Chapter I: The Ancient Arabians (1)

B.C. 2500–A.D. 614

Topography of Arabia--Its History--Influence of Other
Nations--Ancient Civilization---Commerce--Persistence
of Customs and Language--Character of the Bedouin--His
Independence--His Predatory Instincts--Power of Tribal
Connection--War the Normal Condition of Existence in the
Desert--The Virtues and Vices of the Arab--Blood-Revenge
and its Destructive Consequences--Absence of
Caste--Condition of Woman--Marriage--Religion--Astral
Worship--Idolatry--Phallicism--Human Sacrifices--Importance
and Power of the Jews--Christianity in Arabia--Poetry, its
Subjects and Character--The Moallakat---Popularity of the Arab
Poet--His License--Influence of Arabic Civilization and Culture
on Subsequent Ages.

Few countries of the globe present to the eye of the traveller so desolate, so forbidding an aspect as that vast and arid peninsula which, embracing an area of more than a million square miles, stretches away through twenty-four degrees of latitude, from the confines of the Syrian Desert to the shores of the Indian Ocean. Its surface, while far from possessing the monotonous character with which popular fancy is accustomed to invest it, is, for the greater part of its extent, destitute of those physical advantages which tempt either the cupidity or the enterprise of man. Its coasts are low and unhealthy. Its harbors are few and unsafe. Its mineral resources are to this day unexplored and unknown. Its impenetrable deserts, guarded by a fierce and martial population, have always set at defiance the best-matured plans of invasion and conquest. In the principality of Yemen, appropriately named The Happy, the cultivation of the soil has flourished from time immemorial, but in almost every other province the returns of agricultural labor are discouraging and unremunerative. Illimitable wastes of sand, over which sweeps the deadly blast of the simoom; mountains, bald, craggy, and volcanic, whose slopes are destitute of every trace of vegetable life; plains strewn with blocks of tufa and basalt; valleys dotted here and there with stunted shrubs, or encrusted with a saline deposit similar to that upon the shores of the Dead Sea; a soil impregnated with nitre; such are, and have been from prehistoric times, the physical features of the Arabian Peninsula. No stream worthy of the name of river, dispensing wealth and fertility in its winding course to the sea, flows through this dreary and inhospitable land. Wherever a spring was found, a permanent settlement arose, and the black tents of the Bedouin gave place to huts of sun-dried bricks, while the dignity of the sheik, who now aspired to the title of prince, was satisfied with a dwelling superior to those of his subjects only in point of size. The oasis, generally suggestive of shady groves and purling streams, is often, in reality, nothing more than the dry bed of a mountain torrent, along whose borders a little withered vegetation furnishes the hardy camel with pasture, and where a scanty supply of brackish water can, by laborious digging, be obtained. Overhead glitters a sky of brass, unflecked by a single cloud, and, morning and evening, the rays of the sun, mellowed and refracted by the vapors of the earth, clothe every elevation with scarlet, azure, and violet tints which, blended in exquisite harmony, rival the splendors of the rainbow; developing, under the effects of radiation, optical illusions and charming pictures of the mirage, attributed by superstitious ignorance to the influence of enchantment. The unbroken stillness of the Desert, the wide expanse of uninhabited territory, produce a sense of mental depression, accompanied by an apprehension of danger from the convulsions of nature and the violence of man, which no experience seems able to remove; affecting even the sturdy camel-driver, familiar with these solitudes from childhood, who shudders as he urges his string of panting beasts over the drifted sand-heaps and through the mountain fastness, the reputed haunt of evil genii and the vantage ground from whence the murderous banditti oft beset the caravan. So deeply-rooted and tenacious is this feeling that the Arab regards a journey successfully performed as just cause for congratulation, and indeed not inferior to a triumph, as is indicated by his familiar proverb, “Travel is a victory.”

The modern geographical division of Arabia into The Stony, The Desert, The Happy is arbitrary, and unknown to the people the boundaries of whose country it purports to establish. The distinctions between the various tribes of the Peninsula have always been determined by mode of life, habits, and tradition rather than by the accident of locality; have been, in fact, rather personal than territorial. This peculiarity is the result of an extraordinary persistence of a national type which neither a new physical environment, nor the change of political and economic conditions, nor the lapse of centuries has been able to modify sensibly, still less to eradicate completely. Hence has arisen the division of the Arabian people into two classes, nomadic and sedentary, the only one universally recognized by them, and whose line of demarcation has always been sharply defined.

The primordial story of Arabia is lost in the unfathomable darkness of antiquity. The annals of no people are involved in more uncertainty or present greater difficulties in their investigation than those of the Bedouins, as the popular accounts which we possess of their early history bear unquestionable indications of recent date and fictitious origin. Ignorant of the art of writing for centuries before the time of Mohammed, their traditions were orally transmitted, and, in addition to being necessarily subject to all the defects of this mode of communication, were colored by that love of exaggeration and falsehood which seems to be an integral part of the Oriental character. The meagre hints which can be gleaned from these unsatisfactory materials are all that we can rely upon in the almost hopeless attempt to construct a chronological and historical outline of pre-Islamic events. The statements of Moslem writers concerning these events must be subjected to rigid criticism. They suppressed many facts, and condemned indiscriminately the practices of their heathen ancestors; although they knew that the Prophet drew his inspiration largely from this source, and that Islamism could never have been established without the acceptance of many of these idolatrous ceremonies in all their integrity. As far as can at present be determined by the aid of the imperfect and suspicious data at our command, and by a comparison of the physical and mental characteristics of surrounding nations, Arabia has long been a base of extensive emigration, chiefly into Central Asia; while her southern and eastern provinces have, from the days when some famished Bedouin first discovered the marvellous fertility enjoyed by the Valley of the Nile, been the prolific source from whence Egypt recruited her diminishing population.

On the other hand, the influence of neighboring countries upon Arabia has been attended, in its turn, with consequences of the greatest importance. It was peculiarly fortunate that her geographical situation rendered her maritime cities--and in a still greater degree her interior settlements--entrepôts for the distribution of the luxuries of the East and West. Of the latter, in ancient times, and indeed until superseded by the doubtful advantages of Mecca, Petra was the most remarkable. The latter was a veritable troglodytic city. Its dwellings, excavated in the solid rock, disclose by their vast extent that at one time they must have sheltered a population of at least a hundred and sixty thousand souls. Nor was Petra the only town of this kind in Northern Arabia. Many others almost rivalled it in size and opulence, in the splendid architecture of their temples, in the vast ramifications of their commercial interests, in the sybaritic luxury of their inhabitants. Under such conditions a high degree of civilization must necessarily have been reached, which, however, had disappeared with the decline of Phœnician influence at a period long before the dawn of the Christian era. From an epoch not improbably coeval with the establishment of the first Egyptian dynasty there had been an almost incessant passing and repassing of strangers, attracted by the profits of the Ethiopian and Indian trade, upon the highways, which in every direction traversed the Peninsula. This continual intercourse with foreigners, the curious information of distant lands which the latter imparted, the mysterious dogmas of unknown faiths which they professed, their extensive learning and polished manners, insensibly enlarged the sphere of observation and activity, developed the mental faculties, and softened the rudeness of the wild tribes of the Desert. Many of these traders were Phœnicians and Jews whom a common origin, indicated, among other traits, by a striking similarity of language, brought at once into familiar and intimate contact. with the Arabs. The commercial intercourse of Arabia with Egypt is known from inscriptions to have existed for thirty-five hundred years before Christ, and that with Phœnicia may, not improbably, have been of equal antiquity.

No greater contrast can be imagined than that presented by the respective lives of the Arabs and their neighbors and kindred, the denizens of the Valley of the Nile. The actions of the former, like those of all pastoral nations, were irregular, uncertain, capricious. The existence of the latter was controlled by the unvarying phenomena of the Great River, whose influence was perceptible in every phase of political, religious, and social life; whose inundations were symbolical of prosperity, and whose rise was announced by the celestial messenger Sirius, the most magnificent star in the heavens. The subjects of the Pharaohs were dependent upon Arabia for the gums and aromatics so extensively used in embalming; and these precious substances, which must have been produced far more abundantly then than now, were also exported to Phœnicia and Palestine, whence considerable quantities annually found their way into Europe to be consumed in sacrificial ceremonies, in the service of medicine, and in the ostentatious pomp of patrician luxury.

The maritime and agricultural advantages possessed by the southern coast of the Peninsula--designated by the Romans as Arabia the Happy, and afterwards, by the natives, as Yemen, “The Country on the Right Hand” (because the speaker was supposed to stand at Mecca)--had enabled that region to attain to a degree of prosperity and civilization unknown to the pastoral settlements of the interior. Nothing can now be ascertained concerning the early history of Yemen, the royal genealogies of whose sovereigns nevertheless include a period of twenty-two hundred years. Nor can speculation, with any degree of probability, assign even an approximate date to the beginning of its commercial relations with the East. Not only did the bold and adventurous spirit of the Arabian sailors lead them to the extreme Orient, but their coasting vessels regularly visited the shores of the Persian Gulf and the bays and inlets of the African coast; undertakings far more hazardous, if not more lucrative, than voyages to distant Hindustan. From the latter country the native and foreign merchants introduced, with articles of traffic, many idolatrous practices and dogmas of a corrupt philosophy, destined subsequently to manifest the powerful hold they had obtained upon the popular mind by their incorporation into the creed of Islam.

All classic writers who have written upon the subject agree in attributing great wealth to Southern Arabia, a land familiar to antiquity as Saba, or Sheba. Herodotus, Strabo, and Pliny frequently allude to it as the richest country on the globe. Its agricultural resources, dependent upon a vast and intricate hydraulic system which embraced hundreds of leagues of productive territory, were the principal basis of its prosperity. Its streams were confined by massive walls of masonry of cyclopean dimensions and by great embankments. One of these reservoirs was eighteen miles in circuit and a hundred and twenty feet deep. Its stones were laid in bitumen and bolted together with iron rods. Many others, inferior in dimensions and of not less solid construction, collected and retained the melted snows of the mountains. The flow of water was regulated by sluices, and its apportionment rigidly prescribed by law. This thorough system of irrigation, applied to a soil of prodigious fertility under a tropical sun, eventually produced results rivalling those of the vaunted plantations of Babylonia. An innumerable population, distributed throughout this favored territory in hundreds of cities and villages, carried to its highest perfection the cultivation of the soil. The daily expenses of the royal household were fifteen Babylonian talents, eighty-five thousand five hundred dollars of our money. It is related that Mareb, the capital, stood in a vast expanse of perennial verdure, where the branches of the trees, touching each other, formed a vault of continuous shade over the highways, of such extent that a horseman would require a journey of two months’ duration to traverse the cultivated portion of the realm of the monarchs of Saba. One of the latter was the famous Queen Balkis, the friend and admirer of Solomon.

In a region so fortunately situated for commerce, mercantile activity kept pace with agricultural development. The merchants of Saba enjoyed a reputation for shrewdness, ability, wealth, and enterprise not inferior to that of the Phœnicians themselves. They engaged in transactions involving immense pecuniary investments. They despatched great fleets to China. Their caravans traversed the Syrian and African deserts. They exported to Persia annually a thousand talents weight of frankincense. Not only did they purchase directly the commodities in which they dealt, but they also bought and sold extensively on commission. Their warehouses were filled with the rich products of a score of climes; silver vessels; ingots of copper, tin, iron, and lead; honey and wax; silks, ivory, ebony, coral, agates; civet, musk, myrrh, camphor, and other aromatics, some of which were worth many times their weight in gold. Such was their prodigal luxury that only sandal-wood and cinnamon were used as fuel in the preparation of their food. The vegetable kingdom contributed no insignificant share to the commercial wealth of Southern Arabia. Coffee, indigenous to the Peninsula, was exported as a luxury to the provinces of Asia. In that dry climate, where flourished every known variety of cereals, grain could be stored without injury for thirty years. The cotton-plant, the sugar-cane, the cocoa-palm, yielded enormous revenues to those who engaged in their culture. The balsam of Mecca, the gum Arabic, the sap of the _Acacia Vera_, and the famed frankincense were also important articles of export. The country was reputed to be rich in minerals; inexhaustible deposits of salt existed in Saba; gold was found in the mountains; but Arabia produced no iron, which Strabo says in his time was equal in value to the precious metals. The pearl fisheries of the coast, opposite to the Isles of Bahrein, were unrivalled for the beauty and value of their products.

For an unknown period, embracing, however, many centuries, the prosperity of the kingdom of Saba continued. Then it suddenly declined; a general emigration took place, and the former paradise was transformed into an uninhabited desert. The cause of this great and profound change, involving the desolation of a vast region and the dispersion of an entire people, is hidden in obscurity. The puerile fables which attribute it to a threatened inundation from the rupture of a dike are unworthy of notice. It is probable that this calamity was mainly due to the diversion of the caravan traffic to the channels of the Red Sea, to the abandonment of stations, to the cessation of revenue, and to the consequent dearth of the means of subsistence. Foreign wars or domestic convulsions, which, aided by increasing luxury and subsequent weakness, also contributed to drain the resources and exhaust the population of the kingdom, may have hastened the ultimate catastrophe that is supposed to have occurred during the first century of the Christian era.

From this epoch the traditions of the Arabs become more and more confused. Some tribes seem to have emigrated to Mesopotamia, others to have settled in the vicinity of Medina, then called Yathreb, where they intermarried with the Jews already established in that city. We know nothing further of Arabian annals till the promulgation of the faith of Islam began a new chapter in the history of nations. Before the Hegira no date could be fixed with certainty, as there was no chronological system by which to ascertain the year of an historical occurrence, and no public or private records existed to preserve it. But a step beyond the unreliable transmission of past events by tradition were the inscriptions occasionally made upon the shoulder-blades of animals. Not only was the material indispensable to the scribe entirely wanting, but the ability to use it was possessed by only an insignificant number of the people. Among the nomadic Bedouins contempt for literary accomplishments, except that of extemporaneous poetical composition, universally prevailed. Even in the great commercial city of Mecca, at the time of the publication of the Koran, there was but one man who could write. It was not without reason that Mohammed designated the long and obscure period preceding the Hegira, the Age of Ignorance.

Arabia, alone among the countries accessible to the ambition of the powerful sovereigns of antiquity, escaped the humiliation of conquest. The genius of Alexander had planned its subjugation, but death prevented the realization of his vast, perhaps impracticable, design. The legions of Augustus, trained under the discipline of the greatest of the Cæsars, proved unequal to the task of triumphing over a region where the soil, the elements, and the valor of its defenders formed a combination invincible by human prowess. The Persians, for a period of insignificant duration, occupied the western and southern coasts, having previously expelled the Abyssinians, who had invaded and retained a portion of Yemen during the sixth century. No nation, however, was ever able to claim supremacy over any considerable portion of the Arabian Peninsula. For this immunity it was indebted not only to the natural obstacles which defied the advance and the maintenance of an invading army, but also to the superstitious fears with which cunning and credulity had surrounded its name. It was a land of mysterious portents and prodigies, whose borders were guarded by malignant demons; whose deserts, all but impenetrable to the boldest adventurer, were inhabited by cannibal giants and monstrous birds of prey that watched over treasures placed by evil spirits under the spell of enchantment. Every caravan that left Phœnicia for Central Arabia carried quantities of storax, which the Tyrian merchants declared was burnt in the neighborhood of the frankincense shrubs, that its offensive fumes might drive away the winged serpents which were their custodians. The climate was said to be so pestilential that slaves and criminals alone were employed to gather the precious gum, their liberty being conditional upon their success. These politic inventions, implicitly believed by the ignorant, while they insured to the shrewd traders of Phœnicia a monopoly of the valuable products of the Peninsula, exercised no inconsiderable influence over the popular mind of the ancients, and clothed the Desert with terrors which even the reputation and allurements of its prodigious wealth were unable entirely to overcome.

As a result of its exemption from foreign dominion, no other country has preserved the integrity of its customs, its language, and the personality of its inhabitants to such a degree as Arabia. It alone still presents a picture of the government and the domestic economy of patriarchal antiquity. Its manners are those which prevailed centuries before the time of Abraham. The wonderfully sonorous and flexible idiom of the Koran was already formed before the Bible or the Iliad was written. The absolute immobility of the Arabian in his native haunts, contrasted with his ready adaptation to diametrically opposite conditions elsewhere, is one of the most striking anomalies of human character. The influence of Greece and Rome, whose taste in art and maxims of government have left their traces wherever either the valor or the enterprise of those nations has been able to obtain a foothold, is not perceptible in the political or domestic history of Arabia. No ruins of any majestic structure raised by the master-hand of the Athenian or Roman architect have ever been discovered in the great Peninsula, the accounts of whose commercial wealth were matters of popular faith and wonder throughout the ancient world. And, what is probably a more conclusive indication of the permanent absence of foreign influence than any other, however plausible, no name with a Greek or Latin termination has survived in the dialects of those Arabian settlements most intimately associated with the trade of Europe for many centuries.

This inflexibility of national peculiarities becomes invaluable in tracing the causes of the decay and disruption of the great Moslem empires which subsequently dominated so large a portion of the globe. The ethnography of a people who have stamped their characteristics deeply upon succeeding ages; whose customs, laws, and language have, to a certain degree, survived their dominion; the analogy between the religious dogmas which they professed and those which have supplanted them; the play of passions, destructive or beneficent, exhibited by those rulers whom hereditary descent or the accident of fortune raised to supreme authority; the development of the transplanted race, its precocious maturity, the lasting effects of its intellectual supremacy, and its slow but inevitable decline, are circumstances well deserving the attentive scrutiny of the philosophical historian. The absence of reliable information renders impossible an accurate conception of the mental and physical traits of the Arab of two thousand years ago. But, as we know the extreme conservatism of Orientals, their pronounced aversion to change, the obstinate persistence of their traditions, and the general outlines of their character, we may with safety assume that the shepherd who now roams over the desert plateaus of Nejd and Oman is the intellectual counterpart of the Amalekite of the Bible, and that the Arab whose features are sculptured upon the eternal walls of Edfou and Karnak did not differ in any material respect from the predatory Bedouin of to-day. It is a strange anomaly in a land, the greater portion of which, either through the obduracy of Nature or the indolence of its inhabitants, had been for ages condemned to eternal sterility and isolated by sea and desert from contemporaneous civilization, to encounter a race whose genius was capable of at once adapting itself, with equal facility, to the formation and development of an agricultural system surpassing that of any other people, ancient or modern; to the invention of mechanical devices of marvellous ingenuity; to the solution of the most abstruse mathematical problems; to the perfection of a graceful and exquisite order of architecture, unique in design, infinite in detail, remarkable in execution, unrivalled in beauty of ornament; to the protracted investment of cities and the attainment and exercise of that proficiency in the intricate system of military tactics indispensable to success in the art of war; to the foundation and the preservation of empires. A long and tedious apprenticeship is usually required for the attainment to perfection in any of these accomplishments; but the versatile Arab seemed, by intuition, to be able to grasp them all, without previous experience or instruction. In literature, as well, was this pre-eminence of genius disclosed. Poetry was the sole form of literary manifestation appreciated by the Arabic mind; improvisation the only talent it deemed worthy of applause. Even among the most intelligent, nothing deserving of the name of history was preserved; and the genealogies upon which the Arabs prided themselves were merely interminable lists of barbarians of local or tribal celebrity, and dreary catalogues of idols. Yet their predatory hordes effected a great intellectual revolution in every country which submitted to their sway. In addition to their own memorable achievements, they developed and expanded, to the utmost, the mental faculties of their subjects and tributaries. By precept and example, they aroused the emulation and rewarded the efforts of all who struggled to escape from the fetters of ignorance which had been riveted by the superstition and prejudice of ages passed in ignominious servitude. Their conquests in the world of letters offer a far more noble title to renown than the laurels won on fields of appalling carnage or the prestige acquired by the subjugation of vast provinces and kingdoms. To the finest literary productions of modern times does this subtle intellectual power extend. The impress of Arabian genius can be detected in the novels of Boccaccio, in the romances of Cervantes, in the philosophy of Voltaire, in the “Principia” of Newton, in the tragedies of Shakspeare. Its domain is coincident with the boundaries of modern civilization, its influence imperishable in its character.

These far-reaching results are neither derived from spontaneous impulse nor are they of fortuitous origin. They indicate unmistakably a gradual and incessant advance through long periods of time. The inexorable laws which control the destiny of man require a transition through many connected forms, insensibly merging into each other, eventually to effect radical changes in the mental and physical characteristics of individuals and nations. The evolution of a race, like the development of architectural construction, is slow but progressive. The union between the foundation and the superstructure is evident, although the former may not at the first glance be visible. A great distance separates the barbaric sheik of pre-Islamic Arabia and the powerful and enlightened khalifs of Bagdad and Cordova. Yet both the Abbaside and the Ommeyade dynasties traced their lineage directly to the Bedouin robbers, who, each year, waylaid the Mecca caravan. There is no apparent resemblance between the rude structures of prehistoric antiquity and the matchless edifices erected by Athenian genius and skill. It cannot be disputed, however, that the unhewn and misshapen shaft of the cyclopean quarry, which had neither fluting nor volute, base nor capital, was the architectural prototype of the superb columns which adorned the temples of ancient Greece and Rome. In view of the rapid advance of the Arabs under Mohammed’s successors, we are forced to concede to their pagan ancestors not only intellectual powers of the highest order, apparently inconsistent with the degraded conditions of savage life, but also an extraordinary capacity for political organization and for the practical application of the principles of every art beneficial to mankind; talents unconsciously formed and dormant through countless generations; a fact which may well excite the admiration of every scholar, and of which history in previous or subsequent times affords no example.

The Arabs, despite their apparent barbarism, occupy no contemptible place in the annals of antiquity. They conquered Egypt, and, under the dynasty of the Shepherd Kings, governed that country for many centuries. One of their race, enlisted as a private soldier, was, by a series of rapid promotions, raised to the throne of the Roman empire. Their cavalry fought with conspicuous distinction in the imperial armies. More than once the valor of Bedouin mercenaries determined the fate of the Persian monarchy. They constituted the greater part of the forces of Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, in her desperate struggle with Aurelian. Under whatever banner they served, their courage and tenacity of purpose were never questioned. It must be admitted, however, that their fidelity was not beyond suspicion, and that, only too frequently, the name of Arab was a synonym of treachery.

The most remarkable peculiarity of Arabian life is its restless energy. The continuance of this condition from primeval times explains many of the distinctive traits so prominent in the character of the race. The well-known relation existing between commercial activity and civilized habits was powerless to change the existence of the nomadic Arab. His predatory instinct was always stronger than the attractions of sedentary comfort and opulence. Familiarity with Oriental luxury only increased his contempt for those who enjoyed it. His vagrant impulse carried him everywhere. He fearlessly penetrated the mysterious depths of the Libyan Desert. He served in the armies of Hindustan. He was enrolled in the Prætorian Guards, where his natural rapacity was gratified and stimulated by the donatives received for the ignominious sale of the imperial throne. For a considerable time before the advent of Mohammed, an increasing spirit of unrest had characterized the Arabs. With roving and predatory tastes, there could, of course, be no attachment to the soil,--a condition, indeed, regarded by the Bedouin as a badge of servitude. It required centuries to correct this prejudice; but no change of residence, no association with populations long civilized, or even the adoption of a new polity, the admonitions of a new religion, and the powerful attractions of affluence and ease, were ever able to eradicate the spirit of individual independence and tribal hostility which were the most prominent features of the Arabian character. These national peculiarities repeatedly threatened the existence of both the Eastern and Western Khalifates in the days of their greatest splendor. They intensified the bitterness which marked the struggles of rival princes for empire. They promoted and sustained the feuds of the nobility. They lurked under the tattered garments of the infuriated zealot. In the minds of the populace these feelings were scarcely ever concealed. They manifested themselves continually in personal quarrels, in the violence of mobs, in religious tumults, in insurrections, in the commission of frightful atrocities. They were potent factors in the destruction of mediæval Moslem civilization wherever established, and especially is this true of the Hispano-Arab domination, the most advanced, if not the most despotic, of them all. The temperament of the Arab, impetuous, fiery, vindictive, though admirably fitted for conquest, was deficient in those qualities of broad statesmanship and impartial discrimination vitally essential to the security and maintenance of government. Those who enjoyed the highest privileges of individual freedom were the mountaineers, who, in their inaccessible haunts, inured to privation, skilled in all manly exercises, and ignorant of luxury, clung with obstinate tenacity to their idols, and defied all attempts of the Prophet to convert or subdue them. Nor did Islam enlist her adherents in the purlieus of crowded cities. In Pagan as in Moslem Arabia, trade and religion were closely associated. The sympathies of the organized community were with the ancient religion, which contributed to its wealth, its employment, its personal profit, and its social distinction. The merchants and their numerous dependents looked coldly upon a revelation which menaced their revenues and their importance. The priesthood, recruited from the noblest families of the Peninsula, fostered this prejudice with an ardor born of instinctive hatred and professional pride. These two classes, therefore, contributed little to the propagation of the new doctrines; it was the wild hordes of the Desert that conquered the world.

The Himyarite inscriptions, recently deciphered, have established the fact that, at an unknown epoch, two migratory populations, one proceeding from the North, the other from the South, came together in their course, and were so blended by association and intermarriage as to form, in a short time, a single people. This rapid fusion points to a common racial derivation, and it is not improbable that the northern division were the Canaanites expelled by the sword of Joshua.

The very conditions of their existence, in early times, necessarily precluded the idea of systematic organization or concerted union among the vagabond tribes of Arabia. Their polity, if it may be dignified by that name, was essentially patriarchal. Chief’s and rulers were selected from families renowned for individual merit, noble descent, and antiquity of origin, and, in accordance with the paternal custom of the Orient, all retainers of the prince--who, in fact, were usually related to him--were in time enrolled as members of his household; and, in this way, fragments of certain tribes, drawn to a common centre by the ties of real or fancied kindred or through the fear of annihilation, acquired a great preponderance over their neighbors. Before the establishment of Mohammedan rule, there was no government, no code of laws, no superior authority either delegated to or assumed by the magistrate. Each family was independent; each member of it recognized no obligation to society except the protection of his clansmen. The instinct of self-preservation, the force of public opinion, and the apprehension of the encroachments of rival tribes were the only motives sufficiently powerful to effect a temporary union of those whose vital interests were threatened. The power of the sheik was nominal; his functions advisory rather than executive. His station was one of more honor than usefulness; of his own volition he could neither direct military operations, enforce obedience, reward merit, nor inflict punishment. The affairs of the tribe were administered by such of its members as were conspicuous for age, dignity, and wisdom. Even the decision of such a council was not imperative in cases where the general welfare was concerned; for, under such circumstances, the judgment of every personage of wealth, rank, or social distinction was consulted. Absolutism, so prominent a feature of Asiatic government, and carried to such an extreme by Mohammed’s successors, was thus unknown in ancient Arabia. Dominated by the tumultuous freedom of individual caprice, its isolated communities were not even subject to the ordinary legal restrictions imposed by the voice of democracy; and their control approached as near to anarchical license as was compatible with the bare preservation of society. Natural obstacles, such as the scarcity of water and the barrenness of the soil, added to long-inherited prejudice, traditional enmity, and difficulty of intercommunication, have always prevented the political and intellectual development of the Arabs in their native land. The persistence of his original institutions after the mighty revolutions elsewhere wrought by Islam prove conclusively that national regeneration of the Arab under the sky of the Desert is a practical impossibility.

The life of the Bedouin was passed in unremitting hostility. War was the normal condition of his existence; it supplied the sole incentives he deemed worthy of attention--the gratification of revenge, the acquisition of glory, the appropriation of the property of his neighbor. The indulgence of these passions, and especially of the ignoble propensity to rapine, and his cruelty, were his most conspicuous and discreditable characteristics. The occupation of robbery was in the eyes of the Arab rather honorable than otherwise, as it was intimately associated with the profession of arms. In a society without the resources of agriculture, manufactures, or commerce, violent means must be relied on for the sustenance of life. In the Desert the only available expedients to this end were the plunder of enemies and the blackmail of travellers. The total absence of organized government rendered the possession of property doubly precarious. Nowhere else was the fickleness of fortune so apparent. The attack of a hostile tribe might render the most opulent individual a pauper in a single night. No vigilance could prevent such a catastrophe in a region affording unlimited opportunities for surprise and ambuscade, where there was no title to the soil, where the wealth of a community consisted largely of flocks of sheep and herds of camels. Under circumstances where a man’s importance and position among his fellows were dependent upon his inclination to encounter danger and his capacity to elude detection in the pursuit of pillage, poverty became disgraceful. Constant apprehension bred distrust of strangers, until it became a predominant national trait. Where two parties of Bedouins, unknown to each other, met in the Desert, the stronger immediately attacked the weaker. A daring predatory enterprise conferred the highest popular distinction upon its hero. A great robber, who united the qualities of courage and duplicity, and who had amassed wealth by his exploits, was the idol of his tribe. The memory of the famous brigand Harami is even now cherished in the Hedjaz with an admiring veneration scarcely inferior to that conferred upon his countryman Mohammed.

The mental constitution of the ancient Arab presented many remarkable inconsistencies, most of which are still apparent in the character of his descendants. Brave even to temerity, he felt no compunction at the secret assassination of a foe. Professing reverence for age and relying for guidance upon the advice of the elders of his tribe, he did not hesitate to drive the old and infirm from the public feast. While the greatest renown attended the plunder of an encampment, the commission of a trifling theft made the perpetrator an object of universal detestation. He assisted the unfortunate and plundered the defenceless with equal alacrity. The exercise of a generous and unselfish hospitality was no bar to the pursuit of a guest after he had left the inviolable precincts of the camp. In many respects, however, the character of the Bedouin was eminently worthy of admiration. His courage was undisputed. He possessed a high sense of personal honor. The fugitive who solicited his protection, even though he were an enemy, was safe so long as he remained within the enclosure of his tent, and he espoused the cause of the unknown suppliant as if it were his own. After sunset, his blazing watch-fire, like a friendly beacon, guided the course of the belated wanderer over the desert sea. He disputed with his neighbors for the honor of entertaining the stranger, and the deepest reproach he could undergo was the imputation that he was deficient in the virtue of hospitality. His sense of chivalry, nurtured amidst the constant perils of an uncertain existence, was conspicuous in the respect and consideration he afterwards exhibited in the treatment of woman. His simplicity of manner and gravity of demeanor imparted an air of dignity to his appearance, which elicited the respect of those far superior to him in rank, education, and knowledge. Patient in adversity, he considered the display of grief as an unpardonable evidence of weakness. His love of liberty dominated his nature to an extent impossible of appreciation by those subject to the salutary restraints of civilized communities. The existence of many noble qualities in the character of the Arab, however, only rendered its defects the more glaring. His apparent imperturbability screened from the public gaze many vices and imperfections. Like all barbarians, his disposition was largely infantile and capricious, petulant, diverted by trifles, controlled by instinct rather than by reason, quick to take offence, and relentlessly vindictive. Of all beings he was pre-eminently the creature of impulse. His pride was inordinate, his rapacity insatiable. With him the prosecution of vengeance was a sacred duty, which took precedence of every moral and social obligation; and such was his enmity, that he regarded the forgiveness of a serious injury as the badge of a coward. An incorrigible braggart, he never hesitated to employ treachery when it would accomplish the purposes of valor. He practised cannibalism, and like the ferocious Scandinavians drank from the skulls of slaughtered victims. Participation in these horrid banquets was not confined to warriors; women also were present at them, and wore, with savage pride, necklaces and amulets composed of the ears, noses, and bones of the dead.

Under the pretext of preventing future dishonor, but really with a view to economy, under conditions of existence involving a perpetual struggle, he often buried his female children alive. It is said that Othman was never known to weep except when, at the burial of his little daughter, she reached up and caressingly wiped the dust of her grave from his beard. From such unspeakable atrocities as this did Mohammed deliver his countrymen.

The Arabs practised both polyandry and polygamy to an extent rarely countenanced by other barbarians. One woman, whose career would seem to be unique in the history of matrimonial achievement, was celebrated for having been the wife of forty husbands. In a society where communal marriage prevailed, the passion of jealousy was necessarily unknown. The Pagan Arab indulged to the utmost the vice of drunkenness, and prided himself upon his capacity to absorb great quantities of liquor--there were some Himyarite princes who obtained an unenviable immortality by drinking themselves to death. Gambling was so popular in the Desert that the Bedouin, like the ancient German, often staked his liberty, his most priceless possession, on the toss of a pebble. Like the Hebrew patriarchs, he contracted incestuous marriages. He gloried in the name of brigand, and regarded the capture of a caravan as the principal object of life. It was not unusual for him, after plundering the dead, to mutilate them with a brutal malignity that would disgrace an American Indian. He tested guilt or innocence by ordeals of fire and water, which he and his kinsman the Jew had inherited from a remote antiquity. The practice of licentious gallantry, universally prevalent in the Peninsula, and celebrated in many an amatory stanza of the Bedouin poet, was temporarily checked by the austere rule of Islam; but, reviving ere long, under the congenial skies of Spain and Sicily, spread northward, and, inseparably associated with deeds of chivalry and romantic adventure, infected, in time, the rude and comparatively virtuous barbarians of Europe.

An unusual degree of intelligence, a lively imagination, a vivid curiosity, a retentive memory, a childish love of the marvellous, distinguished the Arab of the Age of Ignorance from the other pastoral nations of Africa and Asia. Feuds between tribe and tribe, nourished by injuries mutually borne and inflicted for a hundred generations, intensified the ferocity of a nature which became, under such provocations, incapable of pity. Everything connected with the daily life of the warrior had a direct tendency to foster an already too violent inclination to deeds of blood. The war-horse had his biography; the sword of every famous chieftain had a name and a history. The sayings of the successful marauder, often uttered with epigrammatic terseness, passed into proverbs, and were quoted, with extravagant admiration, by his most remote descendants; his exploits, immortalized by the stirring verses of the poet, were recounted nightly by the camp-fires of his tribe. In case of the murder of a kinsman, no mourning was tolerated until ample vengeance had been taken for the crime. The execution of the savage law of blood-feud, while it contributed to stifle every sentiment of humanity where an hereditary foe was the offender, does not appear to have had any marked effect in increasing the fierceness of the character of the Arab in his contests with those against whom he had no special cause of enmity. Where tribal hostility was, however, a point of honor as well as a religious duty, the vendetta was prosecuted with implacable severity. No circumstance of gratitude or chivalric attachment, neither the memory of past favors nor the hope of future distinction, was permitted to interfere with its rigid enforcement. The right of revenge, originally descending to the fifth generation, passed by inheritance, and was, in fact, never lost, and seldom relinquished. A regular schedule of fines was recognized, dependent upon the age, rank, and social position of the person murdered; but no family that entertained a becoming idea of its own importance and of the dignity of its tribe would condescend to accept the stated number of camels which ancient prescription and common consent had established as the equivalent of a homicide. This barbarous custom applied to every soldier slain in honorable warfare, as fully as to the victim of the assassin’s dagger; and the wholesome dread of the consequences of a hard-fought conflict, where a score of lives might be exacted in return for every fallen enemy, usually rendered the encounters of the Arab comparatively bloodless. An extraordinary value therefore attached to human life in the Desert, where the killing of an individual might entail the extermination of a clan. Considering the bitter hostility evinced by many tribes towards one another, the consequences of animosity inherited for ages, and the continual opportunities for mutual destruction, with their insignificant results, we may, without hesitation, conclude that the law of blood-revenge, despite the idea of ferocity it conveys, has, in reality, been powerfully instrumental in the preservation of the Arab race.

The habits of the Arab were necessarily abstemious. The requirement of constant exertion to obtain the necessaries of life, the uncertain tenure of property, the menacing presence of danger, the poverty of the soil, the national prejudice against industrial occupations, were not conducive to indulgence in those vices which flourish most vigorously under the artificial conditions of an established civilization. The scanty harvests of the South were insufficient to maintain even the population of those thinly settled provinces. Among the products of the vegetable kingdom, the date was the principal reliance of the nomadic people of Arabia. Of this most valuable fruit a hundred varieties grew in the neighborhood of Medina alone. Its highly nutritious properties, its easy preservation, the convenience with which it could be transported for great distances, rendered it an article of food especially adapted to the denizen of those arid and unproductive regions in which it flourished, and which, without it, would have been depopulated. Even its seeds were an object of traffic, and were fed to horses and camels. With the Arabs, as with other nomadic races, a vegetable diet was resorted to only in case of necessity. The quantity of meat served at a repast was an index to the host’s importance as well as the measure of his hospitality. A brass caldron was considered as of only ordinary size when it would easily hold a sheep, and some were so large that a horseman could, without difficulty, eat from them without dismounting. The morsels served from these seething receptacles were proportioned to the vessels in which they were cooked and to the voracious appetites of those who consumed them. The belief, prevalent among barbarians, that the characteristics of an animal are transmitted with undiminished vigor to all who feed upon its flesh, was shared by the Arabs. As their favorite meat was that of the camel, they attributed to its use their irascible temper, a trait which is prominently developed in that beast, also noted among quadrupeds for its dogged obstinacy. In a land where barrenness so discouraged the labors of the husbandman and the shepherd, no object affording nutrition could be neglected, and even the insect world was called upon to contribute its share to the urgent necessities of humanity. Locusts, dried and salted, have always formed a staple article of diet among the poorer classes of Arabia, and, an important part of the larder of every camp, are sold in vast quantities in the markets of the Peninsula.

The differences and the prejudices of caste, the most serious impediments to progress, were unknown to the proud rovers of the Desert, where individual merit was the highest title to respect. The authority of the chief was founded on the consideration he had obtained among the members of his tribe rather than on the illustrious circumstances of his birth or the antiquity of his lineage. Age was an essential requisite to the attainment of official dignity, as indicative of the wisdom supposed to be the result of long experience. With the Bedouin, there was none of that greed of power whose indulgence so often disturbs the peace, and inflames the passions of societies in an advanced state of civilization. The sheik governed through the respect entertained for his character, through the influence of his manners, above all, through his relationship with his clansmen. The paternal sentiment was paramount among the Arabian people. They cherished the memory of their forefathers with peculiar respect. The right of sanctuary attached to their sepulchre; the tribal organization and domestic traditions of the Bedouin were derived from this feeling of ancestral veneration. Like other Asiatics, they considered a numerous family the greatest of distinctions; the father of ten sons was ennobled by a title of honor; and no nation attached more importance to the possession of phenomenal virility. In their treatment of women, a striking contrast exists, in numerous instances, between the Pagan and the later Arabians. With both, it is true, woman was generally a slave. Yet sometimes, in the Age of Ignorance, she was raised to official dignities, even to the throne itself; her opinion was solicited in momentous affairs of state; and in the rôle of diviner and sorceress she wielded a power, unlimited for good or evil, over her superstitious followers. Often gifted with rare poetic talent, she competed, not without distinction, for the coveted palm of literary excellence. Tradition has also handed down the names and achievements of certain intrepid amazons, who fought by the side of their husbands and brothers; and whose determined courage contributed, in a marked degree, to change the fortunes of more than one doubtful battle. But, as a rule, both before and after Mohammed, the advancement of the sex from a condition of servitude was resolutely discountenanced by the Arabs. In the Age of Ignorance, it was stigmatized by the ungallant epithet of “Nets of the Demon.” The sacred ties of blood, and the fact that with marriage woman did not renounce her hereditary privileges, could always command the assistance of her kinsmen, seek refuge among them, and be avenged by their valor in case of grievous personal injury, gave her a considerable degree of importance in the social system of Arabia. It is very evident that in early times polyandry prevailed everywhere in that country, an indication of a scarcity of females, and a custom always incident to a certain stage in the formation and development of society. Its prior existence is demonstrated by the vestiges of communal marriage to be traced to-day in remote portions of the Peninsula, and in the well authenticated tradition that female kinship was originally the rule in the Desert, the child belonging to the tribe and following the fortunes of the mother. Among the Bedouins, the only recognized methods of obtaining a wife were those of capture and purchase. The former was thoroughly congenial with the warlike instincts of a race whose possessions acquired an especial value as the result of martial prowess; the latter represented an indemnity for the possible loss of sons who, under other circumstances, would have become warriors of the maternal tribe. There was, however, no real difference between the lot of the bride who, as the prize of victory, was dragged shrieking from the folds of her tent, and that of the smiling victim whose beauty had been bartered for a hundred camels. Both were regarded as chattels, and descended with other personal property to the heir. As the population increased, and the means of livelihood became more difficult to procure, the appearance of a female child was looked upon as a calamity; infanticide grew common; and nothing but the hope of being able, at some future day, to add to his herd the camels of some prospective suitor, ever reconciled the mercenary Bedouin to the birth of a daughter.

The attainment to a high degree of civilization with all its demoralizing influence was not able to destroy the native politeness, the air of conscious dignity, the noble hospitality, and the courtly graces of manner which distinguished the fierce and untaught tribesman of the Desert. His sense of independence was not hampered by invidious distinctions of rank or inconvenient regulations of property. His intuitive knowledge of human nature, his rare susceptibility to every impression which can improve and develop the mind, his capacity to deal with the most difficult questions of policy, his willingness to encounter the most appalling dangers, were qualities which insured his success in the most distant countries and under the most adverse and discouraging conditions. Despite his readiness to profit by the superior knowledge of his adversaries, he entertained the most extravagant ideas of his own importance, and looked down upon all who were of different manners, religious faith, or nationality. His inordinate family pride preserved for the astonishment of subsequent generations the endless nomenclature of his progenitors; and, at the birth of Mohammed, the most obscure and poverty-stricken individual could name, with a fluency born of long practice and traditional inheritance, his ancestors for six hundred years. His language, wonderfully complex but flexible, offering to the purposes of the poet and the orator--by reason of its prodigal richness and inexhaustible variety--every resource of sentiment, pathos, and eloquence, yet so easily acquired that it was spoken by young children with grammatical correctness and fluency, he justly boasted as one of the most perfect idioms ever invented by man. In short, the Arab regarded himself as the highest exemplar of humanity; his arrogance revolted at the idea of matrimonial connections with races which he deemed inferior to his own; and the pre-eminence he claimed for himself and his countrymen was indicated by the prerogatives which he asserted Allah had vouchsafed to them alone of all nations; “that their turbans should be their diadems, their tents their houses, their swords their intrenchments, and their poems their laws.”