Note 157 — HASAN OF BASSORAH.[5] (continued 3)

Amongst Moslems bastardy is a sore offence and a love-child is exceedingly rare. The girl is not only carefully guarded but she also guards herself knowing that otherwise she will not find a husband. Hence seduction is all but unknown. The wife is equally well guarded and lacks opportunities hence adultery is found difficult except in books. Of the Ibn (or Walad) Harám (bastard as opposed to the Ibn Halál) the proverb says, “This child is not thine, so the madder he be the more is thy glee!” Yet strange to say public prostitution has never been wholly abolished in Al-Islam. Al-Mas’údi tell us that in Arabia were public prostitutes (Bagháyá), even before the days of the Apostle, who affected certain quarters as in our day the Tartúshah of Alexandria and the Hosh Bardak of Cairo. Here says Herr Carlo Landberg (p. 57, Syrian Proverbs) “Elles parlent une langue toute à elle.” So pretentious and dogmatic a writer as the author of Proverbes et Dictons de la Province de Syrie, ought surely to have known that the Hosh Bardak is the head-quarters of the Cairene Gypsies. This author, who seems to write in order to learn, reminds me of an acute Oxonian undergraduate of my day who, when advised to take a “coach,” became a “coach” himself.