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.