As to polygamy, Mr. Lane remarks that it can only be defended as preventing a greater immorality than it occasions; and that Mohammed, like Moses, did not introduce but limited and regulated it. The ancient Egyptians had but one wife each, though they might have slave concubines. Polygamy, however, is rare, and rarer among the upper and middle classes than the lower; “I believe that not more than one husband in twenty has two wives.” The mere sentence, “I give myself up to thee,” uttered by a female to a man who proposes to become her husband (even without the presence of witnesses, if none can easily be procured) renders her his legal wife if arrived at puberty. A man may divorce his wife twice, and each time take her back without any ceremony, unless she has paid for it by resigning the reserved third of the dowry, furniture, etc.; but if he divorces her the third time, or puts her away by a triple divorce conveyed in one sentence, he cannot receive her again until she has been, married and divorced by another husband, who must have consummated his marriage with her. To divorce her, he simply has to say, “Thou art divorced,” or “I divorce thee”; but the woman cannot separate herself from her husband against his will, unless it be for some considerable fault on his side, such as cruel treatment or neglect. The facility of divorce has depraving effects, upon both sexes. Many men in the course of ten years have married twenty, thirty, or more wives; and women not far advanced in age have been wives to a dozen or more successively. “I have heard of men who have been in the habit of marrying a new wife almost every month.” But such conduct is generally regarded as very disgraceful; and few persons in the upper or middle classes would give a daughter in marriage to a person who had divorced many wives.
The women deem it more incumbent to cover the upper and back part of the head than the face; and more requisite to conceal the face than most parts of the person. Many among the lower classes never conceal their faces; women may often be seen with nothing but a narrow strip of rag round the hips. The face-veils have the advantage of leaving the eyes visible, which are generally the most beautiful of the features; fine figures being more common than altogether handsome faces; though some faces are of a beauty distinguished by such sweetness of expression that they seem the perfection of female loveliness, “and impressed me at the time with the idea that their equal could not be found in any other country.” The women of Cairo are less strictly guarded than in most Eastern lands; wives are proud of the restraint as showing that the husbands value them highly, looking upon themselves as hidden treasures. To such an absurd extent do Muslims carry their feeling of the sacredness of women that entrance into the tombs of some women is forbidden to men; and a man and woman are never buried in the same vault, without a wall between them—as if their very corpses might get up to mischief. For adultery on the part of the woman the Kur-ân prescribes death by stoning, but drowning is generally substituted. Unless detected by an officer of justice four eye-witnesses are required; failing these, the accuser is to be scourged with eighty stripes. This extraordinary law is traced to an accusation of adultery against the Prophet’s favorite wife “Aïsheh,” who was thus absolved from punishment, and subsequent revelations established her innocence. If we had a similar law here we might close our Divorce Court. If a husband without any witnesses accuses his wife of adultery, he must swear four times by God that he speaks the truth, and the fifth time imprecate God’s curse on himself if he is a liar; but the wife can counterbalance this by swearing four times by God that he is a liar, and the fifth time imprecating God’s wrath on herself if he speaks the truth. The commentators and lawyers have agreed that in this dilemma the marriage must be dissolved. When a peasant woman is found to have been unfaithful to her husband, in general he or her brother throws her into the Nile, with a stone tied to her neck; or cuts her to pieces and then throws these into the river. In most instances a father or brother punishes in the same manner an unmarried daughter or sister who has been guilty of incontinence. These relatives are considered more disgraced than the husband by the crime of the woman; and are often despised if they do not thus punish her. Women in easy circumstances are put to bed for from three to six days after childbirth; but poor women in the same case seldom take to bed at all, and after a day or two resume their ordinary occupations, if these do not require great exertion.
The law of inheritance is remarkable in two respects; primogeniture is not privileged, and in most cases the share of a female is half that of a male in the same degree of relationship. A debtor is only kept imprisoned for debt if he cannot prove himself insolvent; but if able, he may be made work out what he owes. Apostacy from the faith is death if not recanted on three warnings. Blasphemy against God or any of the Great Prophets, whether repented or not, is instant death: on the ground that apostacy or infidelity is but ignorance and misjudgment, while blasphemy shows utter depravity. If Christians blaspheming Mohammed were punished as are Muslims blaspheming Christians, what a number of our enlightened clerical teachers would have died the death of malefactors!
The Copts, or descendants of the ancient Egyptians, said to number about 150,000, are Christians, but scarcely a credit to that religion whose votaries boast of its civilising and elevating character. The fact is that in advanced countries the Christianity has been civilised by the Secularism, not the Secularism by the Christianity; in countries where the sciences and arts are stationary or retrograde, Christianity proves that it has in itself no motive-power, and is generally even more degraded than the other superstitions around it. Mr. Lane almost despaired of learning anything about these Copts, until he had the good fortune to become acquainted with a character of which he had doubted the existence—a Copt of a liberal as well as an intelligent mind. They hate the Greeks and all other Christians not of their own sect much worse than they hate the Muslims themselves. The priests are supported only by alms or by their own industry. Their language is a dead one. They pray seven times a day, in the course of these reciting the whole Book of Psalms, as well as chapters of the Bible, prayers, etc.: a fine example to their lax co-religionists here. They have long and arduous fasts. In spite or because of all this, they bear a very bad character as sullen, avaricious, abominable dissemblers, cringing or domineering according to circumstances. The one respectable Copt discovered by Lane admitted that they are generally ignorant, faithless, worldly, sensual, and drunken; he declared that the Patriarch was a tyrant and suborner of false witnesses; that the monks and priests in Cairo are seen every evening begging and asking the loan of money, which they never repay, at the houses of their parishioners and other acquaintances, and procuring brandy if possible wherever they call. So much for our esteemed fellow-Christians in Egypt, descendants of what in heathen times was long the foremost nation in the world.
“Women are not to be excluded from paradise, according to the faith of El Islam; though it has been asserted by many Christians, that the Muslims believe women to have no soul. In several places in the Kur-ân, Paradise is promised to all true believers.” They will be admitted by God’s mercy on account of their faith, not of their good works; but their felicity there will be proportioned to their good works. The very meanest male in Paradise is promised eighty thousand beautiful youths as servants, and seventy-two wives of the daughters of Paradise. These celestial virgins we commonly call houris, but learned and accurate Mr-Lane terms them hooreeyehs, vividly suggesting that the Muslim saints burst into rapturous and prolonged hoorays on first perceiving them. He may also have the wives he had here below, if he wants them; and doubtless the good will desire the good. On behalf of the earthly fair sex, I must emphatically protest against this part of the heavenly arrangements. How do we know that the good husband will desire the good wife, however good, when he has two-and-seventy maidens of Paradise all to himself? The trust that he will, cannot be trusted; it is a perfidious consolation to poor women. No wonder Muslim wives are obsequious, when it depends on the will, pleasure or caprice of their husbands whether they shall be re-married in the other world or not. Mrs. Caudle herself would scarcely hazard a curtain lecture with this atrocious alternative in prospect. Try to fancy being an old-maid or grass-widow for ever and ever where all the men are very much married, having six dozen wives each at the very lowest! Such a heaven to a good woman were ten times crueller than hell. When the Muslim women have been aroused to a sense of their rights, they will insist on being treated in the next world on equal terms with the men: the meanest woman of the faithful (supposing any woman can be mean) shall have her eighty thousand beautiful servants, and her seventy-two husbands of the youths of Paradise, resplendent, adoring, ever obedient. This settled first, it will be a question for consideration between herself and her terrene spouse whether they shall combine their several establishments, or agree to be divorced by death. But I digress; women always lead us into digressions, only these are usually much more interesting than the dusty high-road along which it is our business to trudge. The meanest of Muslims will further have a very large tent bejewelled with pearls, jacinths and emeralds. He will be waited on by three hundred attendants while he eats, and served in dishes of gold, whereof three hundred shall be set before him at once, each containing a different kind of food, “the last morsel of which will be as grateful as the first.” This absence of satiety, this ever-fresh vigor, I believe, is to mark all his enjoyments, however freely he may indulge in them. Though wine is forbidden in this life, he may drink of it ad libitum in the next, and the wine of Paradise doth not inebriate. He shall have perpetual youth, and as many children as he may desire. He shall be ravished with the songs of the angel Israfeel, “whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures.” I really cannot go on; my feelings are too much for me. I remember when young being taught to sing (or rather to squall; for my voice could never have been mistaken for that of the angel Isrâfeel, even by a frequenter of revival meetings or music halls):
“I thank the goodness and the grace (grays?)
Which on my birth have smiled,
And made me in these Christian days (dace?)
A happy English child.’*
But now that I am a man, this same consideration fills me with bitterest sorrow and anguish, so that I am ready to bellow:
I curse the evil and disgrace
Which have my birth defiled,
Who would have been in other case
A happy Muslim child!
Yea, when I contrast these glowing and glorious prospects held out to the faithful by the Kur-ân, with the everlasting singing in white night-gowns, amidst the howling of elders and composite beasts all over eyes (what our Heine terms “all the menagerie of the Apocalypse”), in adoration of a God like a jasper and sardine stone to look upon, and of a Lamb with seven horns and seven eyes; then do I wring my hands and beat my breast and tear my hair, sighing and sobbing, moaning and groaning, weeping and lamenting most piteously—Alas! and alas! and alas! why was I bom in a Christian land and reared for the Christian Heaven? Would that I had been born among the Muslims and brought up in the faith of El Islâm! So should I be now looking forward (for from such a generous faith never, never would I have lapsed) unto a Paradise worthy of the name; revelling in anticipations of four-score thousand servants, uncloying courses of three hundred dishes, unlimited strong wine without inebriation, six-dozen wives of the refulgent celestial virgins, aging not themselves, aging not me; perpetual youth, unsating and unexhausting raptures, for ever, and ever, and ever; and instead of having to sing my own throat hoarse, I should have the angel Isrâfeel to sing for me. Ah, dear God! Thou most Compassionate! Thou most Bountiful! Thou to whom all things are possible! grant that I may even yet be converted from a doleful Christian infidel into a blessed Muslim true believer! O God the All-merciful, save me from the terrors and tortures of our Sankey and Moody Christian heaven! O God the All-gracious, let me lie secure in the arms of six-dozen hooreeyehs of Paradise of El Islam! Amen, and Amen.