One of the most serious difficulties in the way of the higher female education in Syria, is the early age at which girls are married.  One young girl attended the Beirut Seminary for two years, from eight to ten, and the teachers were becoming interested in her progress, when suddenly her parents took her out of the school, and gave her to a man in marriage.  After the festivities of the marriage week were over at her husband’s house, she went home to visit her mother, taking her dolls with her to amuse herself!

The Arabic journal “the Jenneh” of Beirut, contained a letter in June, 1872, from its Damascus correspondent, praising the fecundity of Syria, and stating that a young woman who was married at nine and a half, became a grandmother at twenty!  Such instances are not uncommon in Damascus and Hums, where the chief and almost the only concern of parents is to marry off their daughters as early as nature will allow, without education, experience or any other qualification for the responsible duties of married life.  When the above mentioned letter from Damascus was published, Dr. Van Dyck took occasion to write an article in the “Neshra,” the Missionary Weekly, of which he is the editor, exposing the folly and criminality of such early marriages, and demonstrating their disastrous effects on society at large.

Since the establishment of schools and seminaries of a high grade for girls, this tendency is being decidedly checked in the vicinity of Beirut, and girls are not given up as incorrigibly old, even if they reach the age of seventeen.

Dr. Meshakah of Damascus, who has long been distinguished for his learned and eloquent works on the Papacy, is a venerable white-bearded patriarch and his wife looks as if she were his daughter.  I once asked him how old she was when married, and he said eleven.  I asked him why he married her so young?  He said that in his day, young girls received no training at home, and young men who wished properly trained wives, had to marry them young, so as to educate them to suit themselves!

Education is rapidly obviating that necessity, and young men are more than willing that girls to whom they are betrothed, should complete their education, lest they be eclipsed by others who remain longer at school.  I once called on a wealthy native merchant in Beirut, who remarked that “the Europeans have a thing in their country which we have not.  They call it ed-oo-cashion, and I am anxious to have it introduced into Syria.”  This “ed-oo-cashion” is already settling many a question in Syria which nothing else could settle, and the natives are also learning that something more than mere book-knowledge is needed, to elevate and refine the family.  One of the most direct results of female education thus far in Syria has been the abolition from certain classes of society of some of those superstitious fears which harass and torment the ignorant masses.

CHAPTER X.