giving the loose rein to passion and
tumult and violent emotion. How much in conformity with true faith in
God, and religious principle, is the quiet, well-ordered and moderate
course of procedure among civilized nations!
"So in former times, the man was everywhere the absolute tyrant of the
family. The wife was the slave, never to be seen by others. And if, in
conversation, it became necessary to mention her name, it would be by
saying this was done by my wife 'ajellak Allah.' But now, there is a
change, and woman is no longer so generally regarded as worthy of
contempt and abuse, and the progress being made in the emancipation and
elevation of woman, is one of the noblest and best proofs of the real
progress of Lebanon in the paths of morality and civilization."
This is the language of the official paper of the Lebanon government.
Yet how difficult to root out superstitious and injurious customs by
official utterances! At the very time that article was written, these
customs continued in full force. A woman in Abeih, whose husband died in
1866, refused to allow her house or her clothes to be washed for more
than a whole year afterward, just as though untidiness and personal
uncleanliness would honor her deceased husband!
CHAPTER XIV.
BEDAWIN ARABS.
There is one class of the Arab race, of which little or nothing has been
said in the preceding pages, for the simple reason that there is little
to be said of missionary work or progress among them. We refer to the
Bedawin Arabs. The true sons of Ishmael, boasting of their descent from
him, living a wild, free and independent life, rough, untutored and
warlike, plundering, robbing and murdering one another as a business;
roaming over the vast plains which extend from Aleppo to Baghdad, and
from Baghdad to Central Arabia, and bordering the outskirts of the more
settled parts of Syria and Palestine; ignorant of reading and writing,
and yet transacting extensive business in wool and live-stock with the
border towns and cities; nominally Mohammedans, and yet disobeying every
precept of Moslem faith and practice; subjects of the Ottoman Sultan,
and yet living in perpetual rebellion or coaxed by heavy bribes into
nominal submission; suffering untold hardships from their life of
constant exposure to winter storms and summer heats; without proper
food, clothing or shelter, and utterly destitute of medical aid and
relief, and yet despising the refinements of civilized life, and
regarding with contempt the man who will sleep under a roof; they
constitute a most ancient, attractive class of men, interesting to every
lover of his race, and especially to the Missionary of the Cross.
European missionaries can do little among them. To say nothing of the
rough, nomadic, unsettled and perilous life they lead, any European
would find himself so much an object of curiosity and suspicion among
them, and the peculiar Bedawin pronunciation of the Arabic so different
from the correct pronunciation, that he would be constantly embarrassed.
Native missionaries, on the other hand, can go among them freely, and if
provided with a supply of vaccine virus and simple medicines, can have
the most unrestrained access to them. During the last ten years, several
native colporteurs have been sent among the Bedawin, and lately the
Native Missionary Society in Beirût has sent out one of its teachers as
a missionary to the Arabs. There is little use in taking books among
them, as very few can make use of them. Mr. Arthington of Leeds,
England, has been making earnest efforts to induce the Bedawin to send
their children to schools in the towns, or allow schools to be opened
among their own camps. We have tried every means to induce their leading
Sheikhs to send their sons and daughters to Beirût for instruction, but
the Arabs all dread sending their children to any point within the
jurisdiction of the Turks, lest they be suddenly seized by the Turks as
hostages for the good behavior of their parents. The latter course,
_i.e._, sending teachers to live among them, to migrate with them and
teach their children as it were "on the wing," seems to be the one most
practicable, as soon as teachers can be trained. Until the Turkish
government shall compel the Bedawin to settle down in villages and till
the soil, there can be little done in the way of instructing them. And
when that step is taken, it is quite doubtful whether the Moslem
government will not send its Khoteebs or religious teachers, and compel
them all to embrace the religion of Islam. If that should be done,
Christian teachers will have but little opportunity of opening schools
among them.
One of the leading tribes of the Bedawin is the Anazy, who are more
numerous, powerful and wealthy than any other Kobileh of the Arabs.
Their principal Sheikh on the Damascus border is Mohammed ed Dûkhy, the
warlike and successful leader of ten thousand Arab horsemen, of the
Weled Ali. He is now an officer of the Turkish government, with a salary
of ten thousand dollars a year, employed to protect the great Haj or
Pilgrim Caravan, which goes annually from Damascus to Mecca. He
furnishes camels for the Haj, and a powerful escort of horsemen, and is
under bonds to keep the Arabs quiet.
In February, 1871, he came to Beirût on business, and was the guest of a
Maronite merchant, who brought him at our invitation to visit the Female
Seminary, the College and the Printing Press. After looking through the
Seminary, examining the various departments, and inquiring into the
course of study he turned to the pupils and said, "Our Bedawin girls
would learn as much in six months as you learn in two years." I told him
we should like to see the experiment tried, and that if he would send on
a dozen Bedawin girls, we would see that they had every opportunity for
improvement. He said, "Allah only knows the future. Who knows but it may
yet come to pass?" The Sheikh himself can neither read nor write, but
his wife, the Sitt Harba, or Lady Spear, who came from the vicinity of
Hamath, can read and write well, and she is said to be the only
Bedawîyeh woman who can write a letter. With this in view we prepared an
elegant copy of the Arabic Bible, enclosed in a waterproof case made by
the girls of the Seminary, and presented it to him at the Press. He
expressed great interest in it, and asked what the book contained. We
explained the contents, and he remarked, "I will have the Sitt Harba
read to me of Ibrahim, Khalil Allah, (the Friend of God), and Ismaeel,
the father of the Arabs, and Neby (prophet) Moosa, and Soleiman the
king, and Aieesa, (Jesus,) the son of Mary." The electrotype apparatus
deeply interested him, but when Mr. Hallock showed him the steam
cylinder press, rolling off the sheets with so great rapidity and
exactness, he stood back and remarked in the most deliberate manner,
"the man who made that press can conquer anything but death!" It seemed
some satisfaction to him that in the matter of _death_ the Bedawin was
on a level with the European.
From the Press, the Sheikh went to the Church, and after gazing around
on the pure white walls, remarked, "There is the Book, but I see no
pictures nor images. You worship only God here!" He was anxious to see
the _Tower Clock_, and although he had lost one arm, and the other was
nearly paralyzed by a musket shot in a recent fight in the desert, he
insisted on climbing up the long ladders to see the clock whose striking
he had heard at the other end of the city, and he gazed long and
admiringly at this beautiful piece of mechanism. On leaving us, he
renewedly thanked us for _The Book_, and the next day he left by
diligence coach for Damascus.
In the summer we sent, at Mr. Arthington's expense, a young man from the
Beirût Medical College, named Ali, as missionary to itinerate among the
Bedawin, with special instructions to persuade the Arabs if possible to
send their children to school. He remained a month or two among them, by
day and by night, sleeping by night outside the tents with his horse's
halter tied to his arms to prevent its being stolen, and spending the
evenings reading to the assembled crowd from the New Testament. He was
present as a spectator at a fight between Mohammed's men and the Ruella
Arabs east of the Sea of Galilee, in which the Ruella were defeated, but
Mohammed's son Faûr was wounded, and Ali attended him. The Sitt Harba
told Ali that a papist named Shwiry, in Damascus, had taken the Arabic
Bible from them! So Ali gave them another. This Bible-hating spirit of
the Papacy is the same the world over. How contemptible the spirit of a
man _professing_ the name of Christian, and yet willing to rob the only
woman among the Bedawin who can read, of the word of everlasting life!
The whole family of the Sheikh were interested in reading an illustrated
book for children of folio size, styled "Lilies of the Field," which we
printed in Beirût last year. When Ali set out on this journey, I gave
him a letter to the Sheikh, reminding him of his visit to Beirût, and
urging again upon him the sending of his children to school. The Sheikh
sent me the following reply, written by his wife, the Sitt Harba, and
sealed with his own signet ring. I value the letter highly as being
written by the only Bedawin woman able to write:
To his excellency the most honored and esteemed, our revered
Khowadja Henry Jessup, may his continuance be prolonged! Amen.
After offering you the pearls of salutation, and the ornaments of
pure odoriferous greeting, we would beg to inform you that your
epistle reached us in the hand of Ali Effendi, and we perused it
rejoicing in the information it contained about your health and
prosperity. You remind us of the importance of sending our sons and
daughters to be educated in your schools. Ali Effendi has urged us
very strongly to this course; and has spent several weeks with us
among the Arabs. He has read to the children from The Book, and
tried to interest them in learning to read. He has also gone from
tent to tent among our Bedawin, talking with them and urging upon
them this great subject. He constantly read to them that which
engaged their attention, and we aided him in urging it upon them.
Inshullah (God grant) that there may soon be a school among the
Arabs themselves. We Bedawin do not understand the language nor the
ways of Europeans, and we should like to have one like Ali Effendi,
who knows our way of talking and living, come to teach us and our
children. We would also inform you that the book with pictures,
which you sent to the Sitt Harba, has reached her, and she has
read it with great pleasure, and asks of God to increase your good.
She sends salams to you and to the Sitt, and all your family.
And may you live forever! Salam
MOHAMMED DUKHY.
29 Jemady Akhar
1289 of the Hegira
"Postscript.--There has been a battle between us and the Ruella
tribe, and the Ruellas ate a defeat, Ali Effendi was present and
will give you the particulars."
At the date of this writing, Ali has been again to Mohammed's camp,
taking books and medicines, and has done his utmost to prepare the way
for opening schools among the Bedawin in their own camps. Ali has
brought another letter from Sitt Harba, in which she gives her views
with regard to the education of the Bedawin. I sent several written
questions to her in Arabic, to which she cheerfully gave replies. The
following is the substance of her answers:
I. The Bedawin Arabs ought to learn to read and write, in order to learn
religion, to increase in understanding, and to become acquainted with
the Koran. They profess to be Moslems, but in reality have no religion.
II. The reason why so few of the Bedawin know how to read, is because it
is out of their line of business. They prefer fighting, plundering, and
feeding flocks and herds. Reading and books are strange and unknown to
them.
III. If they wished to learn to read, the true time and place would be
in the winter, when they migrate to the East in the Jowf, where they
are quiet and uninterrupted by government tax-gatherers.
IV. I learned to read in the vicinity of Hums. My father brought for my
instruction a Khoteeb or Moslem teacher, who taught me reading. His name
was Sheikh Abdullah. The Sheikh Mohammed taught me writing.
V. The Bedawin esteem a boy better than a girl, because the boy may rise
to honor, but the girl has nothing to expect from her husband, and his
parents and relatives, but cursing and abuse.
VI. A man may marry four wives. If one of them ceases bearing children,
and she be of his family, he makes a covenant of fraternity with her,
and he supports her in his own camp, but she is regarded simply as a
sister. If she be of another family, he sends her home, and pays her
what her friends demand.
VII. The girls and women have no more religion than the boys and men.
They never pray nor fast, nor make the pilgrimage to Mecca. But the old
women repeat certain prayers, and visit the ziyaras, mazars, and welys,
and other holy places.
VIII. If teachers would come among us, who can live as we do, and dwell
in our camps, and travel with us to the desert, they could teach the
great part of our children to read, especially if they understood the
art of medicine.
Ali spent several weeks among them, sleeping in the camp, and attending
upon their sick. The camp was on the mountains east of the Sea of
Galilee. Fevers prevailed through the entire district from Tiberias to
Damascus, and Ali devoted himself faithfully to the care of the sick.
The Sheikh himself was ill with fever and ague, as were several members
of his family. One day Ali prepared an effervescing draught for him, and
when the acid and the alkali united, and the mixture effervesced, the
Bedawin seated in the great tent screamed and ran from the tent as if
the Ruellas were down upon them! What, said they, is this? He pours
water into water, and out come fire and smoke! The Sheikh himself was
afraid to drink it, so Ali took it himself, and finally, after
explaining the principle of the chemical process, he induced both the
Sheikh and the Sit Harba to drink the draught. On leaving the
encampment, the Sheikh gave Ali a guard, and three Turkish pounds (about
$14,) to pay for his medicines and medical services, saying, that as his
Bedawin were growing poor since they were forbidden to make raids on
other tribes, they could not pay for his services, and he would pay for
all. He offered to give him a goat skin bottle of semin (Arab butter)
and several sheep, but Ali was unable to carry either, and declined the
offer. Ali brought a specimen of Bedawin bread. It is black, coarse, and
mixed with ashes and sand. The Bedawin pound their wheat, and knead the
coarse gritty flour without sifting, and bake it on the heated earthen
ovens.
The Bedawin swarm with vermin. Their garments, their persons, their
tents and their mats are literally alive with the third plague of Egypt,
_lice_! Ali soon found himself completely overrun with them, and was
almost driven wild. The Sitt Harba urged him to try the Bedawin remedy
for cleansing his head. On inquiring what it was, he declared he would
rather have the disease than the remedy! After his return to his village
in Lebanon, he spent several days in ablutions and purifications before
venturing to bring me his report. The Sitt Harba gave him a collection
of the nursery rhymes which she and the Bedawin women sing to their
little brown babies, and some of them will be found in the "Children's
Chapter" of this volume. The Sheikh Mohammed, who can neither read nor
write, repeated to Ali the following Kosîdeh or Song, which he composed
in Arabic poetry, after his victory over Feisal, of the Ruella tribe, in
1866. The Ruellas had previously driven Mohammed's tribe from one of the
finest pasture regions in Howian, and Ed Dukhy regained it after a
desperate struggle.
Oh fair and beautiful plain, oh rich green Bedawin pasture.
We had left you, too often stained, with the blood of violent
battle;
Ah, dark disastrous day, when brother abandoned his brother,
Though riding the fleetest of mares, and safe from pursuit of the
foeman,
He never once turned to inquire, though we tasted the cup of
destruction.
Oh fair and beautiful plain, we yesterday fought and regained thee!
I praise and honor His name, who only the victory giveth!
O, Feisal, we've meted to you your deserts in royal measure;
With our spears so burning and sharp, we cut off the necks of your
Arabs,
O, Shepherd of Obaid, you fled deserting your pastures,
Biting your finger in pain and regret for your sad disasters--
Savage hyena, come forth, from your lair in the land of Jedaileh,
Howl to your fellow-beasts, in the distant land of Butîna;
Come and eat your fill of the dead in the Plain of Fada,
O, fair and beautiful plain, you belong to the tribe of the victor;
But Feisal is racked with pain, when he hears the battle story,
Our right-handed spearmen have palsied his arm is its strength and
power;
A blow fell hard on his breast, from the hand of our Anazy warriors;
Come now, ye who wish for peace, we are ready in honor to meet you!
_Our_ wrongs are all avenged, and our arms are weary of battle.
The Arabic original of these lines breathes the true spirit of poetry,
and shows that the old poetic fire still burns in the desert. Feisal now
lives in the region adjacent to Mohammed Dûkhy, and they leave a space
of several miles between their camps to prevent trespass, and the danger
of re-opening the old blood-feud.
I would commend the Arabs of the Desert to the prayerful remembrance of
the Women of America. How the gospel is to reach them, is one of the
great problems of our day. Their women are sunken to the lowest depths
of physical and moral degradation. The extent of their religion is in
being able to swear Mohammedan oaths. "Their mouths are full of cursing
and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and
misery are in their ways, and the _way of peace_ have they not known."
Although their hand is against every man, and every man's hand against
them, let them feel that there is one class of men who love them and
care for them with a disinterested love, and who seek their everlasting
welfare!
CHAPTER XV.
"WOMAN BETWEEN BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION."
This is the title of an Arabic article in the "Jenan" for Sept. 1, 1872,
written by Frances Effendi Merrash, brother of the Sitt Mariana, whose
paper we have translated on a preceding page. It is evident that the
Effendi writes from the atmosphere of Aleppo. The more "polite" society
of that city is largely made up of that mongrel population, half French
and half Arab, which is styled "Levantine" and too often combines the
vices of both, with the virtues of neither. It will be seen that the
able author is combatting the worst form of French flippant
civilization, which has already found its way into many of the towns and
cities of the Orient. He says:--
"Inasmuch as woman constitutes a large portion of human kind, and an
essential element in society, as well as the leading member of the race
in respect to its perpetuation, it becomes necessary both to consider
and speak of her character and position although there are not wanting
those who are coarse enough and rude enough to declare woman a worthless
part of the creation.
"Woman possesses a nature remarkably impressible and susceptible to
influence, owing to the delicacy of her organization and the
peculiarities of her structure. Her proper culture therefore calls for
the greatest possible skill and care to protect her from those
corrupting influences to which she is by nature especially susceptible.
We should therefore neither leave her locked in the fetters of the
ancient barbarism and rudeness, nor leave her free to the uncontrollable
liberty of this modern civilization, for both these extremes bring her
into one common evil estate and both have one effect upon her.
"Have you not observed how the customs of ancient rude barbarism
corrupted the manners of woman and obliterated all those virtues and
excellencies for which she is especially designed by nature? It was
deemed most opprobrious for woman to learn to read and write, to say
nothing of other arts. It was thought indispensable to bind upon her
mouth the fetters of profound silence so that none ever heard her voice
but her own coarse husband, and the walls of the enclosure in which she
was kept imprisoned. She had no liberty of thought or action. Every
woman's thoughts were limited by the thoughts of her husband, and her
character was cast in the mould of his, whether that were good or bad.
And in addition to this, she always suffered from whatever of rudeness
there might be in her rough companion, who availed himself of his
superior brute physical strength as a weapon to overcome her moral
power. He scourged and cursed and despised her in every possible way,
when she was innocent of crime or error. As a result of this course,
her own self respect, and the feeling that she was abused and insulted
by her companion or partner, led her oftentimes to cast off all shame
and modesty, whenever a suitable opportunity presented itself. This grew
out of the fact that she no longer regarded herself as the companion of
her husband and the sharer of all his natural and moral rights, his joys
and sorrows, but she rather imagined herself his captive and bond slave.
She thus sank to the position of a slave-woman who is never allowed
peace or rest, and cares nothing for the training of her children or the
ordering of her house, since she looks upon herself as a stranger in a
home not her own, and we all know how difficult it is for a slave to
perform the duties of the free!
"On the other hand, have you not observed how the influence of modern
civilization is corrupting the nature of woman and making havoc with her
morals?
"There is nothing strange in this, for her delicate nature, when it had
escaped from the chains and imprisonment of the mildest barbarism, into
the open free arena of civilization, lost its reckoning, and wandered
hither and thither in bewilderment according to its own unrestrained
passions. Woman thus became like a feather, 'Borne on the tempest
wherever it blows, and driven about where no one knows.'
"Now since evil images and objects are far more numerous in this world
than those which are good, it becomes evident that the influence of evil
upon the mind of woman is stronger and more abiding than the influence
of the good, owing to this intense delicacy of texture in her mental
constitution. Let us suppose that one man and one woman were placed in a
position where they should only see evil deeds, or only good deeds: the
woman would leave that place either vastly worse than the man, or vastly
better. Now the moral misconduct of woman is far more detrimental to the
propagation of the race, than is the misconduct of man. It is therefore
better for the woman not to go to the extremes of the modern
civilization, whose evils are equal to, yes, and far surpass, its
benefits. Have you not noticed that the leaders of modern civilization
in our age, have imitated, if not surpassed, all the excesses of riot,
and lust and rapine, ever practiced under the barbarism of the ages of
antiquity? Do not the women of this age go lower in shamelessness than
the women of ancient times? Here we see them veiling their faces with
the flimsy gauze of artifice, and befouling the pure waters of life with
the turbulent stream of their own vanity. They pollute the purity of
real beauty by the foul arts of beautifying, and cry out in loud rude
voices in every assembly and gathering. They strut about in
vain-glorious conceit, and flaunt their gaudy apparel in indecent
boldness. They claim what does not belong to them and meddle with what
does not concern them. They do not blush to cloud the precious jewel of
modesty with the selfish airs of passion. Nothing is said which they do
not hear, nothing occurs which they do not see. They become bold,
unblushing and unwomanly.
"Such being the state of things, there can be no doubt that an excess of
this kind of civilization for woman amounts to about the same thing as
the excess of her rude barbarism in ancient times. The two extremes
meet. The dividing line between them then, that is, the middle course,
is the proper one for woman to take. To this middle course there must be
some natural and legitimate guide. This guide is a sound education, and
on this subject we propose at some future time to write, inasmuch as the
education of woman is one of the most important of subjects. Woman is
the one fountain from which is derived the life of man in its earliest
periods. She is the source of all training, and the root of character.
Have you not heard that she who rocks the cradle, moves the world?"
It is evident that the author of this paper has not been so happy as to
see the noblest type of a sanctified Christian civilization, such as can
be seen in the Christian homes of America and England, or even in the
truly Christian homes of Syria. Let us hope that the day is not far
distant, when even in Aleppo, a pure Christianity shall have taken the
place of that semi-barbaric system styled the papacy, which enthralls
the intellects and hearts of so many of the _nominal_ Christians of the
Orient, and when the enslaved inmates of the Moslem hareems shall be set
free, not to indulge in the license of a Parisian libertinism, but with
that liberty wherewith Christ makes His people free!
THE VALUE SET ON WOMAN'S LIFE IN SYRIA.
The free license allowed to men by the Koran in the beating of their
wives, has led the entire population of the East to set a low estimate
upon the life of woman. Until recently in Syria women were poisoned,
thrown down wells, beaten to death, or cast into the sea, and the
government made no inquisition into the matter. According to Mohammedan
law, a prosecution for murder must always be commenced by the friends of
the victim, and if they do not enter complaint, or furnish witnesses,
the murderer is not even arrested. And if he be convicted of the crime,
he is released on paying to the relatives of the victim the price of
blood, which is fixed at 13,000 piastres, or $520! A man may well "count
the cost" before committing murder. This constant compounding of
punishment has degraded the popular views of the value of human life, so
that formerly the murder of a woman was never punished. In March, 1856,
a Druze girl near B'hamdûn married a man of her own choice, instead of
marrying the man assigned to her by her family. She was waylaid by her
own brother and the rejected suitor, murdered and thrown into a well.
About a year after the massacres of 1860, while the European
Commissioners were still in Syria, and Lebanon was beginning to attain
something of its wonted quiet, several Turkish soldiers made an assault
upon a young Maronite girl from the village of Ain Kesûr, who was
carrying a jar of water to the workmen on the Deir el Komr road. Mr.
Calhoun was requested by the Relief Committee in Beirût to devote the
charity funds distributed in this part of Lebanon, to giving employment
to the needy in road-building. This girl was employed to supply the men
with water. The brutal soldiers attempted to gag her with a
handkerchief, in order to accomplish their design, but she was too
strong for them. The struggle was long and violent, but she finally
effected her escape, leaving on the road the fragments of the broken
jar, her shoes and shreds of calico which they had torn from her
clothing. Just at that moment Giurgius el Haddad, Mr. Calhoun's cook,
came up, and seeing the broken jar and the clothing, guessed what had
happened, and after finding the girl, and hearing her story, started in
pursuit of the soldiers to Ainab, whither they had gone, and where a
Turkish officer was stationed. He stated the case to the officer, and
received in reply a blow on his arm from a heavy cane. The case was
reported to the Turkish Colonel in Abeih, who summoned all parties and
ordered each of the soldiers to be beaten with forty lashes on the bare
back. But word had reached Col. Frazier, the British Commissioner, and
he came at once to Abeih in company with Omar Pasha, with order from
Evad, Pasha, to examine the case _de novo_. The result was that two of
the soldiers were condemned by military law to be shot, and were shot at
sunset June 5th, in front of the old palace just below Mr. Calhoun's
house. The event produced a profound impression, and Druzes and Moslems
began to feel that a woman's life and honor were after all of some
value.
In April, 1862, when Daûd Pasha was governor of Mt. Lebanon, a Druze,
named Hassan, murdered a Druze girl of his own village, supposing that
Daûd Pasha would not interfere with the time-honored custom of killing
girls! Much to his surprise, however, he was arrested, convicted and
hung, and the poor women of all sects in the mountain began to feel that
after all they had an equal right to life with the other sex.
In most parts of Syria to-day, the murder of women and girls is an act
so insignificant as hardly to deserve notice. Mt. Lebanon and vicinity
constitute an exception perhaps, but woman's right to life is one of
those rights which have not yet been fully guaranteed in the Turkish
Empire.
In October, 1862, the Arabic official newspaper in Beirût, contained a
letter from Hums which illustrates this fact. A fanatical wretch from
Hamath, one of the infamous Moslem saints, set up the claim that he had
received the power to cast out devils by divine inspiration. He found
credulous followers among the more ignorant, and went to Hums to
practice his diabolical trade. A poor woman had lost her reason through
excessive grief at the death of her son. The husband and others of her
relatives went to consult the new prophet. He refused to go and see her,
stating that he would not condescend to go to the devils, but the
devils must come to him. The poor woman was accordingly brought to him,
and left to await the opportune moment, when he could cast out the
devils, which he declared to be raving within her. After a few days, her
father called to inquire about her, and found her growing constantly
worse. The Hamathite told him that he must bring a gallon of liquid
pitch, to be used as a medicine, and the next day the devils would leave
her. The pitch was brought, and after the father had gone, the lying
prophet tied a cord around her feet, and drew her up to the ceiling, and
while she was thus suspended, thrust a red hot iron rod into one of her
eyes, and cauterized her body almost from head to foot! He then placed
the pitch on the floor under her head, and set it on fire until the body
was "burned to charcoal!" The next day the friends called, expecting to
find her restored to her right mind, when the wretch pointed them to the
blackened cinder. They exclaimed with horror and asked him the reason of
this bloody crime? He replied that on applying the test of burning
pitch, one of the devils had gone out of her, tearing out her right eye,
and when he forbade the rest from destroying the other eye, they fell
upon her and killed her! The body was buried, but the government took
not the slightest notice of the fact. The official journal in Beirût
simply warned the public against patronizing such a bloody impostor!
CHAPTER XVI.
OPINIONS OF PROTESTANT SYRIANS WITH REGARD TO THE WORK OF AMERICAN WOMEN
IN SYRIA.
The following letters have been addressed to me by prominent native
Syrian gentlemen, whose wives have been trained in the American Mission
Seminaries and families. They all write in English, and I give their own
language.
Mr. Butrus el Bistany, the husband of Raheel, writes me as follows:--
Beirût, Oct. 23, 1872.
"It would be superfluous to speak of the efforts of American
Missionary ladies in training the females of Syria, and the good
done by them.
"The sainted Sarah L. Smith, who was one of the first among them,
established the first Female School in Beirût.
"Mrs. Whiting, also, who had no children of her own, trained five
girls in her family, all of whom are still living.
"Mrs. De Forest had a very interesting female school in her family,
and the girls educated in that school are of the best of those
educated by American ladies in Syria.
"The obstacles in those times were very great, and the people
believed that education is injurious to females. But these ladies
obtained a few girls to educate gratuitously, and thus made a good
impression on the minds of the people, and wrought a change in
public opinion, so that year by year the people began to appreciate
female education. And as we are now building on the foundation laid
by those good ladies and reaping the fruit of their labors, we
should pray to be imbued with the same spirit, and try as much as
we can to follow their example, and carry on the work with the same
spirit, zeal and wisdom as they did."
Mr. Naame Tabet, the husband of Miriam, who was educated by Dr. and Mrs.
De Forest, writes as follows:--
Beirût, Oct. 21, 1872.
"It affords me unfeigned gratification that you give me an
opportunity of recording my impressions in regard to the advantages
of female education in this country under the guidance of the light
of the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour, such as is exemplified by
the American Mission, whose labors in diffusing and disseminating
the Scriptures are so conspicuously manifest.
"That example chiefly has had the effect, in this neighborhood, to
stir up gigantic efforts to fill the want of female education. The
same feeling is extending itself throughout Syria, so that future
prospects for the promotion of pure Christian knowledge and true
civilization are brilliant and ought surely to encourage the
benevolent in persevering in their action."
The Rev. John Wortabet, M.D., Professor of Anatomy in the Syrian
Protestant College, and husband of Salome, writes as follows:--
Beirût, Oct. 20, 1872.
"Though I was very young when Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Whiting, and Mrs. De
Forest began their labors in the cause of Female Education in
Syria, I can distinctly recollect that they were the first to
initiate that movement which has grown to so vast an extent at the
present time. To them belongs the honor of having been the
determined and brave pioneers in the important work of raising
woman from her degraded position, brought on by ignorance and
Mohammedan influence, to one of considerable respect, in a social,
intellectual and moral point of view. I do not mean that they
achieved then this great and worthy object, but they were first to
begin the work, which is still going on, and destined apparently to
grow much farther. And it is but just that their names and primary
labors be embalmed in the memories of the past.
"Aside from the intrinsic good which they accomplished, and the
direct fruits of their labors, and you are as well acquainted with
them as I am--they gave the first and best _teachers_ for the
schools which have sprung up so abundantly since their time. Of the
importance of giving well-trained female teachers for female
schools, in the peculiar social system of the East, nothing need be
said.
"I believe, however, that the main value of these earlier labors
was the _impulse_ which they gave to the course of Female Education
in Syria. Prejudices and barriers, which had become hoary by the
lapse of time, have been completely broken down, at least among the
Christian Churches of the East."
CHAPTER XVII.
OTHER LABORS FOR WOMEN AND GIRLS IN THIS FIELD.
The following statements have been chiefly made out from documents
furnished to me by those in charge of the various Institutions. I give
them in order according to the date of their establishment.
THE IRISH AND AMERICAN UNITED PRESBYTERIAN MISSION IN DAMASCUS.
I have not received official statistics with regard to the work of this
Mission in behalf of women, but they have maintained schools for girls
and personal labors for the women through a long series of years. Mrs.
Crawford, who is thoroughly familiar with the Arabic language, has
labored in a quiet and persevering manner among the women of Damascus
and Tebrûd, and the fruits of these labors will be seen in years to
come. Miss Dales, now Mrs. Dr. Lansing, of Cairo, conducted a school for
Jewish girls in Damascus some fifteen years ago, which was well
attended.
Mrs. E. Watson, an English lady of great energy and zeal in the cause of
female education, after years of labor in North and South America,
Greece and Asia Minor, came to Syria in 1858, and commenced a girls'
school in her own hired house. She afterwards removed to Shemlan, in
Mount Lebanon, where she erected a building at her own expense for a
girls' boarding school, and afterwards gave it to the Society for the
Promotion of Female Education in the East. She has since, with untiring
energy, erected another building for a Seminary for Druze and Christian
girls, the former Institution continuing as it has been for many years
under the efficient management of Miss Hicks, assisted by Miss Dobbie.
She has also recently erected a neat and substantial church edifice in
Shemlan.
In Miss Hicks' absence, Mrs. Watson has addressed me the following
letter:
Shemlan, August 28, 1872.
"Our first school for native girls was commenced in Beirût in 1858.
The teachers have been Miss Hicks, Miss Hiscock, Mrs. Walker, Miss
Dillon, Miss Jacombs, (now in Sidon,) Miss Stainton, (now in
Sidon,) and Miss Dobbie. No native female teachers have been
employed except pupils of the school under Miss Hicks' care.
Masters Riskullah in Beirût, and Murad, Reshîd and Daûd, in
Shemlan, have been connected with the school as teachers of the
higher Arabic branches.
"The whole number of boarders under our care up to the present
time, is above one hundred. The only teachers in my second boarding
school are, my adopted daughter Handûmeh, and Zarifeh Twiney, a
pupil of the Prussian Deaconesses. Seventeen or eighteen of our
pupils have been, or are now teachers, and ten are married.
"The school directed by Miss Hicks was given over to the Ladies'
Society in England, some six or seven years ago, and has been
supported by them since. The new school in the upper house is under
no society and is not regularly aided by any. There are from
twenty-six to twenty-eight boarders under the care of my daughter,
Miss Watson, I aiding as I can. Several girls have been supported
for the last two years by friends in America and England. We have
had ten Druze girls in our school in the upper house. Miss Hicks
has had three or four, and a number in her day school. We had also
a number in our day school at Aitath, four of whom are married to
Druze Sheikhs."
Mr. Elias Suleeby, aided by friends in Scotland, has for a considerable
period conducted common schools in a part of Mount Lebanon and the
Bukaa, and now the enterprise has been adopted by the Free Church of
Scotland, who have sent the Rev. Mr. Rae to be their Superintendent.
Their schools are chiefly for boys, though in all the village schools it
is usual for a few of the smaller girls to attend the boys' school. In
Suk el Ghurb, however, they have a boarding school containing some
twenty-five girls.
THE PRUSSIAN DEACONESSES INSTITUTE IN BEIRUT
The Orphan House, Boarding School and Hospital with which the Prussian
Deaconesses are connected, were established in 1860. The two former are
supported by the Kaiserswerth Institution in Germany, and the latter by
the Knights of St. John.
In the Orphan House are one hundred and thirty orphan girls, all native
Syrians, who are clothed, fed and instructed for four or five years, and
often transformed from wild, untutored semi-barbarians to tidy, well
behaved and useful young women. They have ordinarily about fifty
applicants waiting for a vacancy in order to enter.
The Boarding School is for the education of the children of European
residents, Germans, French, Italians, Greeks, Maltese, English, Scotch,
Irish, Hungarians, Dutch, Swiss, Danish, Americans and others. The
medium of instruction is the French language.
Since the Orphan School began, many of the girls have married, thirty
have become teachers, and about twenty of them are living as servants in
families.
In August of the year 1861, the Deaconesses had received about 110
orphans. The children entering are received for three years, and the
surviving parent or guardian is required to sign a bond, agreeing to
leave the child for that period, or if the child is withdrawn before
that time, to pay to the Deaconesses all that has been expended upon
her.
In the summer of 1861, several of the parents came and tried to remove
their children, though they had no means of supporting them, but the
contract stood in the way, and they had no money to pay. The Jesuits
then came forward and furnished the parents with French gold in
Napoleons, and withdrew in one day fifty orphan girls from the
institution, sending them, not to an institution of their own, but
turning them back upon their wretched parents and friends to be trained
in poverty and ignorance. A few days later, thirty more of the girls
were removed in the same way, leaving only thirty. The parents had a
legal right to remove the children on the payment of the money, but what
shall be said of the cruelty of the Jesuits who turned back these
wretched children to the destitution and misery of a Syrian orphan? The
Jesuits are the same everywhere, unscrupulous and intriguing, counting
all means as right, which promote their own end.
THE BRITISH SYRIAN SCHOOLS.
These Schools, so numerous and widely extended, have grown up since the
massacre year 1860. I remember well the first arrival of Mrs. Bowen
Thompson in Beirût, and her persevering energy in forming her little
school for the widows and orphans of Hasbeiya, Deir el Komr and
Damascus.
From that little beginning in 1860, the school increased the following
year, until finally other branch schools were organized in Beirût and
Lebanon, and then in Damascus and Tyre, until now, the following
schedule, furnished to me by the officers of the Institution, will show
to what proportions the enterprise has grown. The Memoir of Mrs.
Thompson, entitled "The Daughters of Syria," gives so full a history of
these schools, that I need only refer the reader to that volume for all
the information desired. Since the lamented death of Mrs. Thompson, the
direction of the schools has been entrusted to her sister, Mrs. Mentor
Mott. The Central Training School in Beirût was under the care of Mrs.
Shrimpton, who labored with great earnestness and wisdom in that
important institution until the spring of 1873, when she resigned her
position and became connected with the work of Female education under
the American mission in Syria. She was aided by English and native
teachers. The schools in Zahleh, Damascus, Hasbeiya and Tyre are under
the care of English and Scotch ladies, who have certainly evinced the
most admirable courage and resolution in entering, in several of these
places, upon outpost duty, without European society, and isolated for
months together from persons speaking their own language. I believe that
such instances as these have demonstrated anew the fact that where woman
is to be reached, woman can go, and Christian women from Christian
lands, even if beyond the age generally fixed as the best adapted to the
easy acquisition of a foreign language, may yet do a great work in
maintaining centres of influence at the outposts, and superintending the
labors of native teachers. These young native teachers trained in
Shemlan, Sidon, Suk el Ghurb and Beirût, cannot go to distant places as
teachers, and _ought not to go_, without a home and proper protection
provided for them. Such protection _is given_ by a European or American
woman, who has the independence and the resolution to go where no
missionary family resides, and carry on the work of female education.
Even at the risk of offending the modesty of the persons concerned, I
cannot refrain from putting on record my admiration of the course of
Miss Wilson in Zahleh, Miss Gibbon in Hasbeiya, and Miss Williams in
Tyre, in making homes for themselves, and carrying on their work far
from European society and intercourse.
The British Syrian Schools are doing a good work in promoting Bible
education. Many of the native teachers, male and female, have been
trained in our Mission Seminaries, and not a few of them are members of
our evangelical churches. It has always been my aim, from the time when
Mrs. Bowen Thompson first landed in Syria to the present time, to do all
in my power to "help those women which labored with me in the gospel."
We are engaged in a common work, surrounded by thousands of needy
perishing souls, Mohammedan, Pagan and Nominal Christian. The work is
pressing, and the Lord's husbandmen ought to work together, forgetting
and ignoring all diversities of nationality, denomination and social
customs. There should be no such word as American, English, Scotch or
German, attached to any enterprise that belongs to the common Master.
The common foe is united in opposition. Let us be united in every
practicable way. Let our name be _Christian_, our work one of united
sympathy, prayer and coöperation, and let not Christ be divided in His
members. I write these words in connection with the subject of the
British Syrian Schools, because I can speak from experience of the
value of such coöperation in the past. As Acting Pastor of the Native
Evangelical Church in Beirût, to the communion of which I have received
so many young teachers and pupils from the various Seminaries and
schools, I feel the great importance of this hearty coöperation and
unity of action among those who are at the head of the various
Protestant Educational Institutions in Syria.
The Emissaries of Rome are laboring with sleepless vigilance to win
Syria to the Papacy. Sisters of Charity, Sisters of Nazareth, Jesuits,
Lazarists, Capuchins, Dominicans, and Franciscans, monks, nuns and papal
legates, are swarming throughout the land. Though notoriously jealous of
each other's progress, they are always united in their common opposition
to the Evangelical faith, and an open Bible. We have thus not only the
old colossal fortresses of Syrian error to demolish, but the new
structures of Jesuitical craft to overturn, before Syria comes to
Christ.
It has been stated on a preceding page that in 1835, the American wife
of an English merchant, Mrs. Alexander Tod, gave a large part of the
funds to build the first school-house for girls ever built in Syria.
That substantial union has been happily reproduced in the cordial
coöperation of the Anglo-American and German communities in Beirût, both
in the Church, public charities and educational institutions, up to the
present time.
Let us all live in Christ, work for Christ, keep our eye fixed on
Christ, and we shall be with Christ, and Christ with us!
_BRITISH SYRIAN SCHOOLS_, 1872.
BEIRUT.
No. Established. Name. Scholars. Teachers.
1 1860 Training Institution, 92 16
2 1863 Musaitebeh, 85 3
3 1868 Blind School, men & boys, 16 2
4 1868 Blind girls' School, 11 1
5 1860 Boys' School, 85 5
6 1861 East Coombe, 120 4
7 1860 Elementary, 30 2
8 1872 Es-Saifeh, 100 4
9 1860 Infant School, 125 3
10 1860 Moslem, 50 4
11 1860 Night School, ---- 5
12 1863 Olive Branch, 85 4
DAMASCUS.
13 1867 St. Paul's, 170 6
14 1869 Blind School, 15 1
15 1870 Medan, 80 2
16 1867 Night School, 30 1
LEBANON.
17 1863 _Ashrafiyeh_, 53 3
18 1868 _Ain Zehalteh_, 50 2
19 1869 _Aramoon_, 40 2
20 1863 _Hasbeiya_, 160 3
21 1867 _Mokhtara_, ---- ----
22 1868 _Zahleh_, 75 4
TYRE.
23 1869 Girls' School, 50 2
---- ----
Totals, 1522 79
Bible Women, 7
MISS TAYLOR'S SCHOOL FOR MOSLEM GIRLS.
This worthy Christian lady from Scotland is doing a quiet yet most
effective work in Beirût, with which few are acquainted, yet it is
carried on in faith from year to year, and the fruits will no doubt
appear one day, in a vast reformation in the order, morality and general
improvement of the Moslem families of Beirût.
Ever since the days of Mrs. Sarah L. Smith, and Mrs. Dr. Dodge, Moslem
girls have been more or less in attendance upon the schools of the Syria
Mission, but the purely Moslem schools of Miss Taylor and of the British
Syrian Schools are making a special effort to extend education into
every Moslem household.
This school was opened in February, 1868, for the poorest of the poor.
It received the name of "The Original Ragged school for Moslem Girls."
No one is considered as enrolled, who has not been at least three weeks
in regular attendance. The number already received has reached very near
five hundred, all Mohammedans, except five Jewish and fifteen Druze
girls. Native teachers are also employed, and the pupils are taught
reading, writing, geography, and arithmetic. The principal lesson-book
is the Bible. The early history of this institution is replete with
interest; but it has attracted little public notice hitherto. It has
always been a prudential question whether it would not be wiser to
proceed with its work in a quiet unobtrusive way, so as not to awake
fanatical opposition. But steady and appreciative friends have stood by
it from the beginning, and those who know the school best have commended
it most earnestly.
CHURCH OF SCOTLAND SCHOOL FOR JEWISH GIRLS IN BEIRUT.
This school has been in operation since 1865. Although established
originally for Jewish girls alone, of whom it frequently had fifty in
regular attendance, it has also had under instruction, Greek and Moslem
girls.
Three European teachers and two native teachers have been connected with
it, under the supervision of the Rev. James Robertson, Pastor of the
Anglo-American congregation in Beirût.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE AMOUNT OF BIBLICAL INSTRUCTION GIVEN IN MISSION SCHOOLS.
There has been great difference of opinion with regard to the proper
position of Education in the Foreign Missionary work. While some have
given it the first rank as a missionary agency, others have kept it in
the background as being a non-missionary work, and hence to be left to
the natives themselves to conduct, after their evangelization by the
simple and pure preaching of the gospel. The Syria Mission have been
led, by the experience of long and laborious years of labor in this
peculiar field, to regard education as one of the most important
auxiliaries in bringing the Gospel in contact with the people. Society
and sects are so organized and constituted, that while the people of a
given village would not receive a missionary as simply a preacher of the
Gospel, they will gladly accept a school from his hands, and welcome him
on every visit to the school as a benefactor. They will not only receive
the daily lessons and instructions of the school-teacher in religious
things, but even ask the missionary to preach to them the Word of life.
Schools in Syria are entering wedges for Gospel truth.
Our schools are of two classes, the High schools or Seminaries for
young men and young women, and the common schools for children of both
sexes. In the former, Biblical instruction is the great thing, the chief
design of the High schools being to train the young to a correct and
thorough acquaintance with Divine truth. The course of Bible instruction
conducted by Mr. Calhoun in Abeih Seminary, is, I doubt not, more
thorough and constant, than in any College or High School in the United
States. While the sciences are taught systematically, the Bible is made
the principal text-book, and several hours each day are given to its
study. In our common schools, likewise, Bible reading and instruction
hold a prominent place. Owing to the paucity of books in the Arabic
language proper to be used as reading books, a reading book was prepared
by the Mission, consisting almost exclusively of extracts from the
Scriptures. In addition to this book, the Psalms of David and the New
Testament are used as regular reading books in all the schools. There
are daily exercises in reading the Bible and reciting the Catechism. It
will be observed from what I have stated, that the amount of spiritual
knowledge acquired by the children, in the very process of learning to
read, is not small. Being obliged to commit to memory texts, paragraphs,
and whole chapters, from year to year, their minds become stored with
the precious words of the Sacred Book. Very much depends upon the
teacher. When we can obtain pious, praying teachers, the Scripture
lessons can be given with much more profit and success, and it is our
aim to employ only pious teachers where we can get them. And the example
of the teacher receives a new auxiliary, as it were, in impressing these
lessons on the mind, where the pupils can attend a preaching service on
the Sabbath. Sometimes a pressing call comes from a village, where it
seems important for strategic reasons, to respond at once. A pious
teacher cannot be found, and we send a young man of well-known moral
character. But only necessity would oblige us to do this, and a change
for the better is always made as soon as practicable.
Bible schools are a mighty means of usefulness. I think nothing strikes
a new missionary with more grateful surprise on entering the Syrian
Mission-field, than to witness the great prominence given to Biblical
instruction, from the humblest village school of little Arab boys and
girls, to the highest Seminaries. The examinations in the Scriptures
passed by the young men in Abeih, and the girls in the Beirût and Sidon
Seminaries, would do credit to the young people in any American
community. Bible schools are not merely useful as an entering wedge to
give the missionary a position and an influence among the people; they
are intrinsically useful in introducing a vast amount of useful Bible
knowledge into the minds of the children, and through them to their
parents. In countries where the people as a mass are ignorant of
reading, they are an absolute necessity, and in any community they are a
blessing. Had all Mission Schools been conducted on the same thorough
Biblical basis as those in Syria, there would have been less objection
to schools as a part of the missionary work.
THE SPHERE AND MODES OF WOMAN'S WORK IN FOREIGN LANDS.
In this age, when Christian women in many lands are engaging in the
Foreign Mission work with so much zeal, it is important to know who
should enter personally upon this work, and what are the modes and
departments of labor in which they can engage when on the ground.
No woman should go to the Foreign field who has not sound health,
thorough education, and a reasonable prospect of being able to learn a
foreign language. The languages of different nations differ as to
comparative ease of acquisition, but it is well for any one who has the
_Arabic_ language to learn, to begin as early in life as practicable. It
should be borne in mind that the work in foreign lands is a self-denying
work, and I know of no persons who are called to undergo greater
self-denial than unmarried women engaged in religious work abroad. They
are doing a noble work, a necessary work, and a work of lasting
usefulness. Deprived in many instances of the social enjoyments and
protection of a _home_, they _make_ a home in their schools, and throw
themselves into a peculiar sympathy with their pupils, and the families
with which they are brought into contact. Where several are associated
together, as they always should be, the institution in which they live
becomes a model of the Christian order, sympathy and mutual help, which
is characteristic of the home in Christian lands. Christian women,
married and unmarried, can reach a class in every Arabic community from
which men are sedulously excluded. They should enter upon the foreign
work as a life-work, devote themselves first of all to the mastery of
the language of the people, open their eyes to all that is pleasant and
attractive among the natives, and close them to all that is unlovable
and repulsive, resolved to love the people, and what pertains to them,
for Christ's sake who died for them, and to identify themselves with the
people in every practicable way. Persons who are incapable of loving or
admiring anything that is not American or English had better remain in
America or England; and on the other hand, there is no surer passport to
the affections of any people, than the disposition to overlook their
faults, and to treat them as our brethren and sisters for whom a common
Saviour died. Let no missionary of either sex who goes to a foreign
land, think that there is nothing to be learned from Syrians or Hindoos,
Chinese or Japanese. The good is not all confined to any land or people.
Among the departments of woman's work in foreign lands are the
following:--
I. Teaching in established institutions, Female Seminaries, Orphan
Houses and High Schools.
II. Acting as Nurses in Hospitals, as is done by the Prussian
Protestant Deaconesses of Kaiserswerth, who are scattered over the East
and doing a work of peculiar value.
III. Visiting from house to house, for the express purpose of holding
religious conversation with the people _in their own language_. This can
only be done in Syria by one versed in the Arabic, and able to speak
_without an interpreter_.
Ignorance of the language of the people, is a barrier which no skill of
an interpreter can break down, and every woman who would labor with
acceptance and success among the women of Syria, must be able to speak
to them familiarly in their own mother tongue. Interpreters may be
honest and conscientious, but not one person in a thousand can translate
accurately from one language to another without previous preparation.
And besides, interpreters are not always reliable. There is still
living, in the city of Tripoli, an old man named Abdullah Yanni, who
acted as interpreter for a Jewish Missionary some forty years ago. He
tells many a story of the extraordinary shape which that unsuspecting
missionary's discourses assumed in passing through his lips. One day
they went through the principal street to preach to the Moslems. A great
crowd assembled, and Abdullah trembled, for in those days of darkness
Moslems oppressed and insulted Christians with perfect impunity. Said
the missionary, "Tell the Moslems that unless they all repent and
believe in Christ, they will perish forever." Abdullah translated, and
the Moslems gave loud and earnest expression to their delight. They
declared, "That is so, that is so, welcome to the Khowadja!" Abdullah
had told them that "the Khowadja says, that he loves you very much, and
the Engliz and the Moslems are 'sowa sowa,' _i.e._ together as one."
Abdullah soon found it necessary to tell his confiding friend and
employer, that it would not do to preach in that bold manner, for if he
should translate it literally, the Moslems would kill both of them on
the spot. The missionary replied, "Let them kill us then." Abdullah
said, "it may do very well for you, but I am not prepared to die, and
would prefer to wait." The very first requisite for usefulness in a
foreign land is the language. It might be well, as previously intimated
in this volume, that in each of the Female Seminaries, the number of the
teachers should be large enough to allow the most experienced in the
language to give themselves for a portion of each week to these friendly
religious visits. The Arab race are eminently a sociable, visiting
people, and a foreign lady is always welcome among the women of every
grade of society, from the highest to the lowest.
IV. Holding special Women's Meetings of the Female Church members from
week to week in the homes of the different families. The neighboring
women will come in, and the native women, who would never take part in a
women's prayer-meeting, in the presence of a missionary, will gladly do
it with the example and encouragement of one of their own sex. Such
meetings have been conducted in Hums and Tripoli, in Beirût, Abeih,
Deir el Komr and Sidon, and in Suk el Ghurb, B'hamdûn, Hasbeiya, and
Deir Mimas for many years. Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Isaac Bird, Mrs. Thomson,
Mrs. Van Dyck, Mrs. Whiting, Mrs. Goodell, Mrs. Dr. Dodge, Miss
Williams, Miss Tilden, Mrs. De Forest, Mrs. Calhoun, Mrs. Wilson, Mrs.
Ford, Mrs. Foot, Mrs. Eddy, and Mrs. W. Bird, Mrs. Lyons and Mrs.
Cheney, Mrs. Bliss, Miss Temple, Miss Mason, Mrs. S. Jessup are among
the American Christian women who have labored or are still laboring for
the welfare of their sisters in Syria, and younger laborers more
recently entered into the work, are preparing to prosecute the work with
greater energy than ever. There are other names connected with Woman's
Work in Syria as prosecuted by the American Mission, but the list is too
long to be enumerated in full. Many of them have rested from their
labors, and their works do follow them.
THE BEIRUT FEMALE SEMINARY.
The last Annual Report of the Board of Missions of the Presbyterian
Church of the United States, speaks of these two Female Seminaries as
follows:
"The Beirût Seminary is conducted by Miss Everett, Miss Jackson and Miss
Loring, containing forty boarding and sixty day scholars, where the
object is to give an education suited to the wants of the higher classes
of the people, to gain a control over the minds of those females who
will be most influential in forming society and moulding opinion. This
hold the Papal Sisters of Charity have striven earnestly to gain, and
its vantage ground was not to be abandoned to them. The institution is
rising in public esteem and confidence, as the number and the class of
pupils in attendance testify. The Seminary is close to the Sanctuary,
not less in sympathy than in position, and its whole influence is given
to make its pupils followers of Christ."
In addition to this brief notice, it should be said that there are in
the Beirût Seminary thirty charity boarders, who are selected chiefly
from Protestant, Greek and Druze families, to be trained for teachers of
a high order in the various girls' schools in the land. A special Normal
course of training is conducted every year, and it is believed that
eventually young women trained in other schools will enter this Normal
Department to receive especial preparation for the work of teaching.
The charity boarders are supported by the contributions of Sabbath
Schools and individuals in the United States, with especial reference to
their being trained for future usefulness.
After an experience of nearly ten years in conducting the greater part
of the correspondence with the patrons of this school, and maintaining
their interest in the pupils and teachers whom they were supporting by
their contributions, I would venture to make a few suggestions to the
Christian Mission Bands, Societies, Bible Classes, Sabbath Schools and
individuals who are doing so much for the education of children in
foreign lands.
I. Let all contributions for Women's Work and the education of girls,
be sent through the Women's Boards of Missions, or if that is not
convenient, in the form of a banker's draft on London, payable to the
Principal of the Seminary with whom you have correspondence.
II. If possible, allow your donation to be used for the general purposes
of the Seminary, without insisting that a special pupil or teacher be
assigned to you. But if it be not possible to maintain the interest of
your children and youth in a work so distant without some special
object, then by all means,--
III. Do not demand too much from your over-taxed sisters in the foreign
field in the way of letters and reports. The labors of a teacher are
arduous everywhere. But when instruction is given in a foreign language,
in a foreign climate, and to children of a foreign nation, these labors
are greatly increased. Add then to this toil correspondence with the
Board of Missions, the daily study of the language, the work of visiting
among the people, and receiving their visits, and you can understand how
the keeping up of correspondence with twenty or thirty Sabbath Schools
and Societies is a burden which no woman should be called on to bear.
IV. Do not expect sensational letters from your friends abroad. Do not
take for granted that the child of ten years of age you are supporting,
will develop into a distinguished teacher or Bible woman before the
arrival of the next mail. Do not be discouraged if you have to wait and
pray for years before you hear good tidings. Should any of the native
children ever send you a letter, (and they have about as clear an idea
of who you are and where you are, as they have of the satellites of
Jupiter,) do not expect from their youthful productions the elegance of
Addison or the eloquence of Burke.
V. Pray earnestly for the conversion of the pupils in Mission Schools.
This I regard as the great advantage of the system of having pupils
supported by Christians in the home churches, and known to them by name.
They are made the subjects of special prayer. This is the precious
golden bond which brings the home field near to us, and the foreign
field near to you. Our chief hope for these multitudes of children now
receiving instruction, is, that they will be prayed for by Christians at
home.
THE SIDON FEMALE SEMINARY.
The Annual Report above mentioned, speaks thus of the Sidon Seminary:
"It is conducted by Miss Jacombs and Miss Stainton, and has numbered
about twenty boarders and six day scholars. The boarders are exclusively
from Protestant families, selected from the common schools in all parts
of the field, and are in training for the Mission service, as teachers
and Bible readers. Four of the graduates of last year are already so
employed. One difficulty in the way of reaching with the truth the minds
of the women in the numerous villages of the land, will be obviated in
part, as the results of this work are farther developed.
"There has been considerable seriousness and some hopeful conversions,
in both these seminaries during the past year.
"The work is worthy of the interest taken in it by the Women's Boards of
Missions, and by societies and individuals in the church who have
co-operated in it."
The Sidon Seminary, as stated on a previous page, was begun in 1862, and
has had four European and six native teachers. Of the latter, one was
trained in Mrs. Bird's family, one in Shemlan Seminary, three in the
Sidon school, and one by Mrs. Watson.
Ten of its graduates have been employed as teachers, and eight are still
so engaged.
I annex a list of Girls' Schools now or formerly connected with the
Syria Mission.
No. of No. of When begun
Location. Pupils. Teach'rs
Beirût, Day School, 50 2 1834
" Seminary, 50 10 1848
Sidon, Seminary, 20 3 1862
" Day School, 6 1 1862
Abeih, " 60 1 1853
Deir el Komr, " 50 2 1855 To be resumed soon.
Ghorify, " 40 1 1863 All Druzes.
El Hadeth, " 40 1 1870
Shwifat, " 70 2 1871
Dibbiyeh, " 20 1 1868
B'Hamdûn, " 30 1 1853 Discontinued.
Meshgara, " 30 1 1869 Boys and girls,
Ain Anûb, " 20 1 1870 and 60 boys.
Kefr Shima, " 40 1 1856 Boys and girls.
Rasheiya el
Fokhar, " 30 1 1869
Jedaideh, " 40 1 1870
El Khiyam, " 25 1 1868
Ibl, " 30 1 1868
Deir Mimas, " 15 1 1865
Kana, " 35 1 1869
Hums, " 40 1 1865
Safita, " 30 1 1869
Hamath, " 30 1 1872
------------- -----------------
Totals 23 801 36
This gives a total of twenty-three girls' schools besides the
twenty-four boys' schools under the care of the Mission, and three
schools where there are both boys and girls. I have kept the name of
B'hamdûn in the list, for its historical associations, but the thirty
pupils credited to it, will be more than made good in the girl's school
about to be resumed in Tripoli under the care of Miss Kip.
The total number of girls is about 800, and the number of teachers 36.
The total cost of these twenty-three schools, including the two
Seminaries in Beirût and Sidon, is about eight thousand dollars per
annum, including rents, salaries of five American and English ladies,
and thirty-one native teachers.
The average cost of the common schools in the Sidon field is sixty
dollars per annum, and in the Lebanon field it varies from this sum to
about twice that amount, owing to the fact that the Deir el Komr and
other schools are virtually High Schools.
The teacher in the Sidon field, and in Abeih, and Safita, are graduates
of the Sidon Seminary.
It is probable that a High School or Seminary for girls will be opened
by Miss Kip in Tripoli during the coming year.
The preceding schedule can give but a faint idea of the struggles and
toil, the patient labors, disappointments and trials of faith through
which the women of the American Mission have passed during the last
forty years, in beginning and maintaining so many of these schools for
girls in Syria.
Did I speak of _trials_? The Missionary work has its trials, but I
believe that its joys are far greater. The saddest scenes I have
witnessed during a residence of seventeen years in Syria, have been when
Missionaries have been obliged to _leave the work_ and return to their
native land. There are trials growing out of the hardness of the human
heart, our own want of faith, the seeming slow progress of the gospel,
and the heart-crushing disappointments arising from broken hopes, when
individuals and communities who have promised well, turn back to their
old errors "like the dog to his vomit" again. But of joys it is much
easier to speak, the joy of preaching Christ to the perishing,--of
laboring where others will not labor,--of laying foundations for the
future,--of feeling that you are doing what you can to fulfil the
Saviour's last command,--of seeing the word of God translated into a new
language,--a christian literature beginning to grow,--children and youth
gathered into Schools and Seminaries of learning, and even sects which
hate the Bible obliged to teach their children to read it,--of seeing
christian families growing up, loving the Sabbath and the Bible, the
sanctuary and the family altar.--Then there is the joy of seeing souls
born into the kingdom of our dear Redeemer, and churches planted in a
land where pure Christianity had ceased to exist,--and of witnessing
unflinching steadfastness in the midst of persecution and danger, and
the triumphs of faith in the solemn hour of death.
These are a few of the joys which are strewn so thickly along the path
of the Christian Missionary, that he has hardly time to think of
sorrow, trial and discouragement. Those who have read Dr. Anderson's
"History of Missions to the Oriental Churches," and Rev. Isaac Bird's
"History of the Syria Mission," or "Bible Work in Bible Lands," will see
that the work of the Syria Mission from 1820 to 1872 has been one of
conflict with principalities and powers, and with spiritual wickedness
in high and low places, but that at length the hoary fortresses are
beginning to totter and fall, and there is a call for a general advance
in every department of the work, and in every part of the land.
Other agencies have come upon the ground since the great foundation work
was laid, and the first great victories won, and in their success it
becomes all of God's people to rejoice; but the veterans who fought the
first battles, and overcame the great national prejudice of the Syrian
people against female education, should ever be remembered with
gratitude.
It has been my aim in this little volume to recount the history of
Woman's Work in the past. Who can foretell what the future of Christian
work for Syrian Women will be?
May it ever be a work founded on the Word of God, aiming at the
elevation of woman through the doctrines and the practice of a pure
Christianity, striving to plant in Syria, not the flippant culture of
modern fashionable society, but the God-fearing, Sabbath-loving, and
Bible-reading culture of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors!
A few years ago, a Greek priest named Job, from one of the distant
villages high up in the range of Lebanon, called on me in Beirût. I had
spent several summers in his village, and he had sometimes borrowed our
Arabic sermons to read in the Greek Church, and now, he said, he had
come down to see what we were doing in Beirût. I took him through the
Female Seminary and the Church, and then to the Library and the Printing
Press. He examined the presses, the steam engine, the type-setting, and
type-casting, the folding, sewing, and binding of books, and looked
through the huge cases filled with Arabic books and Scriptures, saw all
the editions of the Bible and the Testament, and then turned in silence
to take his departure. I went with him to the outer gate. He took my
hand, and said, "By your leave I am going. The Lord bless your work.
Sir, I have a thought; we are all going to be swept away, priests and
bishops, Greeks and Maronites, Moslems and Druzes, and there will be
nothing left, nothing but the Word of God and those who follow it. That
is my thought. Farewell."
May that thought be speedily realized! May the coarseness, brutality and
contempt for woman which characterize the Moslem hareem, give way to the
refinement, intelligence, and mutual affection which belong to the
Christian family!
May the God of prophecy and promise, hasten the time when Nusairy
barbarism, Druze hypocrisy, Moslem fanaticism, Jewish bigotry and
nominal Christian superstition shall fade away under the glorious beams
of the rising Sun of Righteousness!
May the "glory of Lebanon" be given to the Lord, in the regeneration
and sanctification of the families of Lebanon!
Too long has it been true, in the degradation of woman, that the "flower
of Lebanon languisheth."
Soon may we say in the truly Oriental imagery of the Song of
Songs,--"Come with me from Lebanon, look from the top of Amana, from the
top of Shenir and Hermon, from the lions' dens, from the mountains of
the leopards,"--and behold, in the culture of woman, in society
regenerated, in home affection, in the Christian family, what is in a
peculiar sense, "a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and
streams from Lebanon!"
"Is it not yet a very little while, and Lebanon shall be turned into a
fruitful field?" When "the reproach of the daughters of Syria," shall be
taken away, and when amid the zearas of the Nusairîyeh, the kholwehs of
the Druzes, the mosques of the Moslems and the tents of the Bedawin, may
be heard the voice of Christ, saying to the poor women of the Arab race,
weary and fainting under the burdens of life:
"Daughter be of good comfort,
Thy faith hath made thee whole,
Go in peace!"
THE CHILDREN'S CHAPTER.
PART I.
_Abeih, Mount Lebanon_, Sept., 1872.
My Dear Son Willie:--
It is now eight years since you left Syria, and you were then so young,
that you must have forgotten all about the country and the people. I
have often promised to tell you more about the Syrian boys and girls,
what they eat and wear, and how they study and play and sleep, and the
songs their mothers sing to them, and many other things. And now I will
try and fulfil my promise.
Here is a little boy at the door. His name is Asaad Mishrik, or "happy
sunrise," and his name is well given, for he comes every morning at
sunrise with a basket of fresh ripe figs, sweet and cold, and covered
with the sparkling dew. This morning when he came, your brother Harry
stood by the door looking at the figs with wistful eyes, and I gave him
a large one, which disappeared very suddenly. Asaad is a bright-eyed
boy, and helps his mother every day.
When he comes in, he says, Subah koom bil khire, "Your morning in
goodness." Then Assaf, the cook, answers him, "Yusaid Subahak," "May God
make happy your morning." If I come out when he is here, he runs up to
kiss my hand, as the Arab children are trained to be respectful to their
superiors. When a little Arab boy comes into a room full of older
people, he goes around and kisses the hand of each one and then places
it on his forehead. Asaad wears a red tarboosh or cap on his head, a
loose jacket, and trowsers which are like a blue bag gathered around the
waist, with two small holes for his feet to go through. They are drawn
up nearly to his knees, and his legs are bare, as he wears no stockings.
He wears red shoes pointed and turned up at the toes. When he comes in
at the door, he leaves his shoes outside, but keeps his cap on his head.
The people never take off their caps or turbans when entering a house,
or visiting a friend, but always leave their shoes at the door. The
reason is, that their floors are covered with clean mats and rugs, and
in the Moslem houses, the man kneels on his rug to pray, and presses his
forehead to the floor, so that it would not be decent or respectful to
walk in with dirty shoes and soil his sijjady on which he kneels to
pray. They have no foot-mats or scrapers, and it is much cheaper and
simpler to leave the shoes, dirt and all at the door. Sometimes we are
much embarrassed in calling on the old style Syrians as they look with
horror on our muddy feet, and we find it not quite so easy to remove
our European shoes. But it must be done, and it is better to take a
little extra trouble, and regard their feelings and customs, than to
appear coarse and rude.
It is very curious to go to the Syrian school-houses, and see the piles
of shoes at the door. There are new bright red shoes, and old tattered
shoes, and kob kobs, and black shoes, and sometimes yellow shoes. The
kob kobs are wooden clogs made to raise the feet out of the mud and
water, having a little strap over the toe to keep it on the foot. You
will often see little boys and girls running down steps and paved
streets on these dangerous kob kobs. Sometimes they slip and then down
they go on their noses, and the kob kobs fly off and go rattling over
the stones, and little Ali or Yusef, or whatever his name is, begins to
shout, Ya Imme! Ya Imme! "Oh, my mother!" and cries just like little
children in other countries.
But the funniest part of it is to see the boys when they come out of
school and try to find their shoes. There will be fifty boys, and of
course a hundred shoes, all mixed together in one pile. When school is
out, the boys make a rush for the door. Then comes the tug of war. A
dozen boys are standing and shuffling on the pile of shoes, looking
down, kicking away the other shoes, running their toes into their own,
stumbling over the kob kobs, and then making a dash to get out of the
crowd. Sometimes shins will be kicked, and hair pulled, and tarbooshes
thrown off, and a great screaming and cursing follow, which will only
cease when the Mûallim comes with his "Asa" or stick, and quells the
riot. That pile of shoes will have to answer for a good many schoolboy
fights and bruised noses and hard feelings in Syria. You would wonder
how they can tell their own shoes. So do I. And the boys often wear off
each other's shoes by mistake or on purpose, and then you will see Selim
running with one shoe on, and one of Ibrahim's in his hand, shouting and
cursing Ibrahim's father and grandfather, until he gets back his lost
property. Sometimes when men leave their shoes outside the door of a
house where they are calling, some one will steal them, and then they
are in a sorry plight. Shoes are regarded as very unclean, and when you
are talking in polite society, it will never do to speak of them,
without asking pardon. You would say, "the other day some one stole my
new shoes, ajellak Allah," _i.e._, May God exalt you above such a vile
subject! You would use the same words if you were talking with a Moslem,
and spoke of a dog, a hog, a donkey, a girl or a woman.
They do not think much of girls in Syria. The most of the people are
very sorry when a daughter is born. They think it is dreadful, and the
poor mother will cry as if her heart would break. And the neighbors come
in and tell her how sorry they are, and condole with her, just as if
they had come to a funeral. In Kesrawan, a district of Mount Lebanon
near Beirût, the Arab women have a proverb, "The threshold weeps forty
days when a girl is born."
There is a great change going on now in Syria in the feelings of the
people in regard to girls, but in the interior towns and villages where
the light of the Gospel has not shone as yet, and there are no schools,
they have the ancient ideas about them up to this very hour.
I knew an old Syrian grandmother in Tripoli who would not kiss her
granddaughter for six months after she was born, because she was born a
girl! But I know another family in that city of Tripoli that do not
treat girls in that style. The father is Mr. Antonius Yanni, a good
Christian man, and a member of the Mission Church. He is American Vice
Consul, and on the top of his house is a tall flag-staff, on which
floats the stars and stripes, on Fourth of July, and the Sultan's
birthday, Queen Victoria's birthday, and other great feast days. One day
when the Tripoli women heard that "Sitt Karîmeh, Yanni's wife, had
another "_bint_," (girl) they came in crowds to comfort her in her great
affliction! When Yanni heard of it, he could not restrain himself. He
loved his older daughter Theodora very dearly, and was thankful to God
for another sweet baby girl, so he told the women that he would have
none of this heathenish mourning in his house. He then shouted to his
janizary or Cawass, a white bearded old Moslem named Amr, "Amr, haul up
the Bandaira el Americanîyeh, (American flag) to show the world how glad
I am that I have another daughter." "On my head, on my head, sir," said
Amr, and away he went and hauled up the stars and stripes. Now the
Pasha's palace is not far away, and soon the Turkish guards saw the
flag, and hastened to the Pasha with the news that the American Consul
had some great feast day, as his flag was raised. The Pasha, supposing
it to be some important national feast day of the American Government
which he was so stupid as not to know about, sent his Chief Secretary at
once to Mr. Yanni to ask what feast it might be? Yanni received him
politely and ordered a narghileh and coffee and sherbet, and after
saying "good-morning," and "may you live forever," and "God prolong your
days!" over and over and over again, and wishing that Doulet America
might ever flourish, the Secretary asked which of the great American
festivals he was celebrating that day. Yanni laughed and said,
"Effendum, you know how many of the ignorant in Syria are so foolish as
to mourn and lament when God sends them a daughter, but I believe that
all God's gifts are good, and that daughters are to be valued as much as
sons, and to rebuke this foolish notion among the people, I put up my
flag as a token of joy and gratitude." "Sebhan Allah! you have done
right, sir," ... was the Secretary's reply, and away he went to the
Pasha. What the Pasha said, I do not know, but there was probably more
cursing than usual that day in the grand palace of Tripoli, for the
Mohammedans think the birth of a daughter a special judgment from God.
When a boy is born, there is great rejoicing. Presents are sent to him,
and the people call to congratulate the father, and the whole house is
gay and joyous. After a few days a dainty dish called "Mughly" is made
and sent around as a present to all of the relatives. It is made of
pounded rice, and flavored with rich spices and sugar and put into
little bowls, and almonds and other nuts sprinkled over the top. One of
these little bowls is sent to each of the friends. But when a girl is
born, there is no rejoicing, no giving of presents, and no making of the
delicious "mughly."