As usual, the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes. Human nature, all the world over, differs but in degree. Everywhere women may be capricious, coy, and hard to please in common conjunctures: in the hour of need they will display devoted heroism. Any chronicler of the Afghan war will bear witness that warm hearts, noble sentiments, and an overflowing kindness to the poor, the weak, and the unhappy are found even in a harim. Europe now knows that the Moslem husband provides separate apartments and a distinct establishment for each of his wives, unless, as sometimes happens, one be an old woman and the other a child. And, confessing that envy, hatred, and malice often flourish in polygamy, the Moslem asks, Is monogamy open to no objections? As far as my limited observations go, polyandry is the only state of society in which jealousy and quarrels about the sex are the exception and not the rule of life.
In quality of doctor I have seen a little and heard much of the harim.
It often resembles a European home composed of a man, his wife, and his
mother. And I have seen in the West many a happy fireside fitter to make
Miss Martineaus heart ache than any harim in Grand Cairo.
[p.92] Were it not evident that the spiritualising of sexuality by sentiment, of propensity by imagination, is universal among the highest orders of mankind,cest letoffe de la nature que limagination a brodee, says Voltaire,I should attribute the origin of love to the influence of the Arabs poetry and chivalry upon European ideas rather than to mediaeval Christianity. Certain Fathers of the Church, it must be remembered, did not believe that women have souls. The Moslems never went so far.
In nomad life, tribes often meet for a time, live together whilst pasturage lasts, and then separate perhaps for a generation. Under such circumstances, youths who hold with the Italian that
Perduto e tutto il tempo
Che in amor non si spende,
will lose heart to maidens, whom possibly, by the laws of the clan, they may not marry,[FN#23] and the light o love will fly her home. The fugitives must brave every danger, for revenge, at all times the Badawis idol, now becomes the lodestar of his existence. But the Arab lover will dare all consequences. Men have died and the worms have eaten them, but not for love, may be true in the West: it is false in the East. This is attested in every tale where love, and not ambition, is the groundwork of the narrative.[FN#24] And nothing can be more tender, more
[p.93] pathetic than the use made of these separations and long absences by the old Arab poets. Whoever peruses the Suspended Poem of Labid, will find thoughts at once so plaintive and so noble, that even Dr. Carlyles learned verse cannot wholly deface their charm.
The warrior-bard returns from afar. He looks upon the traces of hearth and home still furrowing the Desert ground. In bitterness of spirit he checks himself from calling aloud upon his lovers and his friends. He melts at the remembrance of their departure, and long indulges in the absorbing theme. Then he strengthens himself by the thought of Nawaras inconstancy, how she left him and never thought of him again. He impatiently dwells upon the charms of the places which detain her, advocates flight from the changing lover and the false friend, and, in the exultation with which he feels his swift dromedary start under him upon her rapid course, he seems to seek and finds some consolation for womens perfidy and forgetfulness. Yet he cannot abandon Nawaras name or memory. Again he dwells with yearning upon scenes of past felicity, and he boasts of his prowessa fresh reproach to her,of his gentle birth, and of his hospitality. He ends with an encomium upon his clan, to which he attributes, as a noble Arab should, all the virtues of man. This is Goldsmiths deserted village in Al-Hijaz. But the Arab, with equal simplicity and pathos, has a fire, a force of language, and a depth of feeling, which the Irishman, admirable as his verse is, could never rival.
As the author of the Peninsular War well remarks, women in troubled times, throwing off their accustomed feebleness and frivolity, become helpmates meet for man. The same is true of pastoral life. [FN#25] Here, between the
[p.94] extremes of fierceness and sensibility, the weaker sex, remedying its great want, power, rises itself by courage, physical as well as moral. In the early days of Al-Islam, if history be credible, Arabia had a race of heroines. Within the last century, Ghaliyah, the wife of a Wahhabi chief, opposed Mohammed Ali himself in many a bloody field. A few years ago, when Ibn Asm, popularly called Ibn Rumi, chief of the Zubayd clan about Rabigh, was treacherously slain by the Turkish general, Kurdi Osman, his sister, a fair young girl, determined to revenge him. She fixed upon the Arafat-day of pilgrimage for the accomplishment of her designs, disguised herself in male attire, drew her kerchief in the form Lisam over the lower part of her face, and with lighted match awaited her enemy. The Turk, however, was not present, and the girl was arrested to win for herself a local reputation equal to the maid of Salamanca. Thus it is that the Arab has learned to swear that great oath by the honour of my women.