The Laughable Stories Collected by Mar Gregory John

PREFACE. IX
Instructions;" but the work of Bar-Hebraeus differs
considerably from them all, inasmuch as the soundest
and best teaching, both as regards the present and
the future life, is successfully inculcated by means of
a series of concise sayings and stones culled from
some of the best literatures of the world. It has been
the fashion among some to scoff at Syriac literature
as being the product of priests and monks who had
no knowledge of the profane writings of other nations;
that the greater part of it as known to us relates to
ecclesiastical matters is true beyond a doubt, but that
the greatest Syriac writers had other interests is also
equally true, and of these Bar-Hebraeus is the most
brilliant example. The "Book of Laughable stories"
covers a wide ground, and embraces a very mis-
cellaneous group of subjects. We should hardly expect
the idea of "Woman's Rights" ever to have entered
into the head of the Maphrian of the Jacobite Church,
or even to have existed in an Oriental land in the
XIII th century of our era, yet from one of his stories
we see that it did, and also that some women's views
of the matter were much then what they are now.
For when one woman asked another why a man should
have the power to buy a woman and to do what he
pleased with her while a woman could not act with
freedom in any matter, she replied, "It is because kings,
"and judges, and lawgivers have all been men. They
"have, therefore, acted the part of advocate of theif
"own cause, and have, in consequence, oppressed the
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