Behind the Veil in Persia and Turkish Arabia: An Account of an Englishwoman's Eight Years' Residence Amongst the Women of the East

In the years before the First World War transformed the Middle East forever, an Englishwoman lived behind closed doors with families across Persia and Turkish Arabia, and what she saw there has survived in this remarkable account. Mary Hume-Griffith arrived in Isfahan in 1900 with her husband, a medical missionary, but it was the women's quarters the andarun that became her true domain. Over eight years in Kerman, Isfahan, Yazd, and Mosul, she moved through households of every class, from merchants' wives to servants, gaining a trust that few Westerners have ever enjoyed. She records their folk remedies and superstitions, their loneliness and small rebellions, their handling of servants and their strategies for survival in a world where a woman's status rested entirely on her husband's whim. The book stands as an invaluable record of religious minorities the Baha'is, Parsees, Yazidis, Jews, and Kurds whose cultures she observed with anthropological precision. Hume-Griffith's affection for these women permeates every page, yet she refuses to sentimentalize lives marked by confinement and insecurity. This is history from inside the house, not from the compound gate.