The usual age for a Mohammedan girl to marry is thirteen or fourteen, but in many places they marry as early as eight.... Poor little girl wives! They are taken away from home before they are grown up, and although they are now married women they cannot help behaving as children. There was one young wife of a Government official who received her visitors with the utmost dignity and propriety, and then could not resist the temptation to pinch the old black woman who was handing the tea and make her jump....
A Little Goanese Bride in India
Even when the children grow older their mothers, grown-up children themselves, do not know how to manage them.... One woman bit her little boy’s hand till it bled badly. He was about seven, and had cried to have his best coat on when he went to see the missionary. Another woman bit the cheek of a poor little consumptive girl of eight or nine so that there was a great bruise and the skin was broken. She told a neighbor, with a laugh, that she had got angry with the child because she was tiresome about taking her medicine, which was very nasty.
There is no command in the Koran that girls should be married so young, but the mothers declare that it was the command of Mohammed, and certainly he himself set the example by marrying a girl of nine....
The man is absolute master in his own house, and unless his wife has powerful relations he may do what he likes to her and her children, and no one will take any notice. I knew one woman whose husband treated her like a slave. He forced her not only to do all the work of the house, but the work of the stable too, for he was well enough off to keep a horse. He killed one child in her arms, and twice stole another away from her, sending it once to a town a week’s journey off, and once to another part of the town. Finally he divorced her, without giving any reason, and left her ill and destitute. And she had at no time any redress....
Little Bagum, the child-wife, was deliberately and cruelly burnt by her husband, and was brought to the mission hospital. There was no hope of recovery, but all was done that was possible to relieve her pain and brighten her last days. She had heard something of the Gospel story from a missionary who had paid a visit to her native village, and she had been so interested that she asked two Persian children to teach her more. When she was brought to the hospital even the terrible pain she was suffering did not make her forget the wonderful story, and she begged to be told more and more. And, resting in the love of Christ and trusting wholly in Him and His salvation, she loved to sing of the joy to which He was going to take her, and kept begging for “Here we suffer grief and pain,” until even the Mohammedan women would sit beside her and sing the hymn that comforted her so much....
“I have a foolish husband,” said one little girl, “He says he will beat Jesus Christ out of me, but he can only beat my body, and Jesus Christ is in my heart, so he cannot beat Him out.”
(Mrs. Malcolm, “Children of Persia,” Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier.)