‘In the houses of some nobles, where there may be two or three hundred, or even more, slave-girls kept for state, the possessor of them generally has his quiet much disturbed by their endless quarrels and cabals. Indeed, to such lengths do they proceed, as often to force the master even to inflict death on some of the most refractory. After his demise, the whole disperse, like a swarm of bees, many of them to misery and distress. The handsomest are usually selected by the heir, for his own use; while such as may have superior attractions, though they may even have been the favored mistresses of the father, will not, on many occasions, be the less acceptable to the son. ‘It is a very extraordinary fact, and as little known as it is extraordinary, that, among all the Mussulmans who retain slave-girls only for the purposes of the house (with the exception of those probably originally from _Iran_,[31]) it is an established rule to turn them out when the family retires to bed, to seek husbands for themselves. These women generally attach themselves to some particular persons; and whatever progeny arises from this intercourse, become slaves of course. They are taught to dance, sew, and embroider; and often, in cases of unlooked for distress, the family is supported by their labors. Thus we see, that the situation, in general, of their slave-girls, is, of all others, that which would meet with their own approbation. However, the case is altered with those immured in the _zenanahs_ of nabobs, and men of elevated rank: there, they are strictly confined, and precluded from all possible communication with men.[32] In such case, they wait anxiously for the moment of escape, or embrace the only means left them to mitigate the natural irritability arising from restraint, by forming a connection with some individual of their own sex. This kind of attachment, it is said, is often carried to the most romantic lengths, and, one would think, must be pretty common, from the circumstance of an appropriate term, viz. _moosacqek_, being adopted to distinguish that species of amorous dalliance. ----- Footnote 31: A province of Persian Tartary. Footnote 32: There have, however, been many instances to the contrary. ----- ‘It is not allowable, by the Mahomedan laws, to purchase any slaves, except those taken in battle; but, as at present that resource proves not a plentiful one to the true believers, they have been forced into a method of escaping the law, by making out, what they term, a paper of service; by which it appears, that the parents of the child disposed of, in consequence of extreme distress, agree to give up its services for seventy years, the actual age of the child being taken into the account: a trifling sum is fixed on as a yearly stipend for the child’s services, part of which, viz. the real price, is acknowledged to have been received in advance: the remainder, it is supposed, will be expended in raiment, food, &c.