Of Prostitution in Arabia, Syria, and Asia Minor.
In whatever countries the Mohammedan religion has been established, to describe the condition of women would be generally to repeat the accounts already given. Their character varies in different populations, but everywhere the laws to which they are subject are substantially the same.
In Syria and Asia Minor the marriage code is, among the Muslims, precisely similar to that of Egypt and Turkey, and so also in Arabia. In Natolia, especially, the influence of the Prophet’s law is powerful, and the comparative simplicity of its inhabitants leads them to respect the boundaries laid down to their indulgences. Possessing within their own country all the materials of prosperity, they might, with virtue and industry, become once more a powerful and wealthy race; but misgovernment adds yearly to the mass of their corruption, and they perish in misery and servitude.
In such countries ambition sees no path but that of reckless crime, and mental activity only stimulates to sensual pursuits. Accordingly profligacy flourishes in the cities of Asia Minor, though in the thinly-peopled tracts there is perhaps more purity of manners than in any other Mohammedan country, except Arabia. Polygamy, permitted as it is by the law, is far from being generally adopted. In 1830, the extensive city of Brussa contained only a single man who had more than one wife. Women are secluded to some extent, but enjoy great freedom. Loved and indulged they are, but not respected; and, consequently, their morals are inferior to those of the Bedouin wives.
The Christians, who are so freely tolerated among the Mohammedan population of Asia Minor, preserve very much the customs of Europe, except in the lesser details of their life. In the rich provinces of Syria, Arabs, Greeks, and Ottomans have mingled, bringing each some characteristic habits to modify the general social scheme. The pastoral and the Christian tribes are by far the most moral.
Among the Maronites of Lebanon, who hold our faith, a rigid code exists, with purity of manners; but, as among the ancient Germans, the severe law is only the moral influence in action. The law, without the feeling which upholds it, would be powerful; which constitutes the difference between a community which frames its own code according to its own spirit, and that which receives decrees from the caprice of a ruler. If a man among the Maronites seduce a girl, he must marry her; should he refuse, fasts, imprisonments, and even blows are employed, which force him to submit. The illicit intercourse of the sexes, married or unmarried, is reprobated by the sense of the community, and the profession of prostitution is unknown. On the whole, this may be described as a simple and comparatively innocent race, removed above the profligacy which ferments around them.
The Druses, also, are distinguished by the same characteristics; they do not permit polygamy, and marry very young. A man may divorce his wife, however, by only saying, “Go;” or if she ask permission to visit her relatives, and he concede it, without enjoining her to return, she must consider herself put away. In spite of this facility such separations scarcely ever occur. An adulteress is mercilessly put to death by the hands of her friends. One who commits fornication suffers a similar punishment, but in this case the father may pardon her if he choose. The tenderness of the parent sometimes induces him to spare his child, though her guilt may stain the honour of his house; but brothers, it is said, never relent, visiting the sin of their sister with unsparing sternness.
Prostitutes and dancing girls are common in all the cities and towns of Syria, but they are never met with among any of the pastoral or nomade tribes. In Asia Minor and Palestine the same circumstance is to be observed.
There is little to remark upon in the habits or characteristics of the class, which is similar to others of the same sisterhood in Egypt, Turkey, and other parts of the East[79]. Since, therefore, little could be gained by dwelling at length upon these countries, we quit them, and pass to a region which, if the spirit of romance still remains on earth, may be described as its chosen home.
In Arabia we find a system of manners at once unique and beautiful. In saying this, however, we allude to the Bedouins, or representatives of the true Arab race, who preserve their original simplicity in the rainless plains of their ancient country. In the cities of the coast, and wherever the fertility of the soil has attracted a crowded population, vice has introduced itself, and the graces of the shepherd state have quickly disappeared. In surveying the civilization of Arabia this distinction must always be held in view.
Many natural circumstances combine to influence the natural character of the Arabs in their native region. A country whose sunny and sandy plains alternate with tracts of hills and valleys of the richest bloom, has been their home. In the mountains of Yemen wet and dry seasons alternate, but over the desert hangs a sky of perpetual blue,—bright, dry, and warm; while, during the summer solstice, a sun almost vertical floods the waste of rock and sand with insufferable light, parching the face of all nature.
In this extraordinary region the Arabs live; some, as we have said, in cities or villages, some in separate families, under tents. An independent patriarchal form of government has been preserved in complete unity with their simple system of manners. Their religion is that of Mohammed, though various interpretations of his law have divided them into numerous sects. Differing, as they do, in their scheme of education from Europeans, it is difficult for us to understand their character. The boy grows up until five years old under his mother’s care; then, without a graduation, he is taken to his father’s side. From the companionship of women and children he passes at once into the society of men.
The Arabs hold the female sex in high estimation. They exclude women, indeed, from all public assemblies, preclude them from the use of strong liquors, and hold them from infancy to womanhood under tutelage; but they restrain themselves as well, and their general demeanour is modest, sober, and grave. Those in the fertile province of Yemen are more vivacious than those of the sterile plains. Nevertheless the men love society. Every village has its coffee-house full of gossipers, and every camp its place of rendezvous.
The women of the family occupy the interior of the house or tent; they are secluded to some extent, but not in the extravagant degree described by some writers. A man will not salute one in public, or fix his eyes upon her. Strangers, in general, are not allowed to converse with them, and they are expected to pay great deference to the ruling sex, but they are neither disguised nor immured. Veils they wear, but do not hide their faces with that religious care considered indispensable in some countries. Among many of the tent-dwellers, women drink coffee with strangers; and in some of the communities towards the south they are allowed to entertain a guest in their husband’s absence. Indeed it may be said, that they are in Arabia more free than anywhere else in Islam, and proverbially abstemious in the gratification of all their appetites. All the household duties are performed by them. They fetch water, drive flocks, and wait on the men; but they are loved and respected, notwithstanding, and no claim is held so sacred as that by which a mother exacts duty from her son. There is, indeed, something admirable in the simplicity of these desert tribes, where the wife sits within her husband’s tent, weaving her own garments from the wool of his flocks.
Where several families are congregated, the females visit each other, assemble together, and exchange every pleasant service. They meet in the evening to sing to the young men of the tribe, and many romantic assignations are kept in the little secluded valleys in which Arabia abounds. The well is the favourite spot of rendezvous.
The dances of the Arab girls, who perform before the men, are not only decent but elegant and romantic—totally in contrast to those of the Ghawazee. These amusements are as much for their own gratification as that of the other sex, for sometimes no males are present. Nor are they forced to exhibit when disinclined. Sometimes when the young men have offended the maidens of a tribe, they assemble night after night, but no damsels appear to dance or sing. All this indicates considerable purity of manners. The Mohammedan marriage law prevails among all the Arabs of the peninsula, though its details are modified by their system of manners. A man is expected, though not compelled, to take the widow of his deceased brother. A man has an exclusive right to the hand of his cousin, but is not compelled to marry her. He, however, must finally renounce his claim before she can be taken by any one else. Each may have four wives and as many concubines as he pleases. Two sisters may not be had at once; but one being divorced, the other may be taken.
The disparity between the sexes in point of number, which has been asserted by some travellers, does not appear to exist. Polygamy, a privilege of the rich, is seldom practised even by them. Many wealthy Bedouins, who could well maintain a harem, declare they could not be happy with more than one companion. The law obliges a man to pass at least one night in every week with each of his wives, and this has assisted in checking the practice.
The Mohammedans of Arabia are accused of selling their daughters; but they do not often bargain them away for profit. They naturally prefer a wealthy before a poor son-in-law, and receive a bounty from him; but they richly portion out the bride. She is further endowed by her husband. The contract drawn up before the Kadi stipulates not only what she is to receive upon her marriage, but what she may claim in case of a divorce. In many cases a sheikh of substantial fortune takes a poor son-in-law, gives him the sum necessary to be paid before the judge, and exacts from him in return only a pledge of such an amount, in the event of repudiation, that it can never take place. The wife, not being compelled to vest all her property in him, is, in some measure, free from his authority. She is, indeed, more supreme in the household than in most countries, and is even more happy, because she can insist upon a divorce if ill-used. Some men, indeed, take two wives, and some even three, but these instances are so few that, though the sexes are numerically equal, almost every man may have a wife. In the towns, soldiers and domestics are more frequently married than in Europe. No insult wounds an Arab woman more than to compare her to a fruitless tree. In this way the evils of polygamy, in the cities, are counteracted. A maiden past the marriageable age is ashamed of her virginity, and a widow without children is miserable until she finds a new partner. There are no retreats whither celibacy may fly for refuge from the taunts of the world. Every woman, consequently, is desirous to marry; but those who are taken by pluralists bear fewer children than those who have no rival under the roof. In the house of a polygamist, each woman, feeling she has to contend for favour, seeks by unnatural means to increase her own attractions, to seem more voluptuous than she is, and thus injures her natural powers. Concubinage is more common than polygamy. The sheriff of Mecca has numerous female slaves, and his high example is followed by many wealthy men in the luxurious and corrupt populations of the cities. In the desert it is more rare, and, indeed, scarcely ever practised, except where a father presents his son with a beautiful bondmaid, that he may be satisfied with her, and not enter the towns in search of prostitutes.
In Mecca, the sacred city of the Mohammedan faith, nearly all the wealthy men maintain concubines, but, if they bear children, must, unless their complement of four wives be already complete, marry them or incur public reproach. Some of these voluptuaries, who look on women only as a means to gratify their animal appetites, marry none but Abyssinian wives, because they are more servile, obsequious, and voluptuous than those of pure Arabian blood. Foreigners arriving at that city with the caravan bargain for a female slave, intending to sell her at their departure, unless she bear offspring, in which case she is elevated to the position of a wife. Under any circumstances, to sell a concubine slave, is by the respectable part of the community, regarded as disreputable. Speculators, however, sometimes buy young girls, indulge their sensuality upon them, train them up, educate them, and sell them at a profit. No distinction is made among the children, of whichever class of mothers they are born.
It is one sign of pure manners among the simple communities of Arabia, that chastity is highly prized. When the young Arab marries a girl, he sometimes stipulates in the contract that she must be a virgin. Of this he desires to assure himself by examination. If the outward signs are wanting, the bride’s father has to prove the circumstance accidental; should he fail in this, the fame of her innocence may be destroyed, and she may be driven from home overwhelmed with shame. In many of the nomade communities it is the invariable rule to put away a bride immediately after the discovery of any suspicious sign, and in the hills of Yemen the laws are equally severe. The man who marries a woman disgraced by incontinence shares her infamy unless he send her back to her father.
The dwellers in towns, estimating less highly the worth of feminine virtue, laugh at a man who dishonours his family on account of such a circumstance. A man finding that his bride is not a virgin demands compensation from her father, keeps her a short time, and then puts her away privily, as Joseph was minded to do with the mother of Jesus. Many also understand that nature has refused the sign to some females, and that it is unjust to condemn a woman on the strength of a circumstance which a hundred accidents may have caused. If adultery be committed by the wife, the law condemns her to have her throat cut by the hand of her brother or father; but in general humanity prevails against the written code, and this horrible punishment is seldom inflicted. The usual manner of visiting such an offence is by summary divorce, which is indeed easily to be obtained for trivial causes, or for no cause at all. In towns an agreement before the Kadi, in the desert a lamb slaughtered before the door of the tent, is all the ceremony needed. The simple pronunciation of the word “Go” is, in many parts, sufficient. Men of violent passions abuse this privilege, and it is said that some, not more than 40 years of age, have had as many as 50 wives; but it is utterly untrue to say that such instances are frequent. The existence of the pure and true sentiment of love, which is so rare in Mohammedan countries, is admitted to prevail in Arabia; the natural jealousy of the male sex, the superior wisdom of their regulations respecting the intercourse of the sexes prior to marriage, the independence of the women, and the lofty system of morals distinguishing the Bedouins of the desert, are totally incompatible with such a flagrant profligacy in the use of divorce. Were it the case, the complete confusion of society would ensue; whereas no region in the world presents spectacles of happier homes than the plains of Arabia, with their tents and wandering tribes. Women are comparatively free, being tolerated even in religious differences, which implies a high estimate of their intellectual qualities. The republican spirit of the desert assigns them, indeed, their natural position, and, though much is required from them as modest women, little is exacted from them as an inferior sex.
Some of the peculiar customs among the various communities of Arabia are curious enough to require notice. Before the Wahaby Conquest it was customary among the Deyr Arabs for a man to take his daughter, when marriageable, to the market-place—where all such engagements were formed—and proclaim her for disposal, crying aloud, “Who will buy the virgin?” The Bedouins of Mount Sinai still adhere to their singular practices. A man desiring matrimony makes a bargain with some one who has an unmarried daughter, and if able to settle it, sticks in his turban a sprig of green, which signifies that he is wedded to a virgin. The bride’s inclinations are not beforehand consulted. She must go home with her husband, and submit for one night to his embraces. If she be not pleased, however, she may in the morning go home, when the contract is dissolved. Among the wealthier tribes of the East, no price is paid, and every girl is free to choose a partner. Modesty, with them, is regarded as the finest grace of the sex. It is genuine and unassailable. The bride even is sometimes so coy, that her husband is obliged to tie her up and whip her before she will yield to him. A widow’s marriage is disreputable, and assailed with every demonstration of disrespect. This proves that divorce among them is unfrequent. Among the Nazyene, a tribe on the peninsula of Sinai, a girl, when given in marriage, flies and takes refuge among the hills, where she is supplied with food by her relations. The bridegroom goes in search, and when he finds his bride, must pass the night with her in the open air. She may repeat the flight several times, and indeed is not expected to live with her husband until a whole year has elapsed or she has become pregnant. Various other customs characterise different tribes; but in every feature of Arabian manners we discover a simplicity and purity as admirable as it is rare. Conjugal infidelity is rare in the desert. Fornication scarcely ever happens, and common prostitutes are unknown. In the crowded towns on the coast, however, there are numbers of professional prostitutes, licensed to carry on their calling, who pay considerable sums to the magistrates for the enjoyment of their privileges. In Mecca they are extremely numerous, and for the most part inhabit the poorest quarter of the city. In Dhyrdda, also, they are extremely numerous, but the population of that place is almost exclusively foreign. These women bear scarcely any children. When, during the early years of their vocation, they are capable of producing offspring, they employ artificial means to ensure abortion. The seeds of the tree whence is obtained the balm of Mecca, are used for that purpose.
In the mosques of the sacred city, prostitutes collect in great numbers, and are largely encouraged by the Moolah or priestly class, who find them a source of profit. Those of the more indigent description inhabit a particular quarter, but the others are dispersed amid the general mass of the population. They are more decent in their outward demeanour than the same class in the East and in Europe, and it requires a practised eye to detect, amid the throng of veiled women circulating in the streets and bazaars, those of the venal sisterhood. Contrary, however, to the rule which prevails in England, they are almost the only females who frequent places of worship, which is on account not of their devotion, but of their effrontery, the prejudices of Mohammedans being against it. The Bedouins near cities sometimes frequent the brothels in their neighbourhood; but these belong to the class the manners of which have been vitiated by intercourse with strangers.
In what numbers the prostitutes of the Arabian cities are found we know not, nor do we discover anything remarkable in their manners or modes of life. It would, consequently, be unprofitable to dwell on them. We have to notice, however, in connection with Arabia, two remarkable customs, one of which exhibits to us a class of male prostitutes, if such a term may be allowed, and the other a species of hospitality, now very rare, except among the grossest communities.
In the Arabian province of Hedjaz no unmarried woman may pass within the boundary or enter the mosque. As, however, many rich old widows and persons whose husbands have died by the way arrive with every pilgrim caravan, some device is necessary to procure them admission without breaking the law. A number of men, therefore, live in the frontier towns, who, upon the arrival of every concourse, hire themselves out to the women, marry them, live with them while they pass through the sacred territory, receive a munificent sum for their services, and are then divorced. If one of these individuals chooses to insist on keeping the wife he has procured, she cannot help it; but such an act would be attended with great discredit and the loss of a very profitable occupation. Eight hundred men are sometimes employed as temporary husbands, and a number of boys are continually trained that they may inherit the calling. On the various roads to the shrine of Mecca congregate a number of women, with somewhat of a sacred character attached to them. They are prostitutes, but not indiscriminate in their connections, since they offer to bear to wealthy pilgrims children, who are considered as born under a fortunate auspice.
Among the Merehedes, on the frontiers of Yemen, a custom far more revolting has existed from ancient time, and still prevails. A stranger arriving as a guest is compelled to pass the night with the wife of his host, whatever her age or condition. Should he succeed in pleasing her he is honourably treated. If not, she cuts off a piece of his garment, turns him out into the village, and leaves him to be driven away in disgrace. When the Wahabis conquered the Merehedes, they forced them to abandon this odious practice; but some misfortunes ensuing to the tribe, they were all imputed to this sacrilegious infringement of an ancient law. The custom was therefore restored. Some other female of the family, may, however, be substituted for the wife, but young virgins are never sacrificed to this barbarous hospitality[80].