Mohammedan veiled woman standing by Saracenic ornamented
arch.
I might tell you many other things these people did—how they invented the game of chess, of all games the one that needs the most thought; how they made clocks with pendulums to keep time—people had no real clocks before; how they started wonderful libraries of books; and so on—but this is enough for the present to show you what intelligent people they were.
The Arabs were not Aryans. They belonged to the Semite family, the same family to which the Phenicians and Jews belong. The Arabs were as clever as their cousins the Phenicians, who, you remember, were very clever, but they were also as religious as their other cousins the Jews, who, you remember, were very religious.
But the Moslems had peculiar ideas about women. They thought it was immodest for a woman to show her face to men, and so every woman had to wear a thick veil which hid her face all except her eyes whenever she went out where there were men. With such a veil she could see but not be seen.
But here are their two most peculiar ideas: they believed women were only fit to be slaves to the men, and they thought that a man might have as many wives as he wished all at one time!
So we may wonder, then, what Europe would really have been like if the Moslems had conquered all the rest of the world at that time—if they had left no country Christian—if we were all of us Moslems to-day instead of Christians!
45
A Light in the Dark Ages
Europe had been “dark” for three hundred years. You know what I mean.