excellency must be aware that I have a sick man at my house.  May God grant you health!  Indeed, peace to your head.  Inshullah, it is only a slight attack!” “He has pain in his back, headache, and he will not eat.”  “Has he any fever?” “A little.”  “I will come and see her this afternoon.”  “May God increase your good.  Good morning, sir!”

The Mohammedan laws with regard to polygamy, inheritance and divorce, are a decided advance on the Pagan Arabs of “the Ignorance.”

The Pagan Arabs allowed any number of wives.  The Koran allows only four to any believer, the prophet himself having peculiar privileges in this respect.  The modern practice of Mohammedans in taking a score or more of wives is directly contrary to the Koran.  The Pagan Arabs suffered no woman to have any part of the husband’s or father’s inheritance, on the ground that none should inherit who could not go to war, and the widows were disposed of as a part of their husband’s possessions.  The Koran says, (Sura iv.) “Women ought to have a part of what their parents leave.”  A male shall have twice as much as a female.  But a man’s parents, and also his brothers and sisters are to have equal shares, without reference to sex.  “God commandeth you to give the male the portion of two females.  If she be an only daughter, she shall have the half.  Your wives shall have a fourth part of what ye leave, if ye have no issue.”

Among the Pagan Arabs, divorce was a mere matter of caprice.  The Koran says, (Sura ii.) “You may divorce your wives twice (and take them back again).  But if the husband divorce her a third time, it is not lawful for him to take her again, until she shall have been actually married to another husband, and then divorced by him.”  I have known cases where the husband in a fit of passion has divorced his wife the third time, and, in order to get her back again, has hired another man to marry her and then divorce her.  A rich Effendi had divorced his wife the third time, and wishing to re-marry her, hired a poor man to marry her for a consideration of seven hundred piastres.  He took the wife and the money, and the next day refused to give her up for less than five thousand piastres, which the Effendi was obliged to pay, as the woman had become the lawful and wedded wife of the poor man.

No Mohammedan ever walks with his wife in the street, and in Moslem cities, very few if any of men of other sects are willing to be seen in public in company with a woman.  The women are closely veiled, and if a man and his wife have occasion to go anywhere together, he walks in advance and she walks a long distance behind him.  Nofel Effendi, one of the most learned and intelligent Protestants in Syria, once gave me the explanation of this aversion to walking in public with women, in a more satisfactory manner than I had ever heard it before.  Said he, “You Franks can walk with your wives in public, because their faces are unveiled, and it is known that