Such testimony coming from a witness so competent and so impartial should be conclusive. The reports to the contrary of men who have traveled in Anatolia are of no value whatever, for the simple reason that these men could not possibly get information at first hand. For the _harem_ is everywhere absolutely barred to them, and what information they might get would necessarily be based on idle rumor and therefore quite valueless. Women, however, even when total strangers, are always hospitably received by their Ottoman sisters. And if they are able to speak the language of the country, they have little difficulty in becoming quite familiar with the everyday life of the people. But men, no matter how extensive their travels in Anatolia, will all be forced to confess with a noted English traveler--“throughout our journey, the female sex may be said not to have existed for us at all.”[121] Much has been said about the divorce evil in Turkey. No doubt this does constitute a foul blot on the social system of Islam but it is not so bad as it is usually represented. The Koran safeguards the rights of the wife in many ways and public opinion is daily becoming more opposed to a man’s arbitrary repudiation of his wife. In spite, however, of the present facile dissolution of the marriage bond the frequency of divorce in Anatolia is far less than in many parts of the United States. The Turkish wife [writes another English traveler who had spent many years in the Ottoman Empire] has been called a slave and a chattel. She is neither. Indeed her legal status is preferable to that of the majority of the wives in Europe and, until enactments of a comparatively recent date, the English was far more of a chattel than the Turkish wife who has always had absolute control of her property. The law allows her the free use and disposal of anything she may possess at the time of her marriage, or that she may inherit afterwards. She may distribute it during her life, or she may bequeath it to whom she chooses. In the eyes of the law she is a free agent. She may act independently of her husband, may sue in the courts or may be proceeded against without regard to him.[122] The same author, in referring to the attachment of husband and wife for each other, declares that among the Turkish peasantry “one meets with Darby and Joan as frequently as in England.”[123] “How far removed are we then,” asks an Ottoman gentleman, “from the seductive odalisques whose pictures, in the East, are only to be seen on biscuit tins.”[124]