The form of Islam seen in the large centres of population in the Hausa States is that of a virile, aggressive force, in no sense effete or corrupted by the surrounding paganism. It has had no rival systems such as Hinduism or Buddhism to compete with, and until now has not come into conflict with Christianity. The distinctive characteristics of the African have, however, tended to increase in it sensualism and a laxity of morals, and this has stamped, to a large extent, the attitude toward women and the character of women as developed under its system.

Social and moral evils, which may have a thin cloak thrown over them in the East as well as in those lands of Islam in the North of Africa, are open, and boldly uncovered, in the Hausa States.

Most of what is written in this chapter refers to the Hausa women, who form by far the greatest number in this country; but it is necessary to write a few lines first about the Fulani women, who are aliens and of a different social, political, and racial type.

It is now generally acknowledged that these people—Fulanis—originally came from Asia, or at least are Semitic.

They are the rulers of all this great empire, and have for a hundred years exercised a tyrannical rule over the Hausas and the pagan peoples whom they had succeeded in enslaving before British rule in turn overcame them. The Fulani women are many of them olive-colored; some are beautiful and all have the small features, thin lips, straight nose, and long straight hair associated with the Asiatic. The Fulani rulers, following the Eastern fashion, have large harems and keep their women very secluded.

The late Emir of Zaria was terribly severe to all his people, and cruel to a degree with any of his wives who transgressed in any way or were suspected of unfaithfulness. In one instance in which a female slave had assisted one of his wives to escape, both being detected, the wife was immediately decapitated and the slave given the head in an open calabash and ordered by the Emir to fan the flies off it until next night!

I have been admitted into the home of one such family, the home of one of the highest born of all the Fulani chiefs, saw two of the wives and bowed to them, but the two little girls of seven and eight years came to call on me. On the whole I was struck with the cheerful appearance of the wife and the sweetness of the two little girls, but the husband was a particularly nice man, I should think a kind husband, and I know a kind father.

I knew one other Fulani lady long after the death of her husband, she being about sixty-five years of age, and a very nice woman in many ways. She told me that her husband, although of good family, had married only her and that they had been happily married for over thirty years when he died, and she had remained a widow. I fear, however, these are exceptional cases and that the ordinary life of the women of the ruling Fulani class is a hard one.

I was once sitting in my compound when a well-covered and veiled woman came to see me, with the excuse that she wanted medicine. After some conversation I found it was trouble that had brought her. She had been for some years loved by her husband but had had no children; so her husband had married another wife and disliked her now, and she wanted medicine from me to make him love her again! She begged me never to mention that she had come to me, saying that her husband would certainly beat her nearly to death if he knew that she had come out, and much more so if he knew she had come to me.

The ease with which all Hausa women, but specially those of the middle and lower classes, can obtain divorce for almost any reason; also the frequency with which they can obtain redress for cruelty from their husbands in the native courts, gives them power and a position in the community not to be despised. A man, for instance, in order to get a girl of sixteen years in marriage will pay her parents a sum of perhaps ten or twelve pounds. If at any future time she desires to leave him and marry another man, she can do so by swearing before the native courts that they have quarrelled and that she no longer wishes to live with him. But if that is all she merely gets a paper of divorce and either herself or her next husband has to refund to the aggrieved former husband the sum originally paid for her. If, however, she can prove violence or injury from her husband she has not to pay him anything, but may even in some cases get damages.

A girl is usually given the option of refusing the man whom her parents have arranged for her to marry. This is not often done, but I have known of some cases in which the girl has availed herself of the privilege, and stated that she prefers some one else, in which case the engagement is broken and the new marriage arranged at once with the man of her choice.

In the villages, and among the lower classes in the cities, girls are not usually married until they are about sixteen. Frequently, however, among the higher and wealthier classes the engagement is made by the parents when she is much younger, perhaps eleven or twelve, and she is after that confined with some strictness to the house or else carefully watched.

There is a very vicious and terribly degrading habit amongst the Hausas, which is known as "Tsaranchi." One cannot give in a word an English equivalent and one does not desire to describe its meaning. It has the effect of demoralizing most of the young girls and making it almost certain that very few girls of even eleven or twelve have retained any feelings of decency and virtue.

In this the girls are deliberately the tempters, and many boys and young men are led into sin who would not have sought it. Here one must not blame the women or the girls, for the original sin is with the men, who, through the terribly degrading system of polygamy and slave concubinage, have introduced since centuries that which destroys the purity of the home, and makes it impossible for the children to grow up clean-minded. It is a sad fact that the evil effect of this seems to have acted more on the women and children than on the men.

One feels sorely for the boys brought up in this land without a glimpse of purity in true home life; with never a notion of a woman being the most holy and chaste and beautiful of all God's creation, and never seeing even the beauty of girlhood purity.

One is glad to see that among many of the men there is a growing feeling that they have lost much in this way; and often in talking to men on the subject of women and their naturally depraved condition, I have shown them how, where women are given the place God meant them to have in the home and in the social and religious life of a people, their character is always the most regenerating thing in the life of a nation, and that it is useless for them to wish their women to be different when they do everything to prevent the possibility. With the boys in my own compound and under my own care I am bound to forbid all intercourse with girls because of their evil minds and influence. Of course such a thing is fearfully unnatural and cuts off from a boy's life all those influences which we in Christian lands consider so much tend to strengthen and deepen and soften his character.

It is easy to see from the above the reason why amongst those who are careful to preserve a semblance of chastity, the girls are carefully secluded from a tender age and not allowed outside their compounds except under exceptional circumstances, until the time that they are about to be taken to the house of the man to whom they have been betrothed.

This preservation of virtue by force, points to the fact that there is no public opinion; no love of purity for its own sake; no real and vital principle in Islam which tends to preserve and build up purity.

A mere lad, the viciousness of whose first wife had led him quickly to take a second, said to me when protested with for doing it, "Our women are not like yours, and you can never tell what it all means to us. Even if we wanted to be good they would hinder us."

The existence of a large class of pagan slave girls, who have been caught and brought from their own homes and carried into the Hausa country to become members of the harem of some of the Hausas, also complicates and intensifies the evil; for this mixture only tends to lower the standards and make the facilities for sin tenfold easier.

It is not true in the Central Soudan, as is so often stated, that polygamy tends to diminish the greater evils of common adultery and prostitution. These are very frequent, and it is perfectly true what man after man has sadly told me, that no one trusts even his own brother in the case of married relationships. I am bound to acknowledge, however, in honesty, that these evils are intensified in the cantonments with their large number of native soldiers of loose character, and some even of one's own immoral countrymen.

I have seen very little systematic cruelty towards women or children, except of course in the slave-raiding and slave markets which are now happily abolished. Women are able to take care of themselves and certainly do, so far as I have seen.

The knowledge that a wife may leave at will, that less labor can be got out of a cruelly-treated slave wife, and that little girls can leave home and find a place elsewhere, all have tended to make women's lives freer, and to some extent less hard in the Central Soudan than in North Africa.

On the other hand, one is struck with the apparent lack of love, and forced to the conclusion that a woman is not in any sense, to a man of the Hausa race, more than a necessary convenience; a woman to look after his house, have children, and prepare his meals. In old age she is often abandoned or driven away, or becomes a mere drudge. This is often the case also with a man, if not wealthy; when old his wives will leave him, and many a case I have seen of such desolation. Of real love which triumphs over circumstances of poverty and sickness there is but little; women will leave their husbands when through misfortune they have lost their wealth, and go and marry another, returning later when fortune has again favored the original husband and frowned on the later one.

I met one beautiful exception to this. One of the most beautiful girls I have seen in the Hausa states, with a really good face and one which anywhere would have been pronounced pretty, brought her blind husband to me. When married he had been really good to her, and after one year had lost his sight. For four years she had stuck to him and tended him and really loved him, taking him from one native doctor to another, and at last to me. It was touching to see her gentleness to him and the evident trust of each in the other. I have never seen such another in the Hausa country. Yet what possibilities of the future!

Very few girls attain the most elementary standard of education. But some few do and every facility is provided for those who can and will go farther, and I have known girls, mostly those whose fathers were mallams, who learned to read and write the Koran well, and who were considered quite proficient; and at least one case I know of a woman who, because of her wisdom and education, was entrusted with the rule of two or three cities in her father's Emirate.

The chief occupations of women are the grinding of corn and the preparation of food for the family, the care of their babies, who are slung on their backs, the carrying of water from the well or brook, and, to some extent in the villages, agriculture, though with the exception of the poor slaves it is rare to see women overworked in the fields.

They are great traders also, and if not young or too attractive looking, they are allowed to take their flour, their sweetmeats, etc., to the markets and trade. Then again when the season for all agricultural work is at an end, and their husbands and brothers start for the west and the coast places, for the long wearisome journey which takes them to the places where they sell their rubber, nitre, and other goods, and bring back salt, woollen and cotton goods, the women go with them, and it is a most pretty and interesting sight to see the long row of these young women, in single file, neatly and modestly dressed, with white overalls and a load of calabashes and cooking utensils neatly packed and carried on their heads. They often sing as they march, and coming in at the end of the day's journey, light the fires and prepare the meal for themselves and their male relatives, while the latter go and gather the sticks and grass to make a temporary shelter for the night.

They are tidy, industrious, and lively, and, to any one who did not understand their language, these women would give the impression of a charming picture and of many things good and true. But to one who could hear the conversation, as I often have, the secret of the utter depravity of all the people is soon learned, and one sees how it is that none grow up with any idea of purity. The minds of even young children are vitiated from the earliest age.

I have found many very "religious" women. It must, however, not be forgotten that the religion of Islam is totally divorced from the practice of all morals. Women in some numbers attend the weekly midday service in the mosques, sitting apart and worshipping.

One very handsome woman whom I knew had as a little child been enslaved, and later married to the Emir of Zaria, and had been the mother or stepmother of many of the Zaria princes. She was a very religious woman, was allowed a fair amount of liberty, and was much respected. She not infrequently attended the services and was much interested. But it is certain that, with the exception of the use of a certain number of pious expressions, religion has little hold over the Hausa women, and they can in no sense be considered to share in the devotions of the men, or to be companions with the men in those things which are the deepest part of human nature. Hence with Christians there is the learning of a new relationship altogether, when the man begins to feel that his wife must be his companion and helpmeet in things pertaining to all his life and soul and spirit.

Amongst the very lowest classes, with whom there are less objections to coming into contact with men, and especially white men, and who in their suffering have allowed us to minister to them, I have been able to get a glimpse into the terrible sufferings of the poor women of all the other classes. In their hours of agony and suffering they can get no alleviation, no nursing or skill to shorten the hours of weary pain, and in large numbers they die terrible deaths for the lack of that surgical help we could so easily render them. I was able once to visit a woman who seemed to be dying. She was in a terrible condition; the complete delivery of her child could not be effected, and for two days she had been in a shocking state. In their despair her people asked me to come, and within three hours, by surgical knowledge, we were able to put her right, and finally get her to sleep and complete her cure. But we were told that many, many died in the condition in which we found her, and that there was never any thought of calling for help. Many a man who seemed fairly intelligent, and to whom I have talked almost with indignation of such things, has answered me: "We do not know what to do; our women cannot help these cases, for they have no skill, and we would any of us rather let them die than call a man in to help." And so they do die. They will not yet trust us, although they fully realize that we are different from their own religious leaders. Whole realms of thought have yet to be broken through, whole tracts of life principles and perverted ideas have to be destroyed, before it will be possible for the many poor sufferers in this land to get what the love of Christ has brought within their grasp, but which they are afraid as yet to take.

I have tried to show that there is a bright as well as a sombre side to this picture; that where there is restraint there is often some kindness; that with ignorance there is often a desire and a yearning after better things, and a dull feeling that what is, is not best.

Nothing but a radical change in the very fundamental ideas of woman, even by woman herself, can bring about the regeneration of this land. Only the restoration of woman to the place gained for her by Christ, and snatched from her again by the prophet of Islam, can bring true holiness and life into the homes of Hausa, and bring a new hope and reality into the lives of the men.

The knowledge and worship of Christ are beginning to do this, and in one or two homes in North Nigeria already men, who previously thought woman inferior human beings or superior cattle, and who would have looked upon it as madness to suggest that a woman should be considered the helpmeet of the man in all that pertains to this life Godward and manward, are restoring to their wives and mothers and sisters that dignity. How happy will be the result when this spirit has spread and all the land has begun to feel the influence of good and holy women in the home, the market, the school, and the church.