Next to the service of the husband or master, the care of her children, and attending to other indispensable domestic duties, the most important occupation of the wife is that of spinning or weaving or needle-work. "Sitting for an hour employed with the distaff is better for women," said the Prophet, "than a year's worship; and for every piece of cloth woven of the thread spun by them they shall receive the reward of a martyr."--´Áisheh, the Prophet's wife, thus declared the merit of spinning:--"Tell the women what I say: There is no woman who spins until she hath clothed herself but all the angels in the Seven Heavens pray for forgiveness of her sins; and she will go forth from her grave on the day of judgment wearing a robe of Paradise and with a veil upon her head, and before her shall be an angel and on her right an angel who will hand her a draught of the water of Selsebeel, the fountain of Paradise; and another angel will come to her, and carry her upon his wings, and bear her to Paradise. And when she enters Paradise, eighty thousand maidens will meet her, each maiden bringing a different robe; and she will have mansions of emeralds with three hundred doors, at each of which will stand an angel with a present from the Lord of the Throne."[273]--The arts above mentioned are pursued by the females in the ḥareems of the middle and higher classes. Their leisure-hours are mostly spent in working with the needle; particularly in embroidering handkerchiefs, head-veils, etc., upon a frame called mensej, with coloured silks and gold. Many women, even in the houses of the wealthy, replenish their private purses by ornamenting handkerchiefs and other things in this manner, and employing a delláleh (or female broker) to take them to the market, or to other ḥareems, for sale.[274] The separation of the sexes undoubtedly promotes the free intercourse of people of the same sex and of different ranks, who thus are able to associate together, regardless of difference of wealth or station, without the risk of occasioning unequal matrimonial connections. This separation is therefore felt by neither sex as oppressive, but is regarded by them as productive of results which constitute the Muslim's chief enjoyments,--the highest degree of domestic comfort, and the most free and extensive society of his fellow men. Thus it is with both sexes; and neither would give up the pleasure that they hence derive for a different system of society, somewhat extending their domestic intercourse, but often destroying the pleasures of home, and contracting into a compass comparatively narrow the fellowship which they enjoyed abroad.