THE EMANCIPATION OF MOHAMMEDAN WOMEN 



43 



they have enjoyed privileges which 

 women of other nations have struggled 

 ior centuries to obtain. 



It was believed by the followers of 

 Mohammed, the Prophet of Islam, that 

 -the Koran, which was a collection of his 

 sayings, would be able to deal adequately 

 with all the legal aspects of society. It 

 was soon found that many questions 

 arose to which no reference could be 

 found in the Koran. Under these cir- 

 cumstances an additional code of laws 

 was necessary. The caliphate had been 

 transferred from Mecca to Bagdad, and 

 the leading Mohammedans, seeking for 

 a model on which to base their code, 

 turned to the Roman emperors at Con- 

 stantinople and adopted in a modified 

 form the Code of Justinian. 



It is a well known fact that Roman 

 law regarded the rights of the individual 

 without consideration of sex ; a man or 

 a woman was alike a citizen of the 

 Roman world. This met the require- 

 ments of Mohammedan life, where no 

 woman ever necessarily sustained a last- 

 ing relation with any man. 



Therefore, during all the centuries of 

 Mohammedan history, women have 

 legally controlled their own property. 

 They have been free to buy, sell, or 

 alienate it without consulting any male 

 relative. This has given them inde- 

 pendence of thought and an influence in 

 business affairs that seems wholly incon- 

 sistent with their life of comparative per- 

 sonal slavery. 



Enter a harem and there you see a 

 'Circassian beauty, who has been newly 

 acquired by the tall, handsome pasha 

 who has just passed you in the street. 

 The air is heavy with the odor of East- 

 ern perfumes, and the black eunuch 

 stands by the door to watch all who 

 come and go. The beauty herself is 

 thickly powdered, with an elaborate coif- 

 fure erected by her numerous maids. 

 Jewels half cover her arms, and she 

 wears a beautifully embroidered neg- 

 ligee. There is a languorous expression 

 in her black eyes, as she sits idly smoking 

 -a cigarette and sipping Turkish coffee. 

 Would you think, to look at her, that 



when she draws her money from the 

 bank that she must sign her own check? 

 These two sides of life have been wholly 

 at variance with each other ; but, as years 

 have gone by, the thoughtful side has pre- 

 dominated among the more intellectual 

 Mohammedan women, until now they 

 are ready to enter into the affairs of 

 today with an understanding and vigor 

 which the world has never accredited to 

 them. 



It has been on the social side that 

 Mohammedan women have suffered 

 most under the oppression of the last 

 thirty years, especially from the fre- 

 quency of divorce. A man could legally 

 divorce his wife at any minute, the only 

 condition being the payment of the 

 dowry which was settled upon her by 

 the husband at the time of her marriage. 



In the last attempt to keep the sex in 

 the role assigned to them by the life of 

 the harem, very strict laws have been 

 made to prevent all possible progress 

 among them. Laws have been pro- 

 claimed over and over again forbidding 

 Mohammedan women to attend foreign 

 schools. In this emergency they en- 

 gaged governesses. Most of these gov- 

 ernesses were French, and many of them 

 were inefficient, and bad moral guides to 

 so large a portion of the population be- 

 ginning to think and question. The gov- 

 erness system obtained so much influ- 

 ence after a short time that laws were 

 made forbidding women to have govern- 

 esses. Yet they struggled on in an ef- 

 fort for mental illumination, reading, 

 writing, talking things over among 

 themselves, and sometimes getting help 

 from their husbands and brothers. They 

 have accomplished much, with so heavy 

 a handicap, in literature, science, com- 

 merce, and politics. 



WOMEN WHO ARK WRITERS 



The extreme censorship of the press 

 has kept the best efforts of the Moham- 

 medan women from the knowledge of 

 the public. They have studied lan- 

 guages, written for the papers, and pub- 

 lished books. It is not an uncommon 

 thing to meet a veiled Mohammedan 



