Only slaves and peasant women are allowed to go unveiled, as the veil would hinder them at work. Therefore, outsiders can study the features of Mohammedan women only from members of the lower classes. To find out who is who among the veiled females seen in the streets of oriental cities is impossible even for their own husbands.
About the domestic life of Mohammedan women during former centuries we know practically nothing, as reliable reports by disinterested observers are wanting. But the fact that Mohammedan homes and family life were always secluded from the external world and inaccessible to Christian explorers travelling through oriental countries, rendered the subject peculiarly liable to highly exaggerated and sensational reports. Especially the life in the "Harem," the women's quarter, has been pictured innumerable times as a combination of boundless luxuriance, lascivity, frivolity, laziness and intrigues. In contradiction several ladies, who had a chance to study Mohammedan life during the last century, have asserted, that these reports do not, by any means, correspond with the truth. There is for instance an essay of Else Marquardsen about the manners of the Turks, in which she discusses polygamy. She says: "Throughout the course of many years I was allowed to visit the homes of many prominent people as well as of the poorer classes, but I remember only one case, where a man, a high official, had more than one wife. As a rule I found in all families a spirit of quiet faithfulness to duty, such as it is not always the case among us. The women, often compelled to live together with the mother or other female relatives of their husbands, maintain a good-natured kindness toward each other, which is really solacing and knows no exception. The great devotion, shown to the mother by her son as well as by his wife, and which makes her the most respected member of the whole family, is an education in humility and self-control, the results of which fill one with admiration. As the life of the Mohammedan woman, of which her husband forms the center, is one of repose and seclusion, so she retains a child-like disposition of sentiment which is indeed touching. Unlike as it is with us, she is reared in full knowledge of the natural destination of woman. As soon as she has developed from childhood to womanhood, she is offered to a man, unknown to her, but whom she respects as the god-sent medium to impart the sacred mystery by which she may become a mother. As he gives her the crown of life, she honors him as her lord. But if it should be her fate to remain barren, then she does as Sarah, Leah and Rachel did several thousand years ago; she goes to find another woman, by whom her husband may have children."
The marriagable age for Mohammedan girls is about
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