THE EMANCIPATION OF MOHAMMEDAN 



WOMEN 



By Mary Mills Patrick, Ph. D. 



President of the American College for Girls at Constantinople 



WOMEN in the harems have 

 been an unknown quantity to 

 the outside world during the 

 ages that have past. Their lives have 

 been shrouded in mystery. In the streets 

 they have been concealed behind thick 

 veils and flowing draperies, and hidden 

 behind heavy curtains and latticed win- 

 dows in their homes. 



Until the 23d of July last Constanti- 

 nople was like a medieval city. In fact, 

 it was the only city in Europe which 

 had remained wholly without the out- 

 ward appurtenances of modern civiliza- 

 tion. There were neither electric cars, 

 local post, telephones, nor sewage sys- 

 tem. Thousands of dogs acted as scav- 

 engers in the irregular and badly paved 

 streets. Rising above this medley of 

 Oriental life, the slender minarets of 

 hundreds of mosques pointed to the 

 golden sky. 



In this curious setting the women of 

 the harems stood out as the most inter- 

 esting feature of Mohammedan life. 

 The silent, heavily draped figures, 

 threading their way in and out of the 

 streets, bazars, and shops, seated mo- 

 tionlessly in their caiques on the Bos- 

 phorus, or dimly seen behind, /latticed 

 windows, filled the place with mysterious 

 life. But on the 24th of July all this 

 was changed, as in the twinkling of an 

 eye, by the wonder-working revolution, 

 which was the result of long years of 

 preparation by the Young Turkey party. 

 It brought instant freedom to all classes 

 in Turkey. 



Mohammedan women on that day be- 

 came free. The outward manifestation 

 of this freedom will, from the nature of 

 the case, be somewhat gradual, but 

 morally their freedom has been complete 

 since the Constitution was announced. 

 They played an important part in the 



bloodless revolution of July 24. The 

 makers of New Turkey live mostly 

 abroad, but the Society of Union and 

 Progress penetrated every town and vil- 

 lage in the Turkish Empire. 



Espionage was so severe that promi- 

 nent men did not dare to meet together 

 to discuss plans. They could not even 

 give two dinner parties in succession 

 without exciting suspicion. It was the 

 women who overcame this difficulty. 

 Thousands of letters containing the 

 plans for the coup d'etat of July 24 were 

 patiently carried back and forth between 

 the members of the Society of Union and 

 Progress by them. They were handed 

 from one woman to another, and secretly 

 given to the husbands as they met each 

 other in the streets and in the shops, ap- 

 parently innocent of any political schem- 

 ing. A few Turkish women managed to 

 evade the law against leaving the country, 

 and went to Paris and other places to 

 openly assist in the organization of the 

 Young Turkey party. Yet most of their 

 aid was given in secret. All through 

 Albania, Macedonia, and the Turkish 

 Empire Mohammedan women have been 

 alive to every step of progress made. 



TURKISH WOMEN FOR CENTURIES HAVE 

 BEEN ABLE TO HOLD PROPERTY INDE- 

 PENDENTLY OF THEIR HUSBANDS — 

 RIGHTS WHICH NO GERMAN WIFE EVEN 

 YET POSSESSES 



The training of Mohammedan women 

 through the long centuries that have 

 passed has fitted them to take an active 

 and efifective part in political affairs. 

 The life of the women in the harems has 

 been anomalous ; slaves on the one hand, 

 whose value and happiness depended 

 largely upon their beauty and ability to 

 please a master who could divorce them 

 by a single word, but on the other hand 



