The Women of the Arabs. Henry Harris Jessup
maintains an imperturbable silence, his mind being supposed to be absorbed by one engrossing object. It may be delight. It may be bitter disappointment. It is generally past midnight when the party breaks up and the family retires.
A plurality of wives is absolutely forbidden. If a Druze wishes to divorce his wife, he has merely to say, "You had better go back to your father," or she, the woman, wishes to leave her husband, she says, "I wish to go back to my father," and if her husband says, "Very well, go," the divorce in either case holds good, and the separation is irrevocable. Both parties are free to re-marry. Childlessness is a common cause of divorce.
The birth of a son is the occasion of great rejoicing and presents to the family. But the birth of a daughter is considered a misfortune, and of course not the slightest notice is taken of so inauspicious an event. This holds true among all the sects and peoples of Syria, and nothing but a Christian training and the inculcation of the pure principles of gospel morality can remove this deeply seated prejudice. The people say the reason of their dislike of daughters is that while a son builds up the house, and brings in a wife from without and perpetuates the family name, the daughter pulls down the house, loses her name, and is lost to the family.
The wealthier and more aristocratic Druze sitts or ladies are taught to read by the Fakih or teacher, but the masses of the women are in brutish ignorance. You enter a Druze house. The woman waits upon you and brings coffee, but you see only one eye, the rest of the head and face being closely veiled. In an aristocratic house, you would never be allowed to see the lady, and if she goes abroad, it is only at night, and with attendants on every side to keep off the profane gaze of strangers. If a physician is called to attend a sick Druze woman, he cannot see her face nor her tongue, unless she choose to thrust it through a hole in her veil. In many cases they suffer a woman to die sooner than have her face seen by a physician.
The Druzes marry but one wife at a time, and yet divorce is so common and so heartlessly practiced by the men, that the poor women live in constant fear of being driven from their homes.
In Abeih, we were startled one evening by the cry "Rouse ye men of self respect! Come and help us!" It was a dark, rainy night, and the earthen roof of a Druze house had fallen in, burying a young man, his wife and his mother, under the mass of earth, stones and timber. They all escaped death, but were seriously injured, the poor young wife suffering the most of all, having fallen with her left arm in a bed of burning coals, and having been compelled to lie there half an hour, so that when dug out, her hand was burned to a cinder! For several days the husband refused to send for a doctor, but at length his wife Hala was sent to the College Hospital (of the Prussian Knights of St. John) in Beirût where Dr. Post amputated the hand below the elbow.
One would naturally suppose that such a calamity, in which both so narrowly escaped death, would bind husband and wife together in the strongest bonds of affection and sympathy. But not so in this case. The poor young wife is now threatened with divorce, because she is no longer of any use to her husband, and her two little children are to be taken from her! She lies on her bed in the Hospital, the very picture of stoical resignation. Not a groan or complaint escapes her.
She said one day, "Oh how glad I am that this happened, for it has taken away all my sins, and I shall never have to suffer again in this world or the next!" This is the doctrine of the Druzes, and, cold and false as it is, she has made it her support and her stay.
Dr. Post and Mrs. Bliss have pointed her to the Lamb of God "who bore our sins in His own body on the tree," and she seems interested to hear and learn more.
Her younger sister is in the Beirût Seminary. May this poor sufferer find peace where alone it can be found, in trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ, whose blood cleanseth from all sin!
The cruelty of her husband, sanctioned as it is by the religious code of the Druzes, may be the means of opening her eyes to the falsity of that heartless Christless system, and lead her to the foot of the Cross!
Christians, who read these lines, pray for Hala of Abeih!
SITT ABLA.
More than twenty years ago in the little Druze village of Aitath, in Lebanon, about seven miles from Beirût, lived a family of Druze Sheikhs of the tribe of Telhûk. This tribe was divided into the great Sheikhs and the little Sheikhs, and among the latter was the Sheikh Khottar. The proximity of this village to Beirût, its elevated position, cool air, and fine fountain of water, made it a favorite summer retreat for the missionaries from the withering heats of the plain. Sheikh Khottar and his wife the Sitt, having both died, their orphan son Selim and daughter Abla, called the Sitt (or lady) Abla, were placed under the care of other members of the family of Telhûk. The missionaries opened a school for boys and Selim attended it. Dr. and Mrs. Van Dyck were living in Aitath at the time, and the young Druze maiden Abla, who was betrothed to a Druze Sheikh, became greatly attached to Mrs. Van Dyck, and came almost constantly to visit her. The light of a better faith and the truth of a pure gospel gradually dawned upon her mind, until her love for Mrs. Van Dyck grew into love for the Saviour of sinners. The Sheikh to whom she was betrothed was greatly enraged at her course in visiting a Christian lady, and meeting her one day when returning to her home, attacked her in the most brutal manner, and gave her a severe beating. She fled and took refuge in the house of Mrs. Van Dyck, who had taught her to read and given her a Bible. A short time after, several of her cousins seized her and scourged her most cruelly, and a violent persecution was excited against her and her brother Selim. She was in daily and hourly expectation of being killed by her male relatives, as it had never been heard of in the Druze nation that a young girl should dare to become a Christian, and Mr. Whiting, missionary in Abeih, sent over a courageous Protestant youth named Saleh, who took the Sitt Abla by night over the rough mountain road to Abeih in safety. But even here she was not safe. The Druzes of Lebanon at that time were at the height of their feudal power. Girls and women were killed among them without the least notice on the part of the mountain government. Abla was like a prisoner in the missionary's house, not venturing to go outside the door, and in order to be at peace, she went down with her brother to Beirût, where she has since resided. Selim united with the Church, but was afterwards suspended from communion for improper conduct, and joined himself to the Jesuits, so that Abla has had to endure a two-fold persecution from her Druze relatives and her Jesuit brother. On her removal to Beirût she was disinherited and deprived of her little portion of her father's estate, and her life has been a constant struggle with persecution, poverty and want. Yet amid all, she has stood firm as a rock, never swerving from the truth, or showing any disposition to go back to her old friends. At times she has suffered from extreme privation, and the missionaries and native Protestants would only hear of it through others who happened to meet her. Since uniting with the Church in 1849 she has lived a Christian life. In a recent conversation she said, "I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things … and I still continue, by the grace of Him Exalted, and by the merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, awaiting a happy death, and everlasting rest."
KHOZMA.
Her Christian experience is like that of Khozma Ata. She is the only female member of the Protestant church in Syria from among the Druzes, except Sitt Abla. She was born, in Beirût of the Druze family of Witwat, and when quite a child was taken by Dr. Beadle, then by Miss Tilden, living at one time in Aleppo, then in Jerusalem, and finally settled in the family of Dr. De Forest, where she continued until his departure for America in 1854. For several years she has been an invalid, and is not often able to leave her house, even to go to church. Two of her little girls are in the Female Seminary. In 1861 she taught a day school for girls in Beirût, and assisted Dr. De Forest in his work in the Beirût Seminary. I called upon her a few days since, and she handed me a roll of Arabic manuscript, which she said she had been translating from the English. It is a series of stories for children which she has prepared to be printed in our monthly journal for Syrian children. The name of the journal is "koukab es Subah," or "Morning Star." She has been confined to her bed a part of the summer, and when she gave me the manuscript, she apologized for the handwriting, on the ground that she had written the most of it sitting or lying on her bed. She has not forgotten the example