Page:The Moslem World Vol IV.djvu/221

 NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS


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There is a real call for spiritually minded women with university education to give themselves to Uterarj^ work in Moslem lands. Mr. Arthur T. Upson calls attention to what Moslem women can do, in reviewing a book which appeared sometime ago in Cairo. He says: —

" The Eastern woman being so much kept in the background, it is not generally known whether she is really capable or not. It is, of course, quite misleading and unfair to say that, because the ' fellah ' woman is stupid and ignorant, therefore the Moslem woman, as a whole, is incapable. One does not need to be a Pierre Loti, or even one of his admirers, to discover, after a certain amount of residence in the East, that many of our Eastern sisters have very great capacity for learning.

" Readers of M. Loti's book will have become aware of the degree of culture reached by the Turkish lady, but this is, to a large extent, within the harem, whereas there are some in other lands whose deeds require a wider sphere to display them.

" Among these is the talented daughter of the Inspector of Arabic in the Egyptian ISIinistry of Education, who has, for some years, written under a well-known nom-de -plume.

" Another one is the editor of the book which hes before us. It is a thick quarto volume of 550 pages, entitled Ad-Durr al-Manthur. It was pubhshed nineteen years ago, and seems to have been written two years before that time. It was brought out at the Government Press at Bulac, Cairo.

" The authoress, who styles herself a Syrian by birth, but an Egyptian by long residence, has given a most remarkable series of sketches of famous women. We have here something like 500 short biographies. It might have been thought she would write only of her own people. It were far more likely that she would do as many do, that is, would become so enamoured of the West as to forget the East altogether. Not so, Sayida Zainab Fawaz, the talented authoress, has treated of women in all ages and in all lands; but although she ranges from Hagar, the mother of Ishmael (the reason for whose inclusion is obvious) to Mary, Queen of Scots, and then from the Queen of Sheba to Florence Nightingale, and from A'isha, the wife of Mohammed, to Queens Elizabeth and Victoria — yet she has them all clearly classified under their initial letters.

" It would open the eyes of many students of Arabic literature to read pages 294 to 306. Another A'isha wrote a Qasida (Arabic poem), so arranged that every hne contains a different specimen of the chief rules in rhetoric."

We need in every great intellectual centre of Islam those who will study the whole question of literature in its relation to Moslem woman- hood: both what has been prepared by them and what should be prepared for them at the present time of intellectual awakening.