Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/214

 638–44] clubs, and prayer at Mosque five times a day. Ladies no longer appeared in public excepting as they flitted along shrouded beneath "the veil." The light and grace, the charm and delicacy, hitherto imparted by their presence to Arab society were gone; the softness, brightness, and warmth of nature, so beautifully portrayed in ancient Arab song, were chilled and overcast. Games of chance, and suchlike amusements, were forbidden; even speculation was checked by the ban on interest for money lent. And so, Muslim life, cut off, beyond the threshold of the ḥarīm, from the ameliorating influences of the gentler sex, began to assume outside the dreary, morose, and cheerless aspect ever since retained. But nature is not to be for ever thus pent up; the rebound too often comes; and in casting off its shackles, humanity not seldom bursts likewise through the barriers of the Faith. The gay youth of Islām, cloyed with the dull delights of the sequestered ḥarīm, were tempted thus when abroad to evade the restrictions of their creed, and seek in the cup, in music, games, and dissipation, the excitement which the young and lighthearted will demand. In the greater cities, intemperance and libertinism were rife. The canker spread, oftentimes the worse because concealed. The more serious classes were scandalised not only by amusements, luxuries, and voluptuous living, inconsistent with their creed, but even with immoralities which cannot here be named. Development of this evil came later on, but tares were already sown even under the strict regime of ʿOmar.

For the present such excesses prevailed only in foreign parts. At home, the Caliphs, fortified by the hallowed associations of Medīna, preserved the simplicity of ancient Arab life. Severe simplicity, indeed, was not incompatible (as in the case of Moḥammad himself) with the indulgences of the ḥarīm. But even in this respect, the first three Caliphs, judged by the standard of Islām, were temperate and modest. ʿOmar, they say, had no passion for the sex, Before the Hijra, he contracted marriage with four wives,