The Women of the Arabs

by Henry Harris Jessup

It must not be inferred from what has been said on a preceding page with regard to the favorable position occupied by the women of the nominal Christian sects of Syria as compared with the Mohammedan women, that the first missionaries found the Greek and Maronite women and girls who speak the Arabic language eager or even willing to receive instruction. Far from it. The effects of the Mohammedan domination of twelve hundred years have been to degrade and depress all the sects and nationalities who are subject to Islam. Not only were there not women and girls found to learn to read, but the great mass of the men of the Christian sects could neither read nor write. Many of the prominent Arab merchants in Beirût to-day can neither read nor write. I say Arab merchants, and yet very few of the Arabs of the Greek Church have more than a mere tinge of Arab blood in their veins. To call them Syrians, would be to confound them with the "Syrian" or "Jacobite" sect, who are found only in the vicinity of Hums, Hamath and Mardin. So with the Maronites. They are chiefly of a darker complexion than the Arab Greeks, and are supposed to have had their origin in Mesopotamia. Yet all these sects and races speak the common Arabic language, and hence it will be convenient to call them Arabs, although I am aware, that while many of the modern Syrians glory in the name "Oulad el Arab," many others regard it with dislike.

The Syrian Christianity, moreover, so often alluded to in the history of the Syrian Mission, is the lowest type of the religion of the Greek and Roman churches. Saint-worship and picture-worship are universal. An ignorant priesthood, and a superstitious people, no Bibles, and no readers to read them, no schools and no teachers capable of conducting them, prayers in unknown tongues, and a bitter feeling of party spirit in all the sects, universal belief in the efficacy of fasts and vows, pilgrimages and offerings to the shrines of reputed saints, churches without a preached gospel, and prayers performed as a duty without the worship of the heart, universal Mariolatry, a Sabbath desecrated by priests and people alike, God's name everywhere profaned by men, women and children, and truthfulness of lip almost absolutely unknown; the women and girls degraded and oppressed and left to the tender mercies of a corrupt clergy through the infamies of the confessional; all these practices and many others which space forbids us to mention, combined with the social bondage entailed upon woman by the gross code of Islam, rendered the women of the nominal Christian sects of Syria almost as hopeless subjects of missionary labor as were their less favored Druze and Moslem sisters.

In order to present the leading facts in the history of Mission Work for Syrian women, I propose to give a brief review of the salient points, in the order of time, as I have been able to glean them from the missionary documents within my reach.

The first Protestant missionary to Syria since the days of the Apostles, was the Rev. Levi Parsons, who reached Jerusalem January 16, 1821, and died in Alexandria February 10, 1822. In 1823, Rev. Pliny Fisk, and Dr. Jonas King reached Jerusalem to take his place, and on the 10th of July came to Beirût. Dr. King spent the summer in Deir el Kamr, and Mr. Fisk in a building now occupied by the Jesuit College in Aintûra.

On the 16th of November, 1823, Messrs. Goodell and Bird reached Beirût, and on the 6th of December, 1824, they wrote as follows: "Mr. King's Arabic instructor laughs heartily that the ladies of our company are served first at table. He said that if any person should come to his house and speak to his wife first, he should be offended. He said the English ladies have some understanding, the Arab women have none. It is the custom of this country that a woman must never be seen eating or walking, or in company with her husband. When she walks abroad, she must wrap herself in a large white sheet, and look like a ghost, and at home she must be treated more like a slave than a partner. Indeed, women are considered of so little consequence that to ask a man after the health of his wife, is a question which is said never to find a place in the social intercourse of this country."

Jan. 24, 1825, Dr. Goodell wrote, "Some adult females come occasionally to be taught by Mrs. Bird or Mrs. Goodell, and although their attendance is very irregular, and their disadvantages very great, being without Arabic books, and their friends deriding their efforts, yet they make some improvement. One of them, who a fortnight ago did not know a single letter of the alphabet, can now read one verse in the Bible."

July 1, 1825, Messrs. Goodell and Bird speak of the first girls taught to read in Syria in mission schools. "Our school contains between eighty and ninety scholars, who are all boys except two. One is the teacher's wife, who is perhaps fifteen years of age, and the other a little girl about ten." That teacher was Tannûs el Haddad, who died a few years ago, venerated and beloved by all sects and classes of the people, having been for many years deacon of the Beirût Church, and his wife, Im Beshara, still lives, with an interesting family.

On the 21st of Dec, 1825, Dr. King wrote as follows: "I spent about a month in Tyre, and made some efforts to establish a school for Tyrian females, and was very near succeeding, when one of the principal priests rose up and said, 'It is by no means expedient to teach women to read the word of God. It is better for them to remain in ignorance than to know how to read and write. They are quite bad enough with what little they now know. Teach them to read and write, and there would be no living with them!'" That Tyrian priest of fifty years ago, was a fair sample of his black-frocked brethren throughout Syria from that time to this. There have been a few worthy exceptions, but the Syrian priesthood of all sects, taken as a class, are the avowed enemies of the education and elevation of their people. Some of the exceptions to this rule will be mentioned in the subsequent pages of this volume.

In 1826, there were three hundred children in the Mission schools in the vicinity of Beirût.

In 1827, there were 600 pupils in 13 schools, of whom one hundred and twenty were girls! In view of the political, social and religious condition of Syria at that time, that statement is more remarkable than almost any fact in the history of the Syrian Mission. It shows that Mrs. Bird and Mrs. Goodell must have labored to good purpose in persuading their benighted Syrian sisters to send their daughters to school, and to these two Christian women is due the credit of having commenced Woman's Work for Women in modern times in Syria. In that same year, the wives of Bishop Dionysius Carabet and Gregory Wortabet were received to the communion of the Church in Beirût, being the first spiritual fruits of Women's Work for Women in modern Syria.