An Arab Woman Entering a Saint's Tomb (Tunis)An Arab Woman Entering a Saint's Tomb (Tunis)
Before our house stands a Zawia (saint's tomb), built in honor of a female saint, and at this tomb one day stood an Arab woman, knocking gently at the door and crying in piteous tones, "O lady! Heal me, for I am very ill! I have giddiness in my head! I am very weak! Do heal me!" The poor creature calling in her ignorance on a dead saint not only moves the heart to pity but also creates in the mind a wonder as to who these saints may be, and what has led to their being thus honored.
Let me give you a sketch of a noted dervish, or saint, who has just passed away. I first saw Sidi Ali Ben Jaber some years ago seated in front of a café in the Halfouine—the quarter where the late Bey had built him a house. By his side were native musicians making a discordant noise while at intervals the holy man was bellowing like a mad bull. Securing a corner of a doorstep, I managed to peep over the surrounding crowd and my curiosity was rewarded by the sight of a decrepit, filthy old man, his bald pate encircled by scant grizzled hair and unadorned by the usual fez cap. His sole covering was a dirty cotton shirt, open at the neck and descending no lower than the knees. But what a shirt! As a mark of saintliness, it had not left his body for years, but had gradually increased in thickness, for when sufficiently caked with accumulations of filth and snuff, a clean piece of calico had been sewn over it. This had been covered by successive layers as required, until it is just possible that the initiated might have been able to determine the age of the wearer by the concentric rings of his garment!
Sidi Ali was not always, however, thus seated in state. He would, from time to time, parade the Halfouine, stopping occasionally to demand a gift, which was seldom refused. Stories are told of swift judgments overtaking bold Moslems who slighted the wish of the holy man, and equally thrilling accounts of deliverance from peril to the Faithful who granted his desire.
Sidi Ali Ben Jaber once met another Arab, Sidi Ben Faraji, dragged him into a neighboring shop and insisted on his buying a large and expensive block of marble with which to embellish the "saint's" house, for that happened to be the holy man's craze for the time. On his way home Sidi Ben Faraji had to pass under a bridge, which fell, severely crushing his left arm, and now was apparent the virtue of his gift to the holy man; for had he refused to buy the marble as requested, the bridge would assuredly have fallen, not on his arm only, but on his whole body, and he would havebecome a shapeless mass. Our "Halfouine saint" was sometimes in a violent state of mind. Then, as he approached, the butchers would quickly hide their meat, the confectioners' display of cakes became suddenly scanty, while other shops appeared equally bare.
The "saint" might enter a shop, turn the contents into the street, and work general havoc; the owner not daring to say him nay, but cherishing the hope of recompense in Heaven to atone for present loss. In cases of illness, Sidi Ali would be taken to the house of the sick one, and his presence was said invariably to bring blessing and relief.
He is also said to have foretold the introduction of electric trams, but this appears to have been only thought of when they had already made their appearance in the city.
For months the poor old man had been growing feebler, and in the month of January last he passed away. His death caused general mourning and lamentation, many women weeping bitterly. The corpse was escorted to the mosque and thence to the cemetery by various sects displaying colored silk banners, emblazoned with Koran verses. Crowds pressed round the bier fighting for a chance of seizing it for a moment and thus securing "merit" in heaven, and it was only a strong force of police which prevented the whole being upset. Fumes of incense filled the air, dervishes swayed in their wild chants till one and the other fell exhausted, andwhen the tomb was finally reached the bier was broken into fragments and distributed amongst eager claimants from amongst the thirty thousand Moslems assembled.
Such, dear readers, is a Moslem saint, and their name is legion. It is by the intercession of such as these that the superstitious hope to obtain earthly and heavenly benefits, and it is at the shrines of such as these that the poor Moslem women come, in the dark days of trouble, to pour out their hearts and seek for help and blessing.
Some time ago one of my schoolgirls asked me to go and see her sister, who had been brought from a neighboring village seriously ill. On reaching the house I found a young woman of about eighteen stretched on a mattress on the floor, and sitting by her side, her husband, who was at least fifty years of age. The poor creature was in great suffering and evidently too ill for any simple remedy, so I called in the help of a French lady doctor, who kindly came and prescribed for her.
On going to the house next day, great was my surprise to find that the medicine ordered had not been given, and the surprise gave place to indignation when I discovered that the family firmly believed that the whole trouble was caused by an evil spirit which had taken possession of the young wife, and that the black sheep, tied up in the courtyard, had been placed there in the hope that the demon would prefer to inhabit the body of the animal andmight thus be induced to leave its present abode. Poor young thing! She died not long after, but her friends to this day believe that they did all in their power to help her, and her death could not have been averted since it was surelydecreed.
The veil that shrouds the Moslem home life in Tunis has been raised and my readers have had a peep at its sadder side, but it is only a peep! The farther one penetrates the more intolerable its noisome atmosphere becomes. Deceit and lying are so prevalent that a mother questions the simplest statements of her own son, and I have seen a mistress insist on a servant swearing on the Koran before she would accept his word. Demoralizing conversation is freely indulged in before the children, till their minds become depraved to such an extent that in our school we could not allow the girls to tell each other stories or even ask riddles because of their indecent character; and bad language, even from the little ones, was a thing with which we constantly had to contend.
And now we, to whom God has given so much light and so many privileges, are brought face to face with the problem, What can be done to help our Mohammedan sisters to lift the burdens which mar the happiness of so many lives?
In the first place it seems to me a necessity that theman'seyes should be opened to see the true condition of affairs from a Western, or better still aChristian, standpoint, and should realize the largeramount of domestic happiness he, himself, is losing. And this may be done by education and the free intercourse with Christian families, which will give him an insight into the joys of their home circles.
As was before hinted, European education is already cultivating the intelligence of the upper classes and slowly extending its leavening influence among the masses. There is an increasing desire, not only that the boys should receive a good French education, but that the girls should share its benefits too. Tennyson's words in the mouth of King Arthur have a new significance:—
"The old order changeth, giving place to new,And God fulfils Himself in many ways."
"The old order changeth, giving place to new,And God fulfils Himself in many ways."
But this change cannot be accomplished in a day, nor without a struggle between the old and new systems. This may be illustrated by an amusing scene I once witnessed.
I was one day sitting in the house of a wealthy Arab whose mind had been enlarged by travelling in many lands. His eldest daughter was one of the very few Arab girls I have met who could read and write Arabic beautifully. I was accustomed to give her French lessons, and she was at that moment in the opposite room across the courtyard, taking a lesson from a Jewish music master on a new piano lately sent by her fiancé.
Suddenly two servant girls rushed into the room exclaiming: "Sidi Mohammed is coming! Hereis Sidi Mohammed!" The grandfather, the head of the family, was at the door, and great would be his wrath should he see his granddaughter learning music, and above all from aman. Fortunately the old gentleman, being somewhat infirm, could not quickly descend from his carriage although assisted by his two men-servants, so that by the time he made his appearance the music master was simply hidden away in a tiny inner room and the whole family assembled in the courtyard; ready with profuse salutations, welcomes, and kissing of hands, to conduct him to one of the principal apartments,notthat in which the Jew was imprisoned. I have often wondered how long the visit lasted, and whether the musician was as fortunate as myself in being soon able to beat a retreat.
Yes! the people are ripe for education—but is there not a serious danger in giving them education and educationonly? Is it not to be feared that with minds enlightened to see the errors of Mohammedanism, they will cast off its bonds only to become entangled in the meshes of atheism and become a nation of "libre-penseurs," so that having escaped the rocks of Scylla they find themselves engulfed in the whirlpool of Charybdis?
My second illustration represents a poor Arab woman entering a saint's tomb, over the portal of which is written: "He (God) opens the doors. Open to us (O Lord) the best door!" And with my Christian readers I would plead that they would doall in their power both by prayer and by effort, that while the doors of education and progress are being thrown wide to these Moslems, the best door—the door of the Gospel—may be opened also, so that they too may know the glorious liberty wherewith Christ hath madeusfree.
"It is useless to plant anything: the earth is dead."
"No, it is not dead, it is only dry."
"But I tell you, it is dead. In summer the earth is always dead: see here." And the Arab who spoke stooped and picked up a rock-like clod, that he had hewn with his pickaxe from the trench at his feet. It looked dead enough certainly; the Algerian soil in August is much the same in texture as a well-trodden highway. But it is only waiting.
"It is the very same earth that it is in winter," I replied; "all it wants is water, and water you must give it."
With an Oriental's laconic patience, though all unconvinced, the man went on with the digging of his trench, and the planting therein of acacia clippings to make a new thorn hedge where it had been broken down.
And with a new hope in God my own words came back to me as I turned away. "It is not dead: it is only dry."
For of all the soils in the world our Moslem soil in Algiers seems the most barren, while friend and foe repeat the same words: "It is useless to plant anything: the earth is dead."
But in the face of both—in the face of the hosts of darkness who take up the words and fling them at us with a stinging taunt—we affirm in faith:
"No, it is not dead. It is only dry."
Dry: that we know sorrowfully well; it cannot be otherwise. It is dry soil because Islam has come nearer doing "despite to the Spirit of grace" than any other religion; it is, as has been truly said, the one anti-Christian faith, the one of openly avowed enmity to the Cross of Christ, the one that deliberately tramples under foot the Son of God.
It is dry also because in the religion itself there is something searing, blighting, as with a subtle breath of hell. This is true of the lands where it has laid hold, and true of the hearts,—it is dry.
Dry soil,notdead soil. If you were out here in Algiers and could see and know the people, you would say so too. The next best thing is to bring you some of their faces to look at that you may judge whether the possibilities have gone out of them yet or not: women faces and girl faces, for it is of these that I write. Will you spend five minutes of your hours to-day in looking—just looking—at them, till they have sunk down into your heart?Arethey the faces of a dead people? Do you see no material for Christ if they had a chance of the Water of Life? These are real living women, living to-day, unmet by Him.
Types in Tunis and AlgiersTypes in Tunis and Algiers
To begin with, the first glance will show their intelligence. Get an average ignorant Englishwoman of the peasant class to repeat a Bible story that she has never heard before. She will dully remember one or two salient facts. Go up to a mountain village here and get a group of women and talk to them, and choose one of them to repeat to the others what you have said. You will feel after a sentence or two that your Arabic was only English put into Arabic words; hers is sparkling with racy idiom. More than that, she is making the storylivebefore her hearers: a touch of local color here—a quaint addition there. It is all aglow. And this a woman who has sat year after year in her one garment of red woollen drapery, cooking meals and nursing children, with nothing to stimulate any thoughts beyond the day's need.
And their powers of feeling: do their faces look as if these have been crushed out by a life of servitude? Not a bit of it. No European who has not lived among them can have any idea of their intensity: love, hate, grief, reign by turns. Anger and grief can take such possession of them as to bring real illness of a strange and undiagnosable kind. We have known such cases to last for months; not unfrequently they end fatally; and more than one whom we have met has gone stone-blind with crying for a dead husband who probably made things none too easy while he lived.
And then their will power: the faces tell of that too. The women have far more backbone thantheir menkind, who have been indulged from babyhood; their school of suffering has not been in vain. In the beautiful balance of God's justice, all that man has taken from them in outward rights has been more than made up in the qualities of endurance and sacrifice that stand, fire-tried, in their character.
And down beyond these outward capacities, how about their spirit-nature? It may be hard to believe at home, but it is a fact that just as the parched ground of August is the very same as the fertile earth of spring, so these souls are the very same as other souls. God is "the God of the spirits of all flesh." "He hath made of one blood all the inhabitants of the earth." Forimpressionablenesson the Divine side, they are as quick as in enlightened lands: I think, quicker. It is only that as soon as the impression is made "then cometh the devil" with an awful force that is only now beginning to be known in Christian countries, and there is not enough of the Holy Spirit's power to put him to flight. There will be when the showers come!
As yet the soil is dry: the womenkind are a host of locked-up possibilities for good and sadly free possibilities for evil.
The dark side lies in untrueness born of constant fear of the consequence of every trifling act, moral impurity that steeps even the children—wild jealousy that will make them pine away and die if a rival baby comes. Their minds are rife with superstition and fertile in intrigue.
And while all this has full play, unchecked and unheeded, the latent capacities for serving God and man are wasting themselves in uselessness, pressed down by the weight of things. There is something very pathetic in watching the failing brain-power of the girls. Until fourteen or fifteen years they are bright, quick at learning; but then it is like a flower closing, so far as mental effort goes, and soon there is the complaint: "I cannot get hold of it, it goes from me." Once grown up, it is painful to see the labor with which they learn even the alphabet. Imagination, perception, poetry remain, and resourcefulness for good and evil, but apart from God's grace, solid brain power dies. Probably in the unexplored question of heredity lies the clue; for at that age for generations the sorrows and cares of married life have come and stopped mind development till the brain has lost its power of expansion as womanhood comes on. Life is often over, in more senses than one, before they are twenty.
The story comes before me of three warm-hearted maidens who a few years ago belonged to our girls' class: the eldest came but seldom, for she was toiling over shirtmaking for the support of her mother and sister. This sister and a friend made up the trio.
Their mothers were "adherents"—we had hoped at one timemorethan adherents, but compromise was already winning the day: the daughters hadopen hearts towards the Lord, all of them in a child-like way.
Where are they now?
They came to marriageable age, and Moslem etiquette required that they should marry. We begged the mothers to wait a while and see if some Christian lads were not forthcoming: but no, fashion binds as much in a Moslem town as in the West End of London.
The eldest girl was carried out fainting from her home to be the wife of a countryman. He was good to her: his mother became madly jealous. Within two years the bride fell into a strange kind of decline; when death came there were symptoms showing that it was from slow poison.
The second to marry was the little friend. At her wedding feast those who had forced the marriage on, drugged her with one of their terrible brain-poisons. The spell worked till she could not bear the sight of us, and hated and denounced Christ.
It wore itself out after a few months and light and love crept back. We went away for the summer. Before we returned she had been put to death by her husband. Through the delirium of the last day and night her one intelligible cry was "Jesus"; so the broken-hearted mother told us. She was an only child.
The third is still alive, a mere girl. She has been divorced twice already from drunken, dissolute husbands. Long intervals of silent melancholy come upon her, intense and dumb, like threatening brain-trouble. She was playful as a kitten five years ago.
Poor little souls—crushed every one of them at sixteen or seventeen under the heel of Islam. Do you wonder that we do not consider it an elevating creed?
And yet they have gone under without tasting the bitterest dregs of a native woman's cup; for (save a baby of the eldest girl's who lived only a few weeks) there were no children in the question. And the woman's deepest anguish begins where they are concerned. For divorce is always hanging over her head. The birth of a daughter when a son had been hoped for, an illness that has become a bit tedious, a bit of caprice or counter-attraction on the husband's part—any of these things may mean that he will "tear the paper" that binds them together, and for eight francs the kadi will set him free. This means that the children will be forced from the mother and knocked about by the next wife that comes on the scene; and the mother-heart will suffer a constant martyrdom from her husband if only divorce can be averted. The Algerian women may claim the boys till seven and the girls till ten or twelve; the countrywomen have no claim after the little life becomes independent of them for existence.
Look at the awful and fierce sadness of this face: more like a wild creature than a woman.[D]She hasprobably been tossed from home to home until she is left stranded, or wrecked on rocks of unspeakable sin and shame: for that is how it ends, again and again.
Turn from her: we cannot have her to be the last. Look once more at a girl, untroubled as yet. If you want to see what the women could be if but the social yoke of Islam were loosed from their shoulders, study the little maidens upon whom it has not yet come. Take one of them if you can get hold of her—even a stupid one, as this one may be with all her soft grace—let her expand for a few weeks in an atmosphere of love and purity. Watch the awakening: it is as lovely a thing as you could wish to see, outside the kingdom of God.
A Young Girl of the Abu Saad TribeA Young Girl of the Abu Saad Tribe
And if this budding and blossoming can come with the poor watering of human love, what could it be with the heavenly showers, in their miracle-power of drawing out all that there is in the earth that they visit. Oh the capacities that are there! The soil is "only dry."
And in the very fact of its utter dryness lies our claim upon God. "I will make the shower to come down in his season; there shall be showers of blessing," is His promise. The "season" for the showers in these southern lands, is the time of utmost drought. It is not in July when the gold lingers in the grass, but in September when the tangle of the spring has sunk to ashen gray, ready to crumble at a touch—it is then that we know the rains arenearing. God's "season" comes when all has gone down to despair.
So we look round on our Moslem field, and triumph in the dryness that is so like death, for it shows that we need not have long to wait.
But a great fight is fought overhead in the natural world out here before the rains are set free: the poor dry lands seem to wrestle against the one thing that they need. Before the clouds burst there will come days—weeks, perhaps, off and on—of fierce sirocco, hurling them back as they try to gather. Sometimes they seem on the point of breaking, and a few drops may get through the heavy air, then back go the clouds, leaving the brassy glare undimmed. On the fight goes, and gets only harder and harder, till suddenly the victory is won. The south wind drops, or shifts to the west, and the clouds, laden now with their treasure, mass themselves in the east; then the wind wheels to the east and gets behind them, and in an hour or less, unresisted, they are overhead; unresisted, the windows of heaven are opened, and the rain comes down in floods with a joyful splash, drenching the earth to its depths, and calling to life every hidden potentiality.
A fight like that lies before us in the lands of Islam. It has begun even now; for we have seen again and again the clouds gather and swept back, leaving a few drops at best, and these often quicklydried. They are not yet full of rain, so they do not empty themselves upon the earth.
And it is not from this side that they can be stored: it is not the thirsty earth that can fill them. They travel from afar, where ocean, river, and lake can breathe their vapors upward, swept unseen by the wind that bloweth where it listeth, to the parched places. We need you, in the far-off, Spirit-watered lands to store the showers. You may be but a roadside pool, but your prayer-breath may go up to be gathered in God's clouds and break in His "plentiful rain." When the clouds are full He will still the sirocco blast of evil that fights it back, and it will come down with the sudden swift ease that marks the setting in of the rains here, year by year.
Do we believe that each heaven-sent prayer brings the cloud-burst nearer? That one last cry of faith, somewhere, will set it free? Do we act as if we believed it? Shall we give ourselves to hasten it?
And when it comes, we shall see the latent possibilities awake, and the latent powers assert themselves, and the people of Moslem countries, men and women, show what they can be and do for Him and in His kingdom. For, thank God, they are not dead lands, they are "only dry."
FOOTNOTES:[D]Seeillustration opposite page 294.
[D]Seeillustration opposite page 294.
[D]Seeillustration opposite page 294.
The factors in a Moorish woman's life are largely those of her Moslem sisters everywhere; excepting as exaggerated by the absence of all English or French influence. In Morocco we have the rugged path Mohammed allotted their sex painfully adhered to, and any European influence of other lands conspicuous by its absence. The lack of education, inability to read, undeveloped powers of thought handed through the generations of thirteen centuries, are at least not lessened by time or weakened by heredity.
The families in which daughters are allowed to read are few and far between: just an occasional one among high-class government officials, or a favorite daughter here and there who is destined to support herself and relatives by teaching the few privileged to learn among the rising generation. The little girl is seldom welcomed at birth. It is a calamity she was not a boy. A few years of half-freedom for the town-child and hasty neglect for the village maiden. Many a better-class woman enters her home as a bride, in the carriage which so carefully conceals her, and sees but four whitewashed walls for the remainder of her days, nor leaves their monotony until carried out in her coffin. What uplifting or educating influences does the bare windowless abode (opening only to the central court of the home) exercise? We hear betimes of the wish to remove the veil and allow more liberty to woman. In Morocco she is hardly ready for the change, but needs educating and preparing, ere, with propriety and true modesty, she can take her rightful place.
Divorce is fearfully common and easy. Plurality of wives is an awful curse. The chief features of home-life are quarrels, intrigues, attempted poisonings, and rankling bitternesses.
Slavery is more common than in other countries so near the borders of civilization, and the possession of these human chattels denotes the measure of worldly prosperity. Occasionally they find a kindly master, but, more often, are inhumanly treated and regarded as so much property. We are frequently urged to treat the slave for illness and so increase her market value, while the wife, or wives, may suffer unnoticed and unassisted.
The Moorish woman has little part in religious life. She has no merits or opportunity of attaining such, unless she be a well-known lineal descendant of their prophet. Very few learn the prescribed form of Moslem prayers and fewer still use them. Once and again we find one going through the positions of prayer and accompanying set phrases.These women are usually the most difficult to deal with and least ready for the hearing of the Gospel. One of them, during a medical visit, drew her prayer mat to a distance lest I defile it and closed her ears with her fingers to shut out my words. Undoubtedly thevery best, and oftenonly, way of reaching them is through the dispensary.
Their lives centre largely round the three annual feasts, in preparation for and enjoyment of them. Every birth, circumcision, wedding, death, and even serious illness, is an opportunity, for those allowed sufficient freedom, to receive and pay visits, feast, enjoy the accompanying minstrels, appear in their most gorgeous dress and criticise that of others. Meanwhile they engage in empty and profitless conversation, which too often passes into the injurious both for body and soul, of young and old, hostess and guests. Much attention is paid to fashion, and Moorish etiquette is not to be lightly treated or easily fulfilled.
Some of the women figure in the weird orgies of religious sects of a private and public character. Their wild, dishevelled, and torn hair is prominent in the Satanic dance of the Aisowia Derwishes, and they vie with the men in its frenzied freaks, falling finally exhausted to the ground, unable to rise. But this class fortunately is not numerous. I was visiting in one of these houses last year in Fez. The occupants were strangers and had come pleading me to relieve one in very acute pain. The atmosphere of the room hung heavily over me, I knew not why. Taking my colloquial Gospel, I spoke of Christ and asked to read. A blank refusal was the answer. Then the storm broke and during my second visit I had to rise and leave, asserting my union with Christ and the impossibility of having me or my drugs without the message of my Master and Saviour. They have since been, when the violent pain returned, pleading for relief, but not again inviting to their house. Such uncanny sense of the immediate presence of the evil one, I have never experienced, as when under their roof, nor would wish to again. It was an intense relief to breathe freely in the open air afterwards. Yet two of our recent converts, and one of them among the most promising, have belonged to these followers of Satan! Their wild hair is now neatly braided and they are clothed and in their right minds, sitting with their converted sisters to learn more of Jesus and lifting up voices in prayer to Him.
Female slaves, from the far Soudan, are betimes among our bitterest and loudest opponents during Gospel teaching. They have more courage than their mistresses and are more outspoken. Yet, even among them, we have seen notable changes. One, exceptionally well-taught and able to quote the Koran, met me first with loud contradiction in her Fez home. Frequent attendance at our medical mission wrought a marvellous change. Open opposition first ceased. Then an awakening, and atleast intellectual, acceptance of the vital truths of Christianity and readiness to explain them to newcomers. When she had to follow her master to the south, we were conscious of losing a friend and helper. She took with her a Gospel and was followed by our prayers.
A Bedouin Girl from North AfricaA Bedouin Girl from North Africa
Classes for sewing, reading, and singing are important factors as means of reaching the women and girls. The first of my four years at the Tulloch Memorial Hospital, Tangier, brought me in contact with a most interesting woman. Many years she had been under Mrs. Mensink's teaching and otherwise had known the missionaries. A gradual awakening was manifest, until, during that year, when ill with pneumonia, I found her apparently trusting Jesus. One difficulty haunted her, she was ignorant, could not even read, and her teachers told her Jesus was not the Son of God;—must they not know best? A few days before her death she joyously told me of a dream she had had and assured me her last doubt had gone. In it Jesus appeared to her and proclaimed Himself the Son of God. No after-cloud damped her joy. The death-bed was that of a consistent Christian. Her relatives would not own it and buried her as a Moslem in their own cemetery, with her face towards Mecca.
This year, in one of our inland cities, not a few members of sewing classes have simply trusted Christ for salvation and now meet for prayer and instruction with their leaders. A native women'sprayer meeting has been formed, where each of these new converts takes part and learns to pray. Several also have been led to Jesus through the medical mission and the visitation of their homes.
An instance of earnest simplicity in prayer occurred in our own home. We had spoken to a convert about prayer. She said, "I am too old to learn and too ignorant!" The following day when asked, she replied: "Oh, yes, I prayed this morning." "And what did you say?" "Well, I did not know at first, but then repeated the only prayer I knew, the first chapter of the Koran, and at the end added, 'in the name and for the sake of the Lord Jesus,' and I thoughtHewould understand it and fill in for me all I had been mistaken in or unable to tell Him." He truly did so, for since that time the dear old woman has learned to pray. Grasping my hand after one native prayer meeting, she said, "Oh, to think of it! three of us praying together in the name of Jesus; three of us believing in Him." These were, her married daughter, an only son, and herself. One of these converts of last spring had typhus fever a few months later and passed into the Presence of Him whom she had learned to love. Another is nearing her end and wonders why He tarries so long in coming to take her to be with Himself.
One day's journey from Tangier on mule-back, lives the first woman I ever heard pray; consistently she seeks to tell others the little she knows. A ladymissionary, since departed, lived with her a fortnight in the early days of the North African Mission. She dates her conversion from that time and, without any resident missionary since, dependent only upon the teaching of a few days or weeks during an itinerating visit, she still knows and can explain to others that "the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin." Nearly all of this year's numerous converts are the result of much seed-sowing and the patient labors of long years past, now gathered by prayer into the fold. Not a few of the sowers have passed to their reward without seeing the harvest which should be.
We have found medical work a powerful handmaid to awaken interest in the Gospel story. To our great grief, however, the continued political unrest, due largely to the presence of the Pretender and rising of the tribes from time to time, during the past four years, has almost closed up this highly useful evangelistic and Christ-like work.
The Northern rebellion would have ceased long ago had the present Sultan honest and energetic soldiers and leaders. Few, however, are impervious to foreign gold; and no one trusts another, unless he pay well for the interest in his affairs. The Sultan is a pleasant and enlightened person, but unable to cope with the surrounding lawlessness single-handed. Many a tale of bribery and wrong reaches us. The wild tribes know no other fear than that of seeing turbulent skulls and rebelliousheads hanging upon the city gates. We went down to Fez four years ago, a few weeks after the violent and sad death of our dear friend and brother, Mr. Cooper. His only crime in the eyes of the violent tribesman, his murderer, was that of being a foreigner. Two weeks after our arrival in the city, Consuls ordered foreigners to the coast. We had to obey. Six weeks were spent in Tangier and then again we returned to our scene of labor, the large out-patient dispensary which treated over eleven thousand cases last year and so reached between two hundred and one hundred and fifty with the Gospel on Women's mornings, every day.
Two years ago orders again came to pack up and prepare for emergencies. The storm blew over and since then the main roads have been practically safe for ordinary traffic and merchandise. Even the foreigner can securely take his place in any caravan without fear of ill.
Raisuli's capture of European and American citizens for hostages alarmed many, but he had sought the Government's recognition of his lawful Kaidship, and when refused, wrongly determined to claim the same by force. The strong hand with which he now controls those wild tribes under his jurisdiction, proves his ability to govern. His justice, if semi-barbarous, is certainly ahead of that of most of his fellow Kaids. He reversed the decision of a Moorish tribunal which had wrung from a poor widow her lawful property, restoring that whichhad been unlawfully taken. A few such men in the highest circles would soon bring order out of chaos and strength to the throne. The English missionary has had the great advantage of being favorably received by the people on account of his or her nationality. It stood, to them, for integrity, strength, and honor. Whatever changes may have taken place during the last four years to lessen this trust in her, England has still much favor with the majority. Hers were the pioneer-missionaries, for where no man would have been trusted or allowed to reside, her lady workers penetrated. Before any resident Consul, Miss Herdman and her companions went to Fez and commenced medical work. She won her way into the hearts of the people and is still lovingly remembered. It was her work which Mr. Cooper had taken up for a few short years, when so suddenly snatched from it by a lawless fanatic's hand. The seed sown thus long and faithfully has lain dormant. Just a few, one here and there, gathered into the fold; native converts prepared for colportage work; the building of a foundation on the Rock Christ Jesus. But to those who followed her has been granted to see the increase, and begin to reckon, even, on the "hundredfold."
The coast towns have ever been more accessible to the foreigners; yet alas, where the foreigner isleastknown the native is most receptive, courteous, and hospitable. The average colonist, or even tourist, seldom recommends the Kingdom of God,and the native points to the drink traffic, so opposed to his religious views, and asks how that is included in the Christian country's commerce and consumption!
Thus, the farther removed fromsuchChristian influence the greater the freedom for Gospel work. Tangier was first opened; Hope House being a partial gift to the North African Mission.
At first both men and women were treated here, but the great desirability of conforming to Moorish rules of life led to the opening of a Women's Hospital in the town. Here I did one year's out-patient work during the absence of the efficient and indefatigable lady doctor—Miss Breeze—in England. These were largely the ploughing, seed-sowing days. Since then several have professed conversion. One, on returning to her village home, was bitterly persecuted and finally, to escape death, had to flee by night to her former teachers and with them find refuge. Some four or five of the elder girls in the Moorish orphanage came out boldly on the Lord's side. The teaching of girls has been a prominent feature of the work in that city.
Larache, two days down the coast by mule, was permanently opened many years later, some medical and class work being done, with house to house visitation. Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, our Scotch friends, are independent workers here.
El Kaar, six hours inland from Larache and two days from Tangier by mule, is worked from theformer by the North Africa Mission, and five American lady workers of the Gospel Union Mission do good house to house service in that little town. Its inhabitants are unusually genial and receptive; these are days of seed-sowing, for the harvest is not yet. Women's and girls' classes are also held, and prayers are asked for a few already deeply interested. Some very happy days have I spent working among Moorish friends there.
House to house visitation is essentially for the women. They are always "at home," and to them we definitely go since they can so seldom come to us. Classes have already been a prominent feature of the work in Fez, and gather larger numbers than is usual in the other towns. This city of some one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants has been the residence of the Sultan and his court for the past four years. It is consequently very full and affords splendid opportunities, having been so freely opened up by the large medical mission established there.
Early in the year, a mother and her daughter said to me, "We have been loved intoHeaven, we have seen the love of Jesus in care and healing during our sickness, we take Him now as Savior for our souls." These are living consistently for Him now. Two years ago a prominent theological professor asked me in the street for medicine. I directed him to the medical mission. To the surprise of all he came often, listened quietly from the first, and, ere long, became a decided Christian. His wife, a noblewoman (sherifa), is now reading the Gospel with him, saying, "Yes, I believe that which is written, but, oh! I do want to remain asherifa!" Not yet can she count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, her Lord.
In an inland town in Morocco, where a number of women had professed faith in Christ, the question of baptism arose; two were wishing for it. How could they brave its publicity? One woman had been baptized privately in Tangier, few, even of the missionaries, knew beforehand it was to take place—so bitterly were her relatives opposed to the Gospel. The rite had not been publicly received by any Moorish woman heretofore. After some eighteen months of constant teaching in preparation, these two sisters were ready to brave all danger and opposition, and despite all efforts to foil their purpose, passed through the waters of baptism unveiled before the assembled native church and foreign missionaries, and that as bravely and modestly as any Englishwoman would have done. This was a terrible blow to the devil. He had fought courageously to avert the calamity to his kingdom, but God heard continued and earnest prayer that a first public stand be thus taken for Him. The blow has fallen upon the powers of darkness and this great triumph in women's work been gained for Him. They now "break the bread and drink the wine" with their converted husbands and friends "until He come." One of them received such a spiritualimpetus after the step as to make us fearful lest her boldness endanger life. She brought a formerly bigoted relative and said, "Teach her, pray with her, she is near the Kingdom!" And so it proved, for that day she "entered in." When reading the colloquial Gospel of Luke in one of the highest Government houses, the remark was made to me, "Why, this is the book and this the story we heard from Miss McArthur in Morocco city!"
Some of our native colporteurs work with our Scotch brethren and thus is Christian unity cemented. Dr. Kerr and his fellow-workers have a strong medical mission in Rakat and a similar one was carried on by the North African Mission in Casablanca, until the recent death of Dr. Grieve.
Tetuan has long maintained its vigorous out-patient dispensary, successful visiting in the homes, and numerous classes. Mention should certainly be made of the great impetus given to labors among Moorish women by the publication of a Moroccan colloquial version of Luke. With so few female readers, and the majority of men even, insufficiently educated to understand the magnificent classical translation into Arabic, one within the grasp of every man, woman, and child was urgently needed.
Our American brethren have hitherto published only the Gospel of Luke, which has been so well received, but they hope soon to have in print other portions, which are eagerly looked for.
You say, "We have heard only of encouragingcases, bright prospects, and ingathering; we thought it was not so in Moslem lands and especially among their women." Perhaps it has not been, and even now, only the beginning of early harvest is in the reaping. Thank God, a grand wheat-garnering has yet to follow, and those who have labored longest and seen least fruit will yet divide the spoil. Undoubtedly there are rejecters of the Cross of Christ, and His bitterest enemies are surely under the Crescent's sway. At the same time there is tremendous encouragement for hearts and laborers who can "afford to wait" and have learned to pray.
Only twice in our vast crowded city (though making from six to eight hundred visits in the homes yearly) have I been refused liberty to speak for Jesus andneverbeen denied admittance. There are six sisters in Fez doing this work from house to house, buthundredsof homes await us which we are utterly unable to enter.Onelife is so short where the need is so great, and open doors are on every hand. Most of our fellow missionaries in other stations would plead in the same words. Doors, doors, but how can we enter them? At present the people inland are hardly prepared for the qualified lady doctor. In the bulk of instances where her skill is most urgently needed, she would be refused. Miss Breeze, in Tangier, has patiently labored and trained the women to trust her and submit to the necessary operations.
Away from the coast a similar patience and training are necessary to prepare the female sex for her valuable assistance. At present the trained nurse has the fullest scope, and the limits of her powers represent the willingness of the people for medical work. Sad, indeed, are those instances wherein a little assistance would undoubtedly save life, but is refused point-blank on the plea "if the patient subsequently died the missionary would be accused of murder." At present, no explanation, no persuasion, can change the fiat. Moorish law, like that of the Medes and Persians, "altereth not." They are, however, very susceptible to the influence of drugs, and the simplest remedies often work cures which by them are regarded as miracles, and faith in the "Tabeeba" is proportionately increased.
Colloquial hymns are much valued and a standard hymn-book would be a great boon. I have taken a small American organ with me and sung and explained the Gospel in bigoted and wealthy homes, where reading it would not have been possible. In two instances, I took a magic-lantern with me, from the slides of which plain teaching was an easy task. Once it was a wedding festival and friends had gathered to the feast. Our hostess had lived some years in England with her merchant husband, but a knowledge of English life, or even ability to speak its language, by no means predisposes to the reception of the Truth. It certainly was not so in the present instance. A few months ago she said to a fellow missionary, "I know the right is with you.I well know what I ought to do—-leave Mohammed and accept Jesus—but this would mean leaving my husband and children—turned out of home and robbed of all! I cannot do it." One sad instance stands for many: a rejected Gospel!
I once attended a wealthy and influentialsherifadying of tuberculosis. No English consumptive clings to life more tenaciously than she did. Everything was at my disposal and courtesy lavished until she found there was no hope for her life. Then she bitterly turned from any word of a Life to come and flung herself hopelessly upon her charm-writers and native crudities until past speaking. Her husband took a Gospel, and I heard, sat up into the night and studied its contents. We followed the volume with prayer. To-day news reaches me from the field that he has died of typhoid fever. Oh! to know he accepted its truths!
Sometimes those cases where I have given longest and most frequent medical attention, have finally been least responsive to the story of the Cross. In other instances a single visit awakens interest and the soul goes on into full light and liberty. Several homes I have closely visited and watched, hoping to find an entrance for Christ; but not until some serious illness or other calamity comes are its occupants sufficiently friendly to hear of God's love in Christ. The lady worker and constant visitor in her long white native garment (silham), with veiled face is much safer, humanly speaking, and usually moreacceptable than the foreign worker in European dress. I have even been asked to climb over the roofs into a house within some sacred precincts, where infidel foot may not be known to tread, and one patient was always reached through the stable door, as the main entrance was too near a so-called saint's place. Again I was asked to see and treat a poor sufferer, very ill, in the open street, to avoid standing on their holy ground and defiling the spot.
Probably all I have written is equally true of any Moslem land. The religion of Islam knows no progress and has within itself only the elements of decay. Means for the propagation of the Gospel will scarcely vary. The harem always depends upon the consecrated and tactful sister to reach its inmates from without. These thousands of homes can only be entered by the multiplication of the individual worker a hundredfold.
Now is Morocco's day. A few days later and her opportunity will have passed by forever. Once broken up, or Europeanized in any way, and civilized nations will, perhaps, "fear the propaganda of the Cross and the distribution of the Bible lest fanatics be aroused, holy war proclaimed and bloodshed ensue." At least thus they said when Khartoum was opened to the merchant, and similarly have thought other nations in their respective colonies. They have not yet learned that the converted Moslem is the only one who can be trusted, and the men will largely be influenced by what their mothers andwives are in the home. They know not as we do, that, in time of war, unrest, and danger, valuables and money are brought to the missionary for keeping, and the place of safety to the native mind is the mission house. To meet, in any degree, existing needs, or use present opportunities for freely distributing and reading the Gospel, teaching its precepts and hastening Christ's Kingdom in "Sun-set land," we must strongly re-enforce every station. Increase the number of missionaries working under each mission. Send forth women who have learned how to pray in the home lands to seek these poor sheep and gather them into the one fold and unto the one Shepherd. The commencement of this year's unprecedented blessing among women dates back primarily and supremely to the increased spirit of prayer. At first even all the foreign workers were hardly alive to this, but persistent prayer won them one by one. Then followed the united requests for individual souls, and these too were granted. The Holy Spirit brought us in contact with those hearts within which He was already working, or preparing to work, and as a result the Father was glorified in the Son—souls were saved, and not alone among the angels, but even upon earth and amid the Church militant.
These babes in Christ need daily tending and teaching as little children. The work in the hands of those workers already in the field can scarcely allow any addition, and yet weprayedfor these; andnow who shall feed them? Not only so, some are still halting between two opinions, reading the Word and needing the loving hand to lead them gently over the line; but this individual care is a big task where women's medical mornings each already bring one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty patients. Surely we shall unite in the prayer to the Lord of the Harvest, that He send forth laborers into His harvest and to some—as we pray—He will answer, "Go ye!"
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 attitudetowardwomen and the characterofwomen 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 shouldthinka kind husband, and Iknowa 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 payher 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 themto 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 becomemembers 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 womanto 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 fewdoand every facility is provided for those who can and will go farther, and I have known girls, mostly those whose fathers weremallams, who learned to read and writethe 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 thesticks and grass to make a temporary shelter for the night.