WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
hold, who wait upon the wives and the ikbals. The Dadas are the nurses of the numerous children. Beneath all these grades are the slaves of lowly birth and of alien race.
Early in the growth of polygamy the powerful man who surrounded himself with women, purchased or captured, discovered that his wives often exhibited errant desires. Men of less influence in the community envied his good fortune in the possession of several women; and they often used means to seduce his wives from their fidelity. Romances of the harem abound in the stories of elopement, intrigue, clandestine assignations, stolen visits to the palace by night, the forcible abduction of ikbals, and the murder of eunuchs and guards by hired bravos and professional stranglers.
A pasha lives, like the mediæval baron of England, in a fortified palace, or castle, with men-at-arms for the protection of his personal property. The armed eunuch came into existence as a necessary defence against the men who coveted the wives of their more fortunate neighbours. It was essential also that the women should be closely watched and kept under lock and key, for the human nature of women is like that of men, subject to variability in love, and apt to revolt against the strictest domestic conventions.
Now, a normal man, placed in guardianship of a
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