Divorce needs only the will of the man, and polygamy is common.  Lane says in speaking of Egypt, “The depraving effects of this freedom of divorce upon both sexes, may be easily imagined.  There are many men in this country who, in the course of ten years, have married as many as twenty, thirty or more wives; and women, not far advanced in age, who have been wives to a dozen or more men successively.”

The Nusairiyeh women smoke, swear, and use the most vile and unclean language, and even go beyond the men in these respects.  Swearing and lying are universal not only among the Nusairiyeh, but among the most of the Syrian people.  You never receive a direct reply from a Nusairy.  He will answer your question by asking another, in order, if possible, to ascertain your object in asking it and to conceal the true state of the case.  Their Moslem and nominal Christian neighbors are not much better.  They all lie, and swear, and deceive.  Mr. Lyde illustrates the ignorance of the Greek clergy in Latakiah by the following incident.  A ploughman who had learned something of the Bible, heard a Greek priest cursing the father of a little child.  He said, “My father, is it right to curse?” “Oh,” said he, “it was only from my lips.”  “But does not the psalmist say, Keep the door of my lips?” “That,” replied the priest, “is only in the English Bible.”

Walpole says of the Nusairiyeh women, “when young, they are handsome, often fair, with light hair and jet-black eyes; or the rarer beauty of fair eyes and coal-black hair or eyebrows.”

When a fight takes place between the tribes, the women, like the women of the Druzes, enter into the spirit of it with demoniacal fury.  During the battle they bring jars of water, shout, sing, and encourage the men, and at the close carry off the booty, such as pots, pans, chickens, quilts, wooden doors, trays, etc.  In the Druze war of 1860, I saw the Druze women running with the men through Aitath, on their way to the scene of hostilities in the Metn.  The Bedawin women likewise aid their husbands in the commissariat of their nomad warfare.

The Rev. Mr. Lyde was the first to undertake direct missionary labors among the Nusairiyeh, and his work has been carried on by the Reformed Presbyterian Mission in Latakiah.  The Rev. J. Beattie sends me the following facts with regard to the work now going on among the women and girls.

The first convert under the labors of Mr. Lyde was Hammud, of the village of Merj, a young man of fine mind and most lovely character, who gave promise of great usefulness.  After he became a Christian, his mother, finding that no Nusairy girl would marry a Christian, determined to secure a young girl and have her educated for Hammud.  So she paid four Turkish pounds for a little Nusairy girl named Zahara or Venus, whose widowed mother had removed to her village.  This payment was in accordance with Nusairy customs, and constituted the girl’s dowry.