Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé

by F. Barham Zincke

Men, too, from reasons easily explained, marry much younger there than is customary—I might say than is possible—with us. Our civilization is based on intellect far more than theirs; and it takes with us a long time for a youth to acquire the knowledge he will find requisite in life. School claims him, with those who can afford the time, till he is eighteen; and with many the status pupillaris is continued at the university for three years longer: and no one would think that even then the age for marriage had arrived. And here, again, much more is required for supporting life through all ranks of society. This is another prohibition against a young man’s marrying early. He must first work himself into a position, in which he will have the means of maintaining a family in the way required here, or wait till he has a fair prospect of being able to do so. All this requires time; but in the East, where wants are few, and not much knowledge is needed, a youth may marry very early. I saw at Jerusalem the son of the Sheik of the Great Mosk of Omar, who was then, though only a lad of sixteen years of age, already married to two wives.

And so it follows that, in this region, before men have attained to even the prime of life, their wives are getting old. A necessary consequence of this must be that polygamy will come to be as natural as marriage itself. It has, at all events, been so hitherto.

The facilities for divorce which law and custom provide in these countries (all that is needed is a writing of divorcement) are a result of the same causes: they are, in fact, a corollary to the practice of polygamy. They enable both the man and the woman to escape from what, under the system of polygamy, must often become an insupportable situation, and have the practical effect of making marriage only a temporary arrangement. Indeed, sometimes even before the marriage contract is entered into, the law of divorcement is discounted in this way by the mutual agreement of both parties.

That ‘age cannot wither her’ is, then, precisely the opposite of being a characteristic of the Arab, or even of the oriental, woman. Had it been otherwise with them, polygamy would never have been the practice over this large portion of the earth’s surface.

In our cold, humid, dull climate opposite conditions have produced opposite effects. Here the woman arrives slowly at maturity; and, which is the great point, fights a good fight against the inroads of age. Man has no advantage over her in this respect. And when she is marriageable, she is, not a child of ten years of age, but a woman of twenty, with sufficient knowledge, and firmness of character to secure her own rights. The consequence, therefore, here is that men have felt no necessity for maintaining a plurality of wives; and if they had wished for it, the women would not have allowed them to have it. Voilà tout.

Nature it is that has made us monogamists. No religion that has ever been accepted in Europe has legislated in favour of the opposite practice, because it was obvious, and all men were agreed on the point, that monogamy was most suitable to, and the best arrangement for, us. The exceptional existence of the Arabic custom in European Turkey is one of those exceptions which prove a rule.

Suppose that, in the evolution of those ups and downs to which our earth’s surface is subject, it is destined that the waves of the ocean shall again roll over the vast expanse of the Sahara, which, as things now are, is one of Nature’s greatest factories for desiccated air. Then every wind that will blow from the west, or the south-west, over the present polygamic area, will be charged with moisture, and will bring clouds that will not only give rain, but will also very much diminish the amount of light which is now poured down upon it. Suppose, too, something of the same kind to have been brought about with respect to the great Syro-Arabian desert. Northerly and easterly winds will then also have the same effect. What now withers will have become humid. There will be no more tent life. Better houses will be required, more clothing, more food, more fuel. Men will not marry so early. Women will not get old so soon. Polygamy will die out of the region. Religion will be so modified as to accept, to hallow, and to legislate for the new ideas, which the new conditions and necessities will have engendered. Religion will then forbid polygamy.

CHAPTER XLIII.
HOURIISM.

Married, not mated.