ome have supposed that there will be no place in the Moslem
Paradise for women, as their place will be taken by the seventy-two
bright-eyed Houris or damsels of Paradise. Mohammed once said that when
he took a view of Paradise he saw the majority of its inhabitants to be
the poor, and when he looked down into hell, he saw the _greater part_
of the wretches confined there to be _women_! Yet he positively promised
his followers that the very meanest in Paradise will have eighty
thousand servants, seventy-two wives of the Houris, _besides the wives
he had in this world_. The promises of the Houris are almost exclusively
to be found in Suras, written at a time when Mohammed had only a single
wife of sixty years of age, and in all the ten years subsequent to the
Hegira, women are only twice mentioned as the reward of the faithful.
And this, while in four Suras, the proper wives of the faithful are
spoken of as accompanying their husbands into the gardens of bliss.

"They and their wives on that day
Shall rest in shady groves." (Sura 36.)

"Enter ye and your wives into Paradise delighted." (Sura 43.)

"Gardens of Eden into which they shall enter
Together with the just of their fathers, and their wives." (Sura 13.)

An old woman once desired Mohammed to intercede with God that she might
be admitted to Paradise, and he told her that no old woman would enter
that place. She burst into loud weeping, when he explained himself by
saying that God would then make her young again.

I was once a fellow-passenger in the Damascus diligence, with a
Mohammedan pilgrim going to Mecca by way of Beirut and Egypt, in company
with his wife. I asked him whether his wife would have any place in
Paradise when he received his quota of seventy-two Houris. "Yes," said
he, looking towards his wife, whose veil prevented our seeing her,
although she could see us, "if she obeys me in all respects, and is a
faithful wife, and goes to Mecca, she will be made more beautiful than
all the Houris of Paradise." Paradise is thus held up to the women as
the reward of obedience to their husbands, and this is about the sum and
substance of what the majority of Moslem women know about religion.

Women are never admitted to pray with men in public, being obliged to
perform their devotions at home, or if they visit the Mosques, it must
be at a time when the men are not there, for the Moslems are of opinion
that the presence of women inspires a