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THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH
[Illustration:
DANCING GIRL OF JEYPORE.
Frontispiece.]
THE HARIM AND THE PURDAH
Studies of Oriental Women
by
ELIZABETH COOPER
Author of “My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard,” “The Soul Traders,” etc.
Illustrated
New York
The Century Company
(All rights reserved)
(Printed in Great Britain)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 9
CHAPTER
I. EGYPTIAN WOMEN OF THE PAST 19
II. THE MODERN EGYPTIAN WOMAN 39
III. MARRIAGE, DIVORCE, POLYGAMY 56
IV. THE WOMAN OF THE DESERT 69
V. INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE 85
VI. INDIAN HOME LIFE 100
VII. MARRIAGE—THE GOAL OF WOMAN 113
VIII. INDIAN MOTHERHOOD 130
IX. WOMAN’S SORROW 143
X. HYDERABAD AND THE MOHAMMEDAN WOMAN 154
XI. MOHAMMEDANISM WITHIN THE ZENANA 170
XII. BURMAH 179
XIII. BURMESE RELIGION AND SUPERSTITION 200
XIV. THE LADY OF CHINA 211
XV. THE RED CHAIR OF MARRIAGE 240
XVI. WHEN CHINESE WOMEN DIE 254
XVII. CHANGING CHINA 260
XVIII. JAPANESE WOMEN AT HOME 271
CONCLUSION 307
ILLUSTRATIONS
DANCING GIRL OF JEYPORE _Frontispiece_
Facing page
“TWO WOMEN SHALL BE GRINDING AT THE MILL” 9
EGYPTIAN WOMAN OF THE LOWER CLASS 19
RAMESES AND HIS WIFE 20
A WATER-CARRIER 36
THE TAILOR 44
A WOMAN OF THE MASSES 64
CHILDREN ON THE NILE 66
BEDOUIN WOMEN IN FRONT OF TENT 69
A HOLY MAN, BENARES 96
CRADLE IN VILLAGE, BARODA 132
INDIAN WOMEN SPINNING 148
A CARRIAGE FOR WOMEN 154
MOHAMMEDAN WOMEN, HYDERABAD 170
HUSKING RICE IN A BURMESE VILLAGE 179
BURMESE GIRL 180
DANCING AT A VILLAGE FESTIVAL, BURMAH 183
A BUDDHIST SCHOOL MANDALAY (SHOWING BEGGING-BOWL) 194
BURMESE BOY WITH TATTOOED LEGS 196
_EN ROUTE_ TO A FESTIVAL, BURMAH 198
A BURMESE WOMAN AND HER CIGAR 206
BURMESE WORKING WOMAN 208
GOLDEN PAGODA, MANDALAY 210
CHINESE WOMEN WARMING HANDS AND FEET WITH BRAZIERS 214
CHINESE WOMEN AND CHAIR-BEARERS 218
BOUND FEET OF CHINESE WOMAN 221
AN OLD-FASHIONED CHINESE GIRLS’ SCHOOL 224
WHEELBARROW AND COOLIE—USED IN PLACE OF WAGONS IN TOWNS
AND COUNTRY VILLAGES NEAR SHANGHAI 236
RAIN-COATS OF CHINESE WORKMEN 246
RICE-BOATS ON CANAL, CHINA 260
JAPANESE CHILDREN PLAYING 276
AN OUTDOOR KITCHEN IN JAPAN 290
[Illustration:
“TWO WOMEN SHALL BE GRINDING AT THE MILL.”
To face p. 9.]
INTRODUCTION
“What thou biddest
Unargued I obey. So God ordains;
God is _thy_ law, thou mine: to know no more
Is woman’s happiest knowledge, and her praise.”
This is the creed of the woman of the East to-day. It is the same as it
has been for centuries; it will continue the same for centuries to come.
Indeed, it is a question whether the Oriental woman, with all her
intellectual and social advance which is already beginning, will be able
ever to free herself from those traditional and inherent influences
which have been wrought into the very warp and woof of Eastern humanity.
The Eastern woman is primarily a traditionalist. She is more closely
bound by hereditary tendency than the woman of the West. One of her
outstanding characteristics has lain for years in her dependency and
passive reliance upon her husband for economic support and protection.
Her very seclusion means to her, not that which the word would connote
to the Westerner, slavery or imprisonment; to her it is rather the
mantle of protective care and interest thrown over her by her lord and
master. It has helped to make her feminine, as it has naturally added to
her inefficiency as far as any work is concerned that bears a similitude
of masculine activity.
With the exception of the Burmese woman, and to an appreciable and
growing extent the women of Japan, the Oriental woman has been
influenced and moulded by her economic necessities. The Eastern attitude
toward woman, which in general has been to keep her ignorant and to
consider that her charms other than those relating to her physical
attractions are minute, has brought about a feminine type peculiar to
itself. The result is a woman who outside of the home has no power of
gaining a livelihood, and who as a natural consequence has turned her
whole thought, emotion, and imagination upon her domestic affairs.
Furthermore, we find in such countries of the Orient as Burmah and
Japan, where women are solving the problem of self-support, that they
have also been able, not only to have greater freedom, but also, to a
certain extent, they have demanded the right to choose their own mates
and regulate the laws concerning their home life. For instance, in each
of these countries the wife has the right of divorcing her husband—a
right denied the woman of other Oriental lands. The property rights of
women in these lands, where women are just beginning to be wage-earners,
are also clearly set forth in their civil codes, giving justice to the
women.
The realm of the Eastern woman is primarily the realm of the home. She
has the true spirit of the bee; she considers the collective good of the
household before her own. Her great vocation is to be a wife and mother.
She attends personally to her household duties, and domestic service is
to her not a disgrace. Her children are to her a veritable life-work.
She looks after them personally, superintends their every act, and
watches closely their development. Even the high lady of the East does
not consider it demeaning to cook with her own hands that which she
knows will appeal to the taste of her family. Cooking, indeed, is
regarded as a fine art in the East, and recipes are handed down like
heirlooms from mother to daughter along with the family jewels.
The Eastern woman is honoured by the honour of her household. It is her
business to make it possible for her husband and her sons to advance,
and she shines in the reflected light of their achievements. She has not
been taught, neither has she any suspicion of the Western ambition to
make name and fame for herself. There is a certain delight and
satisfaction in living behind the veil which one can hardly appreciate
from the Western point of view. That this Eastern feminine regards her
success as domestic rather than social is abundantly proved to any one
who lives intimately in touch with the women of these countries.
The one great cry which goes up from the heart of every Oriental woman,
regardless of place or station, in any home between Algiers and Tokio,
is, “Give me sons!” It is this desire for men-children, and the belief
on the part of the woman that this is the primal and ultimate destiny of
womanhood, that has made marriage the universal custom for all women
throughout the East. Rarely indeed do you find an unmarried woman. In
India marriage is assured by betrothal in early childhood; and even in
those countries where education and Western influence are raising the
age limit of marriages one finds no diminution in the general feeling
that woman’s world is the home, with her children about her.
This devotion to the purely domestic realm has left the woman a victim
to ignorance, superstition, and the many evils that follow in their
train. One finds the same superstition working in the minds of the women
in Cairo, in Calcutta, and in Peking. The Egyptian mother dresses her
boy in rags to guard him from the baneful influence of the “evil eye,”
while the woman of China pierces her son’s ears and places a ring
therein, to deceive the gods and make them think he is a girl. The woman
of Algiers will buy charms and magic symbols to bring her the blessing
of motherhood, while the woman of Japan visits shrines and holy places,
where her faith and superstition are traded upon by those who understand
the weakness of their womenkind. She has so long been accustomed to rely
upon her superstitions, her emotions, and to use her intuition in the
place of a brain, that the present beginnings in education have been
hampered. That, however, she will prove herself capable in the realm of
mental training is proven by the fact that, especially in Egypt and in
Japan, modern schools for girls are becoming really popular movements in
the development of these countries. Every advance in the education of
men adds to the possibility of intellectual emancipation for women.
During long ages Eastern women have been denied the right to think for
themselves and have been compelled to feel their way emotionally, and
their power to feel thus has become abnormally developed at the expense
of their power to judge or reason. The woman of the Orient is a woman
swayed by emotions, by the heart instead of by the intellect.
There is a logical line of connection to be traced among the modern
women of the East. Her phases of development have been the inevitable
outcome of influences to which she has been taught to submit as a duty.
Her religious sense—the strong spiritual craving that is deep within the
heart of all women—has been utilized as a means of influencing her to
yield implicit obedience to her mankind, whether he be father, brother,
or husband. She has made him, in a certain sense, her god, and in
yielding all to him she has ceased to think in the terms of her own
individuality, accepting the common opinion that the Eastern woman lives
for her home and the amusement and the material comfort of her husband.
A mental deficiency bill was passed upon her centuries ago, and the laws
command her husband to keep her under restraint. Her menfolks expect her
to be deficient, and have carefully guarded her from opportunities of
becoming otherwise. Her husband has not associated her with any of his
outside life, and she has found little or nothing in his conversation to
stimulate or to broaden her mind. Considering her as a being who only
understands her children and the petty gossip of the women’s quarters,
he has deprived her of the mental possibilities which have reached the
men of the East. He has not only tried to teach her not to think for
herself, but the Eastern masculine has endeavoured to make her
understand that she cannot think. Nor is this tendency entirely
abolished by modern education. The young girl fresh from her school in
Cairo or Calcutta, where she has caught glimpses of a new world, and
where her brain has been slightly awakened, marries and goes into the
traditional home, where her faith in herself is gradually diminished by
living constantly in the atmosphere of ignorance and superstition which
still rules so largely in her woman’s world. Finally, she gives up
trying, resigning herself to the standard of the man-made world in which
she finds herself, and her husband becomes her keeper in every sense of
the word.
The Eastern woman naturally tends in this way to lose her self-reliance,
which she is not allowed to exercise. She often decides few matters for
herself, even the small details of her daily life being settled by her
husband. The effect is insidious, but none the less relaxing, since the
faculty of responsibility, like every other faculty, is strengthened
only by exercise, and passes away with disuse.
Can the woman of the East be awakened to an advanced development without
harm to herself? Within her is found an enormous amount of suppressed
capacity for good and evil. This suppression, which has been her cue for
generations, possesses great dynamic power. Force becomes dangerous when
confined; it should be directed, and unless properly guided and
controlled, when it does burst forth, as it is bound to do with these
women who are becoming educated and learning their power, it is likely
to riot widely, with havoc for its effect. The Eastern woman who has
traded upon her emotional nature for her livelihood, who has used these
same emotions to keep her husband in a land where divorce is easy and
where polygamy is practised by many, may be guided by her feelings
rather than her intellect, using her new-found freedom to bring her
lasting unhappiness instead of the joy which she now believes is lying
just outside her doors. In India advance has come too rapidly at times,
and the woman in her desire to slavishly imitate her sisters from the
West has shocked the conservative traditions of her nation, and thereby
greatly retarded her cause. The Egyptian woman when in England or France
becomes almost ludicrous in her attempts to be like the European woman,
forgetting that she lacks the foundation of the years of freedom and
equality with men which bring judgment and confidence to the woman of
the Western world.
The woman of the Orient is awakening and is setting herself the task to
consider what is best to be done. How can she remedy the deficiency of
the social life of her land? The case is not a hopeless one by any
means, even though her capacities and wonderful possibilities have lain
dormant for so long. Many of these women now see the things that are
wrong; they see the iniquity of a system in which they are not allowed
to choose their own mate; they see the crying wrongs of their antiquated
marriage and divorce laws, made for another period than the twentieth
century—laws which do not fit the present conditions, however successful
they may have been in other times. These women are learning to respect
themselves and their position, learning to appreciate and value the
weight of their majorities, and some are having the courage to speak
out. These bolder ones are being punished for their intrepidity; but it
does not check them. The cause for which they are working is gradually
becoming more and more possible with the advent of education and Western
influences, which are causing the present-day educated men of the Orient
to require a certain amount of education in their wives and daughters.
As this new order comes to the land of the Nile and the Ganges, the
old-time woman who passed her days lounging on the divans, eating
sweets, drinking coffee, and gossiping with servants and friends as
ignorant as herself, will pass away. The new woman of the East will
never be a suffragette; she will never attend mass meetings nor carry
banners marked “Votes for Women”; indeed, it would be as incongruous to
think of these sheltered women doing such a thing as to imagine the long
row of mummies at the Museum of Cairo suddenly starting a procession
down the aisles of the museum. These women, however, are setting up a
high standard for themselves, eager to accept all the Western world has
to offer them by way of education and growth, while they feel that they
have the capacity to attain the objects of their new ambitions.
In all this change, will the Oriental woman remain the same as regards
the deepest things in her nature? Will she keep her innate sense of
modesty, her womanliness, her love of home and children, her feminine
qualities which seem to us of the Western world almost a weakness, but
which comprise her appealing charm? We cannot but feel that although the
woman of the East may change radically in the outward expression of her
life, inwardly she will remain the same. Indeed, it would be a great
mistake if the Eastern woman became satisfied with any mere superficial
imitation of her Western sisters. She would lose her birthright. She
would lose the consummate opportunity of being an Oriental in an
Oriental world, and bringing out of her treasure things new and old for
the benefit of the women of every race. Her message to the world of the
West in the devotion and the keeping of the home, in the love and pride
of children, in her self-effacement for the good of the family, is a
high message and in no period has it been more insistently needed. It is
this contribution which the woman of the Orient will bring in return for
the education and enlightenment from the Occident.
If the Western woman comes to the Oriental bringing in her hands the
fair gifts of intellectual advancement and broadened life, her Eastern
sister will not be her debtor if she, by example, presents in return the
even more precious charms of obedience, modesty, and loyalty which
fundamentally are the priceless jewels in the crown of the world’s
womanhood.
[Illustration:
EGYPTIAN WOMAN OF THE LOWER CLASS.
To face p. 19.]
The Harim and the Purdah
CHAPTER I
EGYPTIAN WOMEN OF THE PAST
The word Egypt opens the Book of Romance to the traveller in the East,
and he longs to come under the spell of its mysterious grandeur, and
gaze upon the monuments which will speak to him of the power and
splendour of a people long since gathered to their gods. It is a land in
which to dream dreams and see visions. The temples, broken columns, and
great pylons call with a voice that must be heard even by the prosaic
tourist, and the hands he sees painted upon the walls of Denderah or
Deirel Bahari will beckon him when sitting in office, club, or home, far
from the dazzling sands or burning sun of Africa.
The charm of the land of the Pharaohs is very real, and it is hard to
speak of Egyptian life in a calm and lucid style, or free oneself from
extravagant descriptions.
Egypt and its fascination are favourite themes for novelists and writers
of travel, and yet in spite of a good deal of general knowledge we
remain curiously ignorant of the Egyptian woman, from the point of view
of her moral and mental development. In common with women of other
Oriental lands, she has been an object of mystery to the Western world.
We know that in the olden time, in the days of the Pharaohs, she held an
important place in the life of her world. We see her pictures on the
tombs, temples were erected in her honour, and we know that there were
queens who in their day governed their country with dignity and rare
ability.
In former days the purity of the blood of the royal line was assured by
the marriage of a brother and sister, the queen reigning equally with
the king. If a queen of royal birth took as her consort a male not
descended directly from a royal mother, even though his father might
have been a Pharaoh, at the death of his wife he was compelled to
abdicate in favour of the son or daughter who could call the queen
“mother.” This was shown when Thotmes I was compelled to resign his
crown in favour of that great Queen Hatshepsu, his daughter, who for
twenty years governed Egypt. Although her reign was a stormy one because
of her half-brothers who claimed the throne, her name and features
erased from all the monuments, and omitted from the official tablets and
chronological records, yet enough was left to show that her power had
been great and that she commanded the attention of the world. It is said
that Hatshepsu had herself everywhere depicted as a man, wearing the
dress and even the beard of the stronger sex, perhaps hoping in this way
to gain a greater allegiance of her people.
[Illustration:
RAMESES AND HIS WIFE.
To face p. 20.]
One of the most interesting temples along the Nile is that of the first
woman ruler of Egypt of whom we have accurate knowledge. One rides over
the hot sands beneath a burning sun to a series of great terraces and
broken white columns against a background of tiger-coloured precipices.
This beautiful temple of the XVIIIth Dynasty, called by the Egyptians
“the Sublime of the Sublime,” was dedicated to Amen Ra and his companion
gods, Hathor and Anubis, but it was really erected to commemorate the
glorious reign of a great queen.
Another woman who influenced Egypt was the mother of Amenophis IV, the
great reformer. He disestablished the State religion, some say at the
instance of his mother; confiscated the lands and destroyed the power of
the priests of Amon who were becoming all-powerful; and established the
worship of one God.
Solomon evidently held the Egyptians in high favour. He had many wives
before he married a princess of Egypt, but we hear of no palaces being
built especially for any of them, nor of the worship of their gods being
introduced into Jerusalem. Yet we are told that a magnificent palace was
built for Pharaoh’s daughter and that she was permitted, although
contrary to the laws of Israel, to worship the gods of her country.
Then there was Hypatia, an Alexandrine, who established a school of
philosophy where learned men from all parts of the world came to listen
to her words of wisdom; and in the British Museum there is a manuscript
of the Old and New Testament, written on parchment immediately after the
Council of Nice, by an Egyptian woman, which goes to prove that men did
not possess all the knowledge nor learning of their time.
We all know the story of Cleopatra and the part she played in the
downfall of her country, and history abounds with tales narrating the
bravery, courage, and charm of Egyptian women.
Women are also associated with the religion of this old land. The
worship of Isis was as general as the worship of her brother Osiris, and
this goddess is reverenced as the representation of true and loyal
wifehood.
Another woman, Athor, the goddess of love, who was called the “Great
Mother” and served as the protectress of earthly mothers, was good and
beautiful, lovely and gentle, the goddess of love and joy. Neith was
worshipped as the goddess of art and learning. Maat was the goddess of
truth and justice; and in ancient times judges, when trying cases, held
a small figure of the goddess Maat in their hands, and touched the
persons acquitted with it, to show that they had won their cause.
There was Taur, the goddess of evil, and Sekhet, typical of the
scorching, destructive power of the sun, and many minor goddesses whose
emblems, seen on columns and walls of the ancient ruins, tell us that in
those days woman was thought fit to represent Divinity.
The women of ancient Egypt were evidently not secluded, as is shown by
the story of Pharaoh’s daughter who was going with her train of maids to
bathe when she found Moses. The story of Potiphar’s wife and Joseph
would never have been told in modern times, as a man-servant would not
have dared to go to the women’s quarters.
This valley of the Nile has always been the home of mystery and charm.
The inscriptions on its tombs and temples have been deciphered and
receive much attention in modern days; but they are not more interesting
than is the woman of Egypt, who, as we have learned, enjoyed greater
liberties and received more honour than is the heritage of her modern
daughters. It is difficult to understand her, as even yet she represents
traditions and the habits of dead centuries, fit to be relegated to the
past.
She is the Sphinx of this Oriental land, and will not easily give to the
world her secrets.
THE MOHAMMEDAN WOMAN.
When first one visits Egypt, romance seems to peer from beneath the veil
of each black-robed figure, and mystery lurks behind the intricate
carving that covers the windows where one is sure some languid beauty
sits waiting for the moment when her lord and master will be gone, that
she may wave a white hand to the passionate suitor below. This idea of
Egypt is generally derived from highly coloured and erotic novels which
always make this country alluring and often sensual. To one who has been
given this highly seasoned food for his imagination to feed upon the
modern Egypt, with its great glaring hotels, its motor-cars, its shops
that might be in London or New York, is a great disappointment.
Illusions will again be lost if one is permitted to enter the beautiful
homes on the fashionable drives of Cairo, for they are not Eastern in
any sense, nor is there anything about them to indicate that their
owners are Orientals. They express no individuality, and might belong to
any person of means whether in the East or the West. The drawing-rooms
are furnished in French fashion, with gilded chairs, a grand piano,
hangings and curtains made in England or France. Great glass chandeliers
holding the glaring electric lights express the cosmopolitanism which
the mistress feels she must show the world, in order that she may not be
considered as belonging to the old school of Egyptian womanhood.
One hears the word harim and instantly conjures up an Arabian Nights
picture of rare hangings, subdued lights, beautiful odalisques lounging
on soft divans, slaves, incense, and a general air of sensuousness
pervading the entire place. I read a book not long ago written by a
well-known woman writer who says, “I am thankful to say that I have
never been within a harim except twice, and the memory of that dreadful
place will rest with me for many years.” Yet she admits that on her
first visit to this “dreadful place” she had no interpreter and could
only draw upon her imagination to give the women she saw their position
in the elaborate household. This imagination was evidently a vivid one,
as she believed that many women she saw were “the poor deluded slaves”
of the master of the house, while quite likely they were the innumerable
relatives and woman-servants that always throng the rich man’s home.
In reality, in present-day modern Cairo, if one enters the harim of the
better class, or of the official class, one is greeted by a hostess
dressed in the latest French creation, tea is served, while the politics
of the world are discussed easily in either French or English by the
polished, up-to-date Egyptian women.
The word harim is much misunderstood by the people of the Western world.
The Arabic word harim simply means the women’s quarters. The selam-lik
are the apartments in which the men of the household have their business
offices, receive their friends, and pass their time, while the harim-lik
are the apartments reserved for the female members and children of the
family. The literal meaning is exclusiveness, seclusion, privacy. In its
restricted sense it embodies the two meanings of the women of the
household and their exclusive apartments. In the wider acceptance of the
term we understand by harim an established social system deriving its
sanction from a body of laws promulgated by the Arabian prophet
Mohammed. When a woman is harim it means that she is secluded, and we
hear the expression in regard to schoolgirls. “Yes, my daughters go to
school,” a mother will say, “but they are kept harim.”
In Persia and Turkey the word zenana is used, and in India the common
form of expression for the woman who is not seen by any male except
those of her immediate family is, “She is purdah-nashim, or simply
purdah.” The purdah is the screen that shuts her from the outside world,
and the Oriental, whatever his race, whether in Egypt, Turkey, or India,
whether he calls it the harim, purdah, or zenana, speaks of it in his
literature and poetry as the “Sanctuary of Conjugal Happiness.”
One can live years in the East and get little idea of the life of the
Moslem woman of the better class. In Egypt ten million out of the twelve
million inhabitants are followers of the prophet Mohammed, and to
understand at all the Eastern woman one must learn something of the
religion that dominates the entire life of the Mohammedan. The actions
of the Moslem woman, whether in India, Arabia, Egypt, Persia, or
Algiers, are controlled and forced to comply with the laws made by the
Arabian prophet of the seventh century, and even to-day his word
practically governs each act of the domestic life as well as the world
outside the home.
Before Mohammed’s time there were no social, religious, nor educational
institutions in Arabia, as we understand them. Unlimited polygamy,
slavery, drunkenness, polytheism, gambling, child murder, and plunder
existed. He taught that there was but one God, forbade child murder,
limited the number of wives to four, forbade the use of intoxicating
liquors, gambling, usury, and gave women a definite legal status.
The reforms inaugurated by this wonderful man effected vast and marked
improvement in the position of the women of the Eastern world. Her
status had degenerated from that held in ancient times until her
position was extremely degraded. She was the chattel of her father,
brother, or husband, like his camel or his sheep, and could be bought
and sold as any other chattel. She was an integral part of her husband’s
estate and was inherited by his heirs. The son inherited his father’s
wives and often married them. This Mohammed severely censured, and laid
down most exacting laws in regard to the women lawful for a man to
marry. He says:—
And marry not them whom your fathers have married; for this is a
shame and hateful, and an evil way—though what is past may be
allowed. Forbidden to you are your mothers and your daughters, and
your sisters, and your aunts, both on your father’s and your
mother’s side, and your foster-mothers and your foster-sisters, and
the mothers of your wives, and your stepdaughters who are your
wards, born of your wives, and the wives of your sons, and ye may
not have two sisters.
He is severely criticized that he authorized polygamy, but when one
remembers the wild, lawless people whom he governed, it seems that he
showed extreme moderation in limiting the number of wives to four. He
added that a man might possess the slaves within the household, and his
followers say he was compelled to put in this postscript in order to
quiet the unrest that was caused by the new domestic regulation which
was so contrary to all ideas then controlling his immediate world.
He expressly stated that if a man could not deal justly and love equally
all his wives, he must then marry but one. All true believers quote this
as meaning that Mohammed really intended his people to be monogamous, as
it was fully known that no man could love four women with equal ardour.
The husband is also enjoined to partition his time equally amongst his
families, and there is a saying that if a man inclines particularly to
one of the women of his household, in the day of judgment he will
incline to one side by being a paralytic.
He allowed women to inherit property, although he gave a girl only half
the inheritance of a boy. A wife may inherit one-fourth of her husband’s
estate if there are no children, and one-eighth if there are children;
if there is more than one wife, the eighth is divided equally amongst
them. A man may inherit one-half of his wife’s property in the event of
her being childless, but only one-quarter if she leaves children, and
neither one can disinherit the other.
Yet the laws show clearly that a woman was not legally the equal of a
man, as it takes the testimony of two women to equal that of one man,
and the price of a woman’s life was only fifty camels instead of the
hundred camels demanded for the life of a man. There is a reason for
this other than the mere disregard of women. Those days were lawless
days, when tribe was fighting tribe and the non-fighting women were
naturally not held in such esteem as were the men who were needed to
fight in the continuous tribal wars.
Moslems claim that the Mohammedan woman is more truly protected by the
laws of Mohammed than are the women of Western countries. She can
dispose of any property that she may receive, either from her family or
her husband, as she sees fit. She is not responsible for the debts of
her husband; she can sue and be sued; or she can make contracts or enter
into any business undertaking without consulting her husband; and she
may even take him before the courts if he does not live up to an
agreement he may have made with her.
Yet this wily Eastern prophet did not believe in the absolute equality
of women; as he says:—
Men are superior to women on account of the qualities with which God
hath gifted one above the other, and on account of the outlay they
make from their substance for them;
and he warns his followers from making too large settlements on them or
in giving them too many valuable gifts:
And entrust not to the incapable the substance which God hath placed
with you for their support; but maintain them therewith, and clothe
them, and speak to them with kindly speech.
A Moslem woman is supposed to share the responsibilities of life as well
as its pleasures. In the case of destitute parents, sons are required to
contribute two-thirds towards their support, while the daughters must
add their third. This is a very wise law, because Egypt, like
practically all Oriental countries, makes no provision from its public
funds for the maintenance of the poor or old. Each family must care for
its own helpless.
Many reasons are given for the laws compelling the women of Mohammedan
lands to be veiled and to pass their life within the inner apartments
reserved for their especial use. Some say that Mohammed caused women to
be veiled because of his jealousy of his young wife Ayesha; others claim
that the prophet, becoming enamoured by the beauty of his adopted son’s
wife, caused her to be divorced, afterwards marrying her, contrary to
the laws he himself had made; he wished to protect men from being
subjected to the temptation which had overtaken him and had brought upon
him the displeasure of his people. But the seclusion of women was found
in Asia, in ancient Rome, in Syria, and even in Athens, long before the
time of Mohammed. It was in practice amongst many Oriental nations from
the earliest times, and quite likely Mohammed simply adopted the customs
of the people with whom he came in contact on his conquering tours.
The seclusion of women, especially among the nomads, can be traced to
the warlike habits of the people. In times of war the enemy would first
of all carry away the women, children, and cattle of the tribe with whom
they were fighting. In order to protect the helpless they were kept in
inner rooms. The richer and stronger the family, the more secluded were
the women, and it became a mark of caste to be kept within the women’s
quarters, or protected. Thus what first originated as a necessity became
afterwards a matter of aristocracy, and the man who could keep his women
strictly harim was looked upon as higher in the social scale than one
who was compelled, from economic reasons or otherwise, to allow the
females of his household to come and go freely in the world.
An Egyptian woman, from the time when she is seven or eight years old,
never shows her face unveiled to any man except her father, her brother,
or her husband. No chance is given the followers of the Arabian prophet
to have the little flirtations that are so dear to the heart of many of
her Western sisters. Mohammed says:—
And speak to the believing women that they refrain their eyes and
display not their ornaments, except those which are external; and
that they throw their veils over their bosoms, and display not their
ornaments except to their husbands, or their fathers, or their
husbands’ fathers, or their sons, or their husbands’ sons, or their
brothers or their brothers’ sons, or their sisters’ sons, or their
women, or their slaves or their children. And let them not strike
their feet together so as to discover their hidden ornaments.
The present-day Mohammedan woman observes this law more strictly than
was at first intended, even to not being seen by the father of her
husband. I know an Egyptian woman who is never seen by her father-in-law
except on the first day of the year, when he calls upon her to wish her
the joys of the coming year. She enters the room closely veiled and
offers him the season’s greetings, then leaves without further
conversation. I was calling upon an Indian Mohammedan woman who could
not enter the room until her father-in-law had left it, as it would have
been a serious breach of etiquette for him to see her.
This seclusion does not rest heavily upon the Mohammedan woman, as she
considers it the desire of her husband to protect her, and she would be
the first to resent the breaking of her seclusion, as showing that she
had lost value in his eyes. She lives for no one except her family, is
supposed to be of no interest to any one else, it being a great breach
of social decorum for any male member of a family to even inquire about
her. A man would never say to another man, “Is your wife well?” He would
say, “Is your household well?” And the husband would never speak of his
“wife” to another man, but would speak of his “house,” which would
naturally include the female occupants.
The harim is the “Holy of Holies” in the Moslem world. Even a police
official would hardly dare to penetrate the women’s quarters in search
of a criminal. When a man has retired to his harim he is free from any
disturbing influence from the outside world. If a friend or enemy should
call and servants would say that the master was in the harim, the caller
would be compelled to leave or wait until the master was disposed to
enter again the selam-lik, or rooms assigned to the male members of the
household.
The greatest evil in the harim life lies in the dreadful seclusion and
the paralysing monotony. Many of the older women are unable to read and
write, and they pass their days in weary idleness and a vacuous routine
which is only broken by visits to women friends as mentally impoverished
as themselves. Not being allowed the friendship of the opposite sex,
they are denied the stimulation of the mind which would no doubt result
from the interchange of ideas with men who come in contact with the
outside world. Naturally the intellectual development is restricted, and
this starving of the mentality of the women must have a result
detrimental to the rising generation.
Seclusion also makes a woman very much more the actual possession of her
husband than she would be if allowed to come and go in the world, to
know her rights and the means by which to enforce them. Although the
laws are very much in her favour, in regard to property rights
especially, it takes a woman of more than ordinary courage and
intelligence to break away from the walls which encircle her and parade
her troubles in open court. We are told of the wonderful laws allowing
the woman to dispose of her property as she wishes; but we are not told
that she may give this property to her husband, and when once within the
harim, pressure is often brought compelling the woman to give all that
she possesses to her husband, making her doubly helpless and wholly
within his power.
They have a proverb that a woman must always answer the call of her
husband, “even if she is at the oven.” Her happiness depends entirely
upon the treatment she receives from him. His visits to the harim are
the only breaks in the monotony of her life, and he brings to her the
only touch she may have with the great man-world outside. By a few men
the wives are treated as if they were intellectual equals, but these are
few and far between. The average Oriental treats his womenfolk as if
they were upon a lower plane than himself, “brought up amongst ornaments
and contentious without cause.”
One would judge that, handicapped as they are, Moslem women would take
no part in the political or social life of their country, but facts
prove that they can rise to great heights and exhibit rare courage and
executive powers in time of need. Ayesha, the favourite wife of
Mohammed, showed an instance of bravery and courage that might belong to
women of any land. When Ali, the cousin of the prophet, rebelled against
the successors of Mohammed, Ayesha took the field against him,
commanding the troops in person at the “Battle of the Camel,” and in
later days they have shown that the restrictions of the harim do not
deaden the fires that burn in women’s breasts when tyranny or oppression
rules their land.
In Persia, where Mohammedanism in its strictest sect has sway, the women
have been known to rise in force and demand the rights of their people
when all the efforts of the men have failed. In 1861, at the time of the
great famine, foodstuffs rose to an exorbitant price, because of a few
greedy officials who were enriching themselves at the expense of their
starving countrymen. It was impossible to bring the matter before the
Shah by the methods generally employed, but the women rose, and one day
thousands of them surrounded his carriage as he was returning from a
hunting trip, and stating the wrongs of his people, demanded that he
should make an investigation. The Shah was thoroughly frightened at the
sight of this unprecedented exhibition on the part of his usually unseen
subjects, and promised all they asked, and, what was more wonderful,
kept his promise. The leaders of the party who were causing the distress
were beheaded, and the price of bread was diminished by half within
twelve hours. It is only a few years ago that the women of Persia
confronted the President of the Assembly in his hall, and tearing aside
their veils and producing revolvers, confessed their decision to kill
their husbands and sons and add their own dead bodies to the sacrifice
if the deputies should waver in their duties to uphold the liberties of
the Persian people.
[Illustration:
A WATER-CARRIER.
To face p. 36.]
These Moslem women display a fortitude and courage that is almost
fanatical in times of persecution. Thousands in Persia have given their
lives for their faith in Baha Ullah, the leader of a sect of reformed
Mohammedans. They have been dragged from the harims to the public
market-places, where they have been subjected to unheard of indignities
before having the privilege of dying for their faith. They have also
been compelled to sit in rows facing the public execution grounds while
their husbands and sons were beheaded before their eyes, but even the
torture and death of those they loved did not cause them to waver from
what they believed to be right. The story of one woman exemplifies the
fanatical courage that will dominate such a shut-in woman, when in some
dim, tragic hour she has been compelled to give her contribution in the
life she loved to her religious cause. In Tabriz one day a crowd of
women were seated facing the executioner’s block, and amongst them a
delicate, dainty woman who had been protected all her life within the
harim of one of the prominent men of Tabriz, but whose death had left
his women helpless to bear the brunt of his enemy’s wrath. Chance had
made this enemy the city Governor, and he remembered that the family of
the man he hated even in death were followers of Baha Ullah. On this
morning in June the mother was brought to see the death of her
fourteen-year-old son, her only child. When the executioner had done his
work, the head was tossed into her lap, and she was told “Take back your
son.” She stood up, and holding the loved head in her hands, held it
towards the sky, as if to give it as an offering to the God who seemed
to have deserted her in her hour of need, looked long into the closing
eyes, then threw it to the official’s feet, saying, “I do not take back
what I give my God!” and turning quickly, took her place among the
sorrow-maddened women.
Her cousin, who told me the story and who was a witness to the scene,
said to me: “It is impossible for a Western woman to understand a Moslem
woman. Perhaps because of our exclusion and the lack of means of
self-expression, we have over-developed our inner emotional natures,
which at times of sorrow burst forth like a hidden flame. We not only
gave our lives in those dread days of Tabriz, but what is worse, we gave
the lives of those we loved—and still lived on.”
The women of Egypt have as yet had no reason to rise up _en masse_ and
show what they may do in times of national distress. It is unusual for
the women of any Mohammedan land to usurp the prerogatives of men. They
are fundamentally intensely feminine, the home their only domain.
Sa’adi, the Persian poet, said:—
No happiness comes to the house of him whose hen hath crowed like a
cock.
It will be many years before the Egyptian woman joins the ranks of the
militant suffragettes, and tries to blow up the Pyramids or deface the
walls of Egypt’s famous temples in the spirit of emulation and zeal for
_the Cause_.