SOCIAL SEVERANCE BETWEEN THE SEXES. 297

of their movements. The house of the shekh was a
square rock-area with the doorways of tombs on three
sides and a brick wall on the fourth. In these inner
dens each wife had her separate abode; but during
the day they were all together in the court, spinning
or oftener chattering childishly (as they were very
young girls), amicably enough for the most part, when I
chanced to see them. There were, however, from time
to time sounds of grave disturbance; and we used to
hear of one or other of the wives running off to her
old home, of the raother-in-law unceremoniously fetch-
ing her back, and of the infinite tribulation it cost the
dowager to keep them all in order. Allowing for the
ruder forms, more demonstrative action, and coarser
colouring applicable to the grade here represented, the
same outline will probably exhibit the general realities
of life in the Mohammedan hareem.

The social severance between the sexes, in the East,
which the system of the Koran confirms, is more singu-
larly exemplified among villagers such as these, than
even in the towns. In the latter, the comparative
artificiality of customs, and the privacy of domestic
arrangements permitted from the nature of the case, or
rather required, while tending, among other things, to
maintain the strictness of the distinction, conceal consi-
derably the evidences of its active existence. In the
more unconstrained and natural life of those peasants
the actual relationship is more prominently seen. It
might have been supposed that with monogamy (it is
true compulsorily) prevailing largely among them; that
from the proximity and publicity of their simple abodes