A voyage to Senegal

by Jean Baptiste Léonard Durand

It is also the business of the women to prepare the provisions, fetch water, and attend to the horses and cattle, which always lodge in the same tent. Those who are in easy circumstances keep Negro slaves to do the principal part of the labour; but they are always obliged to wait upon their husbands themselves. In short, nothing can exceed the arrogance of a Moor to his wife, nor the humility of the woman in presence of her husband.

The women, when a horde changes its situation, strike the tents, load and unburden the camels; and when the husband mounts his horse, his wife holds the stirrup: they are not even admitted to eat with the men, but when dinner is ready, they retire, and wait till they are called on, to take what is left.

These women are in some degree the property of their husbands: for a Moor does not marry till he is able to buy himself a wife. The fathers sell their daughters; and he who has most of them, is considered the richest man. The price agreed on is always paid in advance; and the husband may afterwards put away his wife, but what he has given for her is never returned. Nevertheless a Moor cannot turn away his wife without obtaining permission from the oldest people of the horde, but which they never refuse to give; so that the demand is a simple matter of form.

The women are treated by the Moors with the most sovereign contempt; they never take the names of their husbands, nor do the children even bear the names of their fathers. Amongst almost all the hordes they admit only of four or five different names. The men are distinguished by that of their tribe, and have some kind of surname.

Although the women in question are so badly used, and though they are very indecent in their manners and gestures, they are faithful to their husbands. An instance to the contrary seldom occurs; but when it does, the offender is driven from the house of her lord, and his relations generally revenge themselves by her blood, for the disgrace which she has brought upon their family.

The Moors consider the women as an inferior race of beings, created solely for their pleasure and caprice. With respect to female beauty they have singular ideas. An elegant shape, majestic walk, a mild and expressive physiognomy; in short, all the charms which delight our eyes, are to them without attraction. They must have women particularly fat; for with them corpulence seems to be every thing. Hence those women who only require the assistance of two slaves to help them to walk, can have but moderate pretensions; but those who cannot stir, and who are obliged to be conveyed upon camels, are considered perfect beauties, particularly if they have long teeth projecting out of the mouth.

This taste of the Moors for massive beauties induces the women to take the greatest care to make themselves fat. Every morning they eat an enormous quantity of cuscus, and drink several jugs of camel’s milk. The girls are obliged to take this food, whether they have an appetite or not; and when they refuse they are beaten to compliance. This forced diet does not occasion indigestion or any other disease; on the contrary, it induces that degree of fatness which passes for perfection in the eyes of the Moors. The Moorish girls are in other respects little attended to; and their education is totally neglected. These people think nothing of moral qualifications: for voluptuousness, submission, and corpulence are all that the Moors admire.

The boys are better treated; they are generally taught to read and write the Arabic language; and as soon as they begin to grow up, they are respected by the Moorish women, and even by their mothers, who no longer eat with them. At an early period they are accustomed to use the poniard adroitly, and to tear out with their nails the bowels of their adversaries: they are taught to give a lye the semblance of truth; are, in short, familiarized with wickedness, and are instructed to commit a crime with as much pleasure as they would do a good action.

A plurality of wives being permitted amongst the Moors, a hut is seldom seen with less than eight or ten children. The women live together under the same tent, and are witnesses of the partial attachment of the husband, without betraying any marks of jealousy.

The tent destined to receive a new married couple is ornamented with a little white flag, and the bridegroom has a band round his forehead of the same colour; and whether he be young or old, or be married for the first or sixth time, he is always decorated with the symbol of virginity.