The Women of the Arabs

by Henry Harris Jessup

The Druzes admit women to the Akkal or initiated class, but not so the Nusairîyeh. The great secret of the Sacrament is administered in a secluded place, the women being shut up in a house, or kept away from the mysteries. In these assemblies the Sheikh reads prayers, and then all join in cursing Abubekr, Omar, Othman, Sheikh et-Turkoman and the Christians and others. Then he gives a spoonful of wine, first to the Sheikhs present, and then to all the rest. They then eat fruit, offer other prayers, and the assembly breaks up. The rites of initiation are frightful in the extreme, attended by threats, imprecations and blasphemous oaths, declaring their lives forfeited if they expose the secrets of the order.

They use given signs and questions, by which they salute each other, and ascertain whether a stranger is one of them or not. In their books they employ the double interlacing triangle or seal of Solomon. They call each other brethren, and enjoin love and truthfulness, but only to the brethren. In this they are like the Druzes. So little do they regard all outside their own sect, that they pray to God to take out of the hearts of all others than themselves, what little light of knowledge and certainty they may possess! The effect of this secret, exclusive, and selfish system is shown in the conduct of the Nusairîyeh in robbing and murdering Moslems and Christians without compunction.

As it has been said, the Nusairîyeh women are entirely excluded from all participation in religious ceremonies and prayers, and from all religious teaching. The reason given, is two-fold; the first being that women cannot be trusted to keep a secret, and the second because they are considered by the Nusairîyeh as something unclean. They believe that the soul of a wicked man may pass at death into a brute, or he may be punished for his sins in this life by being born in a woman's form in the next generation. And so, if a woman live in virtue and obedience, there is hope of her again being born into the world as a man, and becoming one of the illuminati and possessors of the secret. It is a long time for the poor things to wait, but it is a convenient reward for their husbands to hold out before them.

Yet the women are so religiously inclined by nature that they will have some object of worship, and while their husbands, fathers and sons are talking and praying about the celestial hierarchies, and the unfathomable mysteries, the wives, mothers and daughters will throng the "zeyarehs," or holy visiting shrines, on the hill tops, and among the groves of green trees, to propitiate the favor of the reputed saints of ancient days. These shrines are supposed to have miraculous powers, but Friday is the day when the prophets are more especially "at home," to receive visitors. On other days they may be "on a journey," or asleep. Whenever a Nuisairiyeh woman is in sorrow or trouble or fear, she goes to the zeyareh and cries in a piteous tone, "zeyareh, hear me!"

Their women do not veil themselves, and consequently there is more of freedom among them than among Moslems and Druzes, and in their great festivals, men and women all dance together.

When a young man sees a girl who pleases him, he bargains with her father, agreeing to pay from twenty dollars to two hundred, according to the dignity of her family; of which sum she receives but four dollars, unless her father should choose to give her a red bridal box and bedding for her outfit. She rides in great state to the bridegroom's house amid the firing of guns and shouts of the women, and on dismounting, the bridegroom gives her a present of from one to three dollars, called the "dismounting money."

Divorce needs only the will of the man, and polygamy is common. Lane says in speaking of Egypt, "The depraving effects of this freedom of divorce upon both sexes, may be easily imagined. There are many men in this country who, in the course of ten years, have married as many as twenty, thirty or more wives; and women, not far advanced in age, who have been wives to a dozen or more men successively."

The Nusairîyeh women smoke, swear, and use the most vile and unclean language, and even go beyond the men in these respects. Swearing and lying are universal not only among the Nusairîyeh, but among the most of the Syrian people. You never receive a direct reply from a Nusaîry. He will answer your question by asking another, in order, if possible, to ascertain your object in asking it and to conceal the true state of the case. Their Moslem and nominal Christian neighbors are not much better. They all lie, and swear, and deceive. Mr. Lyde illustrates the ignorance of the Greek clergy in Latakiah by the following incident. A ploughman who had learned something of the Bible, heard a Greek priest cursing the father of a little child. He said, "My father, is it right to curse?" "Oh," said he, "it was only from my lips." "But does not the psalmist say, Keep the door of my lips?" "That," replied the priest, "is only in the English Bible."

Walpole says of the Nusairîyeh women, "when young, they are handsome, often fair, with light hair and jet-black eyes; or the rarer beauty of fair eyes and coal-black hair or eyebrows."

When a fight takes place between the tribes, the women, like the women of the Druzes, enter into the spirit of it with demoniacal fury. During the battle they bring jars of water, shout, sing, and encourage the men, and at the close carry off the booty, such as pots, pans, chickens, quilts, wooden doors, trays, etc. In the Druze war of 1860, I saw the Druze women running with the men through Aitath, on their way to the scene of hostilities in the Metn. The Bedawin women likewise aid their husbands in the commissariat of their nomad warfare.