The Chaliphate - Muir - The Search For Mecca

A. T). 638-44] SOCIAL DETERIORATION 183
wife of noble blood held, under the old and chivalrous ATI. 17-23.
code of the Bedawin, a position of honour and supremac)'
in the household, from which she could be ousted b)' no
base-born rival, however fair or fruitful. She was now
to be, in the estimation of her husband, but one amongst
many. A slave-girl bearing children, became at once, as
Uvi Wclcd} free ; and in point of legitimacy her offspring
ranked with the children of the free and noble wife. Beauty
and blandishment thus too often outshone birth and
breeding, and the favourite of the hour displaced her noble
mistress.
With the coarse sensualist, revelling like Al-Moghira in Story of
a liarJm stocked with Greek and Persian bond-maids, this
might have been expected. But it was not less the case
in many a house of greater refinement and repute. Some
lady, ravished, it may have been, from a noble home, and
endowed with the charms and graces of a courtly life,
would captivate her master, and for the moment rule
supreme. The story of Leila affords a sample. That
beautiful Ghassanid princess was bought at Dumia by
Khalid from the common prize. The fame of her charms
reached Medina, and kindled a romantic flame in the
breast of 'Abd ar-Rahmfm, son of Abu Bekr. The
disconsolate lover ceased not singing his mistress's praises,
and his own unhappiness, in verses still preserved. At
last he became her master, and she was despatched from
the camp to his home. At once he took her to wife.
His love was so great that, forsaking all other, he kept
only to her, so long as her beauty lasted. She was the
queen of his household. After a time she fell sick and
began to waste away. The beauty went, and with it the
master's love, and her turn came to be forsaken. His
comrades said to him "
: Why keep her forsaken and
neglected thus? Suffer her to go back to her people
and her home." So he suffered her. Leila's fate was
happy compared with that of most. Tired of his toy, the
owner would sell her, if still young and beautiful, to be
the plaything of another; or if disease or years had
fretted her beauty, leave her to eke out the fcjrlorn, weary,
hopeless, lot of a household slave.
'
i.e. " Motlicr of a cliikl."