"Teach not thy daughter letters; let her not live on the roof."

Moorish Proverb.

Of no country in the world can it more truly be said than of the Moorish Empire that the social condition of the people may be measured by that of its women. Holding its women in absolute subjection, the Moorish nation is itself held in subjection, morally, politically, socially. The proverb heading this chapter, implying that women should not enjoy the least education or liberty, expresses the universal treatment of the weaker sex among Mohammedans. It is the subservient position of women which strikes the visitor from Europe more than all the oriental strangeness of the local customs or the local art and colour. Advocates of the restriction of the rights of women in our own land, and of the retention of disabilities unknown to men, who fail to recognize the justice and invariability of the principle of absolute equality in rights and liberty between the sexes, should investigate the state of things existing in Morocco, where the natural results of a fallacious principle have had free course.

No welcome awaits the infant daughter, and few care to bear the evil news to the father, who will[page72] sometimes be left uninformed as to the sex of his child till the time comes to name her. It is rarely that girls are taught to read, or even to understand the rudiments of their religious system. Here and there a father who ranks in Morocco as scholarly, takes the trouble to teach his children at home, including his daughters in the class, but this is very seldom the case. Only those women succeed in obtaining even an average education in whom a thirst for knowledge is combined with opportunities in every way exceptional. In the country considerably more liberty is permitted than in the towns, and the condition of the Berber women has already been noted.

Nevertheless, in certain circumstances, women attain a power quite abnormal under such conditions, usually the result of natural astuteness, combined—at the outset, at least—with a reasonable share of good looks, for when a woman is fairly astute she is a match for a man anywhere. A Mohammedan woman's place in life depends entirely on her personal attractions. If she lacks good looks, or is thin—which in Barbary, as in other Muslim countries, amounts to much the same thing—her future is practically hopeless. The chances being less—almost nil—of getting her easily off their hands by marriage, the parents feel they must make the best they can of her by setting her to work about the house, and she becomes a general drudge. If the home is a wealthy one, she may be relieved from this lot, and steadily ply her needle at minutely fine silk embroidery, or deck and paint herself in style, but, despised by her more fortunate sisters, she is even then hardly better off.[page73]

If, on the other hand, a daughter is the beauty of the family, every one pays court to her in some degree, for there is no telling to what she may arrive. Perhaps, in Morocco, she is even thought good enough for the Sultan—plump, clear-skinned, bright-eyed. Could she but get a place in the Royal hareem, it would be in the hands of God to make her the mother of the coming sultan. But good looks alone will not suffice to take her there. Influence—a word translatable in the Orient by a shorter one, cash—must be brought to bear. The interest of a wazeer or two must be secured, and finally an interview must take place with one of the "wise women" who are in charge of the Imperial ladies. She, too, must be convinced by the eloquence of dollars, that His Majesty could not find another so graceful a creature in all his dominions.

When permission is given to send her to Court, what joy there is, what bedecking, what congratulation! At last she is taken away with a palpitating heart, as she thinks of the possibilities before her, bundled up in her blanket and mounted on an ambling mule under strictest guard. On arrival at her new home her very beauty will make enemies, especially among those who have been there longest, and who feel their chances grow less as each new-comer appears. Perhaps one Friday the Sultan notices her as he walks in his grounds in the afternoon, and taking a fancy to her, decides to make her his wife. At once all jealousies are hidden, and each vies with the other to render her service, and assist the preparations for the coming event. For a while she will remain supreme—a very queen indeed—but only till[page74] her place is taken by another. If she has sons her chances are better; but unless she maintains her influence over her husband till her offspring are old enough to find a lasting place in his affections, she will probably one day be despatched to TafilÁlt, beyond the Atlas by the SÁharah, whence come those luscious dates. There every other man is a direct descendant of some Moorish king, as for centuries it has served as a sort of overflow for the prolific Royal house.

As IslÁm knows no right of primogeniture, each sultan appoints his heir; so each wife strives to obtain this favour for her son, and often enough the story of Ishmael and Isaac repeats itself among these reputed descendants of Hagar. The usual way is for the pet son to be placed in some command, even before really able to discharge the duties of the post, which shall secure him supreme control on his father's death. The treasury and the army are the two great means to this end. Those possible rivals who have not been sent away to TafilÁlt are as often as not imprisoned or put to death on some slight charge, as used to be the custom in England a few hundred years ago.

This method of bequeathing rights which do not come under the strict scale for the division of property contained in the KorÁn is not confined to Royalty. It applies also to religious sanctity. An instance is that of the late Shareef, or Noble, of WazzÁn, a feudal "saint" of great influence. His father, on his deathbed, appointed as successor to his title, his holiness, and the estates connected therewith, the son who should be found playing with a certain stick, a common toy of his favourite. But[page75] a black woman by whom he had a son was present, and ran out to place the stick in the hands of her own child, who thus inherited his father's honours. Some of the queens of Morocco have arrived at such power through their influence over their husbands that they have virtually ruled the Empire.

Supposing, however, that the damsel who has at last found admittance to the hareem does not, after all, prove attractive to her lord, she will in all probability be sent away to make room for some one else. She will be bestowed upon some country governor when he comes to Court. Sometimes it is an especially astute one who is thus transferred, that she may thereafter serve as a spy on his actions.

Though those before whom lies such a career as has been described will be comparatively few, none who can be considered beautiful are without their chances, however poor. Many well-to-do men prefer a poor wife to a rich one, because they can divorce her when tired of her without incurring the enmity of powerful relatives. Marriage is enjoined upon every Muslim as a religious duty, and, if able to afford it, he usually takes to himself his first wife before he is out of his teens. He is relieved of the choice of a partner which troubles some of us so much, for the ladies of his family undertake this for him: if they do not happen to know of a likely individual they employ a professional go-between, a woman who follows also the callings of pedlar and scandal-monger. It is the duty of this personage, on receipt of a present from his friends, to sing his praises and those of his family in the house of some beautiful girl, whose friends are thereby induced[page76] to give her a present to go and do likewise on their behalf in the house of so promising a youth. Personal negotiations will then probably take place between the lady friends, and all things proving satisfactory, the fathers or brothers of the might-be pair discuss the dowry and marriage-settlement from a strictly business point of view.

At this stage the bride-elect will perhaps be thought not fat enough, and will have to submit to a course of stuffing. This consists in swallowing after each full meal a few small sausage-shaped boluses of flour, honey and butter, flavoured with anise-seed or something similar. A few months of this treatment give a marvellous rotundity to the figure, thus greatly increasing her charms in the native eye. But of these the bridegroom will see nothing, if not surreptitiously, till after the wedding, when she is brought to his house.

By that time formal documents of marriage will have been drawn up, and signed by notaries before the kÁdi or judge, setting forth the contract—with nothing in it about love or honour,—detailing every article which the wife brings with her, including in many instances a considerable portion of the household utensils. Notwithstanding all this, she may be divorced by her husband simply saying, "I divorce thee!" and though she may claim the return of all she brought, she has no option but to go home again. He may repent and take her back a first and a second time, but after he has put her away three times he may not marry her again till after she has been wedded to some one else and divorced. Theoretically she may get a divorce from him, but practically this is a matter of great difficulty.[page77]

The legal expression employed for the nuptial tie is one which conveys the idea of purchasing a field, to be put to what use the owner will, according him complete control. This idea is borne out to the full, and henceforward the woman lives for her lord, with no thought of independence or self-assertion. If he is poor, all work too hard for him that is not considered unwomanly falls to her share, hewing of wood and drawing of water, grinding of corn and making of bread, weaving and washing; but, strange to us, little sewing. When decidedly passÉe, she saves him a donkey in carrying wood and charcoal and grass to market, often bent nearly double under a load which she cannot lift, which has to be bound on her back. Her feet are bare, but her sturdy legs are at times encased in leather to ward off the wayside thorns. No longer jealously covered, she and her unmarried daughters trudge for many weary miles at dawn, her decidedly better-off half and a son or two riding the family mule. From this it is but a short step to helping the cow or donkey draw the plough, and this step is sometimes taken.

Until a woman's good looks have quite disappeared, which generally occurs about the time they become grandmothers—say thirty,—intercourse of any sort with men other than her relatives of the first degree is strictly prohibited, and no one dare salute a woman in the street, even if her attendant or mount shows her to be a privileged relative. The slightest recognition of a man out-of-doors—or indeed anywhere—would be to proclaim herself one of that degraded outcaste class as common in Moorish towns as in Europe.

Of companionship in wedlock the Moor has no[page78] conception, and his ideas of love are those of lust. Though matrimony is considered by the Muslim doctors as "half of IslÁm," its value in their eyes is purely as a legalization of license by the substitution of polygamy for polyandry. Slavishly bound to the observance of wearisome customs, immured in a windowless house with only the roof for a promenade, seldom permitted outside the door, and then most carefully wrapped in a blanket till quite unrecognizable, the life of a Moorish woman, from the time she has first been caught admiring herself in a mirror, is that of a bird encaged. Lest she might grow content with such a lot, she has before her eyes from infancy the jealousies and rivalries of her father's wives and concubines, and is early initiated into the disgusting and unutterable practices employed to gain the favour of their lord. Her one thought from childhood is man, and distance lends enchantment. A word, the interchange of a look, with a man is sought for by the Moorish maiden more than are the sighs and glances of a coy brunette by a Spaniard. Nothing short of the unexpurgated Arabian Nights' Entertainments can convey an adequate idea of what goes on within those whited sepulchres, the broad, blank walls of Moorish towns. A word with the mason who comes to repair the roof, or even a peep at the men at work on the building over the way, on whose account the roof promenade is forbidden, is eagerly related and expatiated on. In short, all the training a Moorish woman receives is sensual, a training which of itself necessitates most rigorous, though often unavailing, seclusion.

Both in town and country intrigues are common,[page79] but intrigues which have not even the excuse of the blindness of love, whose only motive is animal passion. The husband who, on returning home, finds a pair of red slippers before the door of his wife's apartment, is bound to understand thereby that somebody else's wife or daughter is within, and he dare not approach. If he has suspicions, all he can do is to bide his time and follow the visitor home, should the route lie through the streets, or despatch a faithful slave-girl or jealous concubine on a like errand, should the way selected be over the roof-tops. In the country, under a very different set of conventionalities, much the same takes place.

In a land where woman holds the degraded position which she does under IslÁm, such family circles as the Briton loves can never exist. The foundation of the home system is love, which seldom links the members of these families, most seldom of all man and wife. Anything else is not to be expected when they meet for the first time on their wedding night. To begin with, no one's pleasure is studied save that of the despotic master of the house. All the inmates, from the poor imprisoned wives down to the lively slave-girl who opens the door, all are there to serve his pleasure, and woe betide those who fail.

The first wife may have a fairly happy time of it for a season, if her looks are good, and her ways pleasing, but when a second usurps her place, she is generally cast aside as a useless piece of furniture, unless set to do servile work. Although four legal wives are allowed by the KorÁn, it is only among the rich that so many are found, on account of the expense of their maintenance in appropriate[page80] style. The facility of divorce renders it much cheaper to change from time to time, and slaves are more economical. To the number of such women that a man may keep no limit is set; he may have "as many as his right hand can possess." Then, too, these do the work of the house, and if they bear their master no children, they may be sold like any other chattels.

The consequence of such a system is that she reigns who for the time stands highest in her lord's favour, so that the strife and jealousies which disturb the peace of the household are continual. This rivalry is naturally inherited by the children, who side with their several mothers, which is especially the case with the boys. Very often the legal wife has no children, or only daughters, while quite a little troop of step-children play about her house. In these cases it is not uncommon for at least the best-looking of these youngsters to be taught to call her "mother," and their real parent "Dadda M'barkah," or whatever her name may be. The offspring of wives and bondwomen stand on an equal footing before the law, in which IslÁm is still ahead of us.

Such is the sad lot of women in Morocco. Religion itself being all but denied them in practice, whatever precept provides, it is with blank astonishment that the majority of them hear the message of those noble foreign sisters of theirs who have devoted their lives to showing them a better way. The greatest difficulty is experienced in arousing in them any sense of individuality, any feeling of personal responsibility, or any aspiration after good. They are so accustomed to be treated [page81] as cattle, that their higher powers are altogether dormant, all possibilities of character repressed. The welfare of their souls is supposed to be assured by union with a Muslim, and few know even how to pray. Instead of religion, their minds are saturated with the grossest superstition. If this be the condition of the free woman, how much worse that of the slave!

The present socially degraded state in which the people live, and their apparent, though not real, incapacity for progress and development, is to a great extent the curse entailed by this brutalization of women. No race can ever rise above the level of its weaker sex, and till Morocco learns this lesson it will never rise. The boy may be the father of the man, but the woman is the mother of the boy, and so controls the destiny of the nation. Nothing can indeed be hoped for in this country in the way of social progress till the minds of the men have been raised, and their estimation of women entirely changed. Though Turkey was so long much in the position in which Morocco remains to-day, it is a noteworthy fact that as she steadily progresses in the way of civilization, one of the most apparent features of this progress is the growing respect for women, and the increasing liberty which is allowed them, both in public and private.

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