Page:Islam, Turkey, and Armenia, and How They Happened.djvu/156

150 the man is forced to pay his children's living until the boy is seven years old and the girl nine.

4. The Rights of Turkish Women. Mohamet, being very fond of his mother (who was widowed soon after, or, according to others, just before the birth of the only child) has repeatedly ordered honor and mercy towards mothers, especially widowed mothers. "No man," the Mohametan law says, "can repay the merit of his mother, even if he could carry her on his back all the way to Kabeh," the holy temple in Mecca.

But the same law evidently ranks woman lower than man by limiting, for example, her legal rights. An heiress can only get the half proportion of inheritance that an heir of the same relation may get. The wife can only get one-fifth of the property of her deceased husband if he has bodily heirs from her or from a former wife. A woman can never claim a divorce nor make an objection if her husband marries three wives more and desires to keep concubines. During the husband's lifetime the wife has no claim on his movable or immovable properties, only her dowry and personal ornaments and clothing presented to her. The consequences of the limitation of family rights are mutual hatred, unfaithfulness, crime, and a general degradation of woman. Women are not allowed to attend mosques for the daily prayers; they may have them in the harem. In the month of Ramazan, the fasting month, they are permitted to go to the mosque, but must enter from a special small back door and sit in a gallery enclosed by a thick