CHAPTER I

THE ANCIENT ARABIANS

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.”

The pre-Islamitic religion of the Arabs was mainly a debasing idolatry polluted by human sacrifices, and ascending, by ill-defined gradations, from the lowest forms of fetichism to the adoration of the stars. Their faith was far from uniform, and almost every tribe had special objects of veneration and peculiar modes of worship. Some were absolutely destitute of the idea of a God; some grovelled before roughly-hewn blocks of stone; others worshipped trees and springs,--the most grateful gifts of nature in a parched and thirsty land; others, again, greeted with praise the rising sun as its beams illuminated the purple mists of the Desert, or bowed reverently at night before the glittering majesty of the heavens. The members of certain tribes were materialists; not a few accepted the metempsychosis; many were familiar with the philosophical creed of the Buddhist, which regarded death as the irrevocable end of all spiritual activity, the beginning of a state of absolute quiescence, of eternal and immutable rest. The majority of the Arab races, however, looked upon their idols as mediators between the Supreme Being and man. Hence they erected temples in their honor, named their children for them, made pilgrimages to their shrines, and solicited their good offices with precious gifts and offerings. The heavenly bodies were placed in the same category. Their intercession with the Deity was also invoked by frequent applications; and to their power, thus indirectly exercised, were attributed the most important as well as the most trivial occurrences of life, the benefits of fortune, the infliction of calamities, the mysterious and terrifying effects of natural phenomena. It is a superstition as old as the human race to imagine the universe to be peopled with mysterious beings, and the lives of men to be moulded by the beneficent or malignant influence of the stars. The worship of the Sun, the genial dispenser of light, of warmth, of health, in whose train follow the increase of flocks, the bursting of buds, the welcome sight of refreshing verdure, the author of all that is useful and attractive in every species of organic life, a worship which in ages of primeval simplicity has always most strongly appealed to the gratitude and veneration of man, was highly popular in Pagan Arabia. Classic historians have established the fact that it was at one time almost universal in the Peninsula, where the idol which was the terrestrial manifestation of that great luminary was designated by the appellation Nur-Allah, “The Light of God.” His authority was everywhere paramount, whether openly worshipped, represented by fire the great purifying agent, or exhibited under various symbols of force and power, which all nations, however separated, and differing in physical and mental characteristics, have, with wonderful unanimity, adopted as his peculiar emblems. Temples were also raised to the Moon, Sirius, Canopus, the Hyades, Mercury, and Jupiter. But of all the starry bodies none enjoyed greater favor, or was worshipped with more splendor, than Saturn. His attributes were often confounded by his votaries with those of his kindred divinities Mars and the Sun. It has been proved by the learned researches of Dozy, that the famous Kaaba was originally a shrine dedicated to that deity. He was the Baal of the Hebrews, and once their tutelary god as well as that of the Phœnicians--carried by the former during their sojourn in the wilderness, venerated by the latter in the magnificent temples of Sidon and Tyre. The extent of his worship in the East was, it might be said, coincident with the view of the brilliant planet by which he was represented in the tropical heavens. The giver of all material blessings, he was, in this capacity, invoked as the creator and preserver of terrestrial life; but he was also propitiated as the avenger of sacrilege and crime. Among different peoples he was adored under innumerable manifestations. The familiar word Israel is a synonym of Saturn; the Hebrew priests knew him as Sabbathai--whence is derived our Sabbath; and in Judea, as in Egypt, the first day of the week was dedicated to and named for him. In Arabia, this popular divinity was known as Hobal, a word indisputably derived from the Hebrew language. Occupying the most exalted position in the Arabic Pantheon, while his image was anthropomorphic, he was, in reality, a representative of the monotheistic principle. His name and his worship in the Peninsula were alike of Jewish origin. Antiquarian ingenuity and research have traced his various migrations from the eastern shore of the Mediterranean to the province of Hedjaz, and have elucidated certain obscure Scriptural texts relative to his shrine, his worship, and his festivals. Among the multitudinous divinities which claimed the reverence of the ancient Arabians was also the Hebrew Jehovah, adored under the form of a he-goat, sculptured in gold, as well as the profligate Venus, known to the Babylonians as Mylitta, and to the Phœnicians as Astarte. As a tribute to their eminence in the Christian world, the Virgin and the Child occupied a post of honor among the three hundred and sixty idols which crowded the sanctuary of Mecca. In the religious system of the Peninsula there was no mythology, a fact which perhaps contributed not a little to its speedy overthrow. But, though polytheistic to the last degree, the Arabs recognized a Supreme Being whose majesty was confined to no particular locality, to whom no altar was dedicated, and who, too awful to be directly addressed, could be approached only through his celestial ministers the stars. This was the great Al-Lah, whose name, corresponding to the El and the Elohim of the Jews, was pre-eminent in honor and dignity, both in the Age of Ignorance and in the Age of Islam. The most superstitious races of men, and those that are the highest in intelligence among the most civilized, have and require no shrines. In Arabia the whole Desert was the temple of the Supreme God.

Associated with the most exalted ideas of divine power were to be found superstitions usually encountered only in the primitive epochs of society. The wide-spread worship of the generative forces of nature, whose remaining monuments seem to the uninstructed sense of our cavilling age mere evidences of a depraved imagination, had its share of public favor in Arabia, where the male and female principles were adored under various symbolical forms. Many of these have survived in the monoliths scattered throughout the Peninsula, whose towering masses are regarded, even by devout Moslems, with no small degree of superstitious awe. The stone-circles and menhirs mentioned by travellers as existing in Oman and Nedjd are evidently of the same general type as those of Carnac and Stonehenge, and, from the descriptions given of them, of scarcely inferior dimensions, and perhaps of still higher antiquity. It is a singular circumstance, that gigantic structures, bearing such a common resemblance as to suggest that they were erected by the same race of builders and designed for similar purposes, should be found in countries so different in physical features, climate, inhabitants, religious traditions, language, and history, as Central Arabia and Western Europe.

Like other nations of ancient times, the Arabs invested certain trees with a sacred character, a custom indicative of the lingering influence of phallicism; a worship whose original principles, long forgotten in the Peninsula, survived only in the exhibition of its peculiar emblems and in the practice of a gross and shameless immorality. Among the Pagan Arabs, no form of superstition was too debasing to claim its votaries. They raised altars to fire. They attributed supernatural powers to the crocodile and the serpent. Each tent had its image; every hovel of sun-dried bricks was filled with tutelary deities. Shapeless masses of stone, which tradition had associated with remarkable events or endowed with celestial origin, were approached with a reverence not vouchsafed to idols of the most costly materials and elaborate workmanship. Of these blocks, which partook of the nature of the fetich, the black were sacred to the Sun, the white to the Moon. In the Pagan world two of the former were especially famous; over one was erected a splendid temple on the mountain near Emesa in Syria, whence the infamous Roman emperor Heliogabalus derived his name; the other was built into the wall of the Kaaba of Mecca. The latter was the most remarkable object of the kind known to antiquity. A plain fragment of basalt, seven inches in diameter, whose composition is apparently identical with that of a neighboring mountain, it had acquired, in the eyes of the people of Arabia, a sanctity not shared by any other emblem of idolatrous worship. It was probably, in its origin, a phallic symbol, and stood alone in an open square of the city, ages preceding the building of the Kaaba, an event which tradition has assigned to a date four hundred years before the foundation of the temple of Solomon. Thus invested with the sanction of immemorial prescription and the virtues of a miraculous relic, it has received the reverent homage of millions upon millions of idolaters and Moslems. It has survived the accidents of conquest, of iconoclasm, of conflagration. The silver bands which unite its fragments bear witness to the vicissitudes and rough usage to which it has been subjected. The healing power it was supposed to possess attracted the sick and the disabled from regions far beyond the limits of Arabia. It was the starting-point of ceremonial and pilgrimage. It imparted its virtues to the Kaaba, that temple where alone, in all the Peninsula, hereditary feuds were suspended; where violence was forgotten; where rudeness gave way to courtesy; where the temporary surrender of individual freedom, and the voluntary relinquishment of tribal animosity, seemed to announce the existence of national sentiment and the possibility of national union. The recognition by Mohammed of the claims of the Black Stone and the Kaaba--the ancient temple of Saturn--to public veneration, in a creed otherwise uncompromisingly hostile to idolatry, demonstrated the high estimation in which they were held by the Arabs. The latter, with their numerous shrines, their swarms of deities, their elaborate paraphernalia of worship and imposture, were, however, far from being a religious people. They evinced a decided aversion to metaphysics. Their ideas of personal liberty were not consistent with unquestioning submission to the tyranny of a priesthood. Their native intelligence rendered them. skeptical; their nomadic habits were unfavorable to the maintenance of a permanent ecclesiastical establishment. The multiplicity of deities had, as is invariably the case, weakened the faith of the masses in any. The genuine piety of a people is always in an inverse ratio to the number of its gods.

The early Arabians practised magic and divination, had recourse to oracles, maintained wizards and sorcerers--charlatans whose ascendency was largely due to the narcotics they made use of to open a pretended communication with the spirit world. Amulets were universally worn as a protection against the baneful consequences of the evil eye. Hand in hand with presages and magical arts, auguries, and incantations, came the incipient doctrine of the influence of the planets upon mineral substances, as well as a belief in their power to affect the destiny and welfare of man; theories which, eventually developing into the vain pursuits of alchemy and judicial astrology, indicate an acquaintance with the principles of science only acquired by much study and repeated experiments. The practice of these rites, so severely reprobated in the Koran, was associated in the minds of the people with the ceremonies of public worship during the age of polytheism. The words altar and talisman are practically synonymous in Arabic, a fact which discloses the intimate alliance originally existing between divination, sorcery, and religion in the Peninsula.

Human sacrifices, so repugnant to all our ideas of piety and justice, but common to nations of Semitic origin, were of frequent occurrence among the Arabs before Mohammed. The mode of death was by fire, which removed every earthly impurity; but it was only in the fulfilment of a solemn vow, on an occasion of national rejoicing, or to avert some impending calamity, that such a costly expiation was exacted. The Israelites, allied to the Arabs by the ties of consanguinity, and by similar religious conceptions, had also long been familiar with these revolting and cruel rites; instances of whose observance will at once suggest themselves to all who are familiar with the Pentateuch.

The Hebrew has always exerted a remarkable influence upon the public sentiment, the religious faith, and the foreign and domestic relations of the inhabitants of Arabia. A great analogy exists between the languages of the two nations, and the Hebrew alphabet was used by the prehistoric Arabs. It is believed by many Oriental scholars that Israel was not the founder of the people who bear his name; that the twelve tribes have a mystic relation to certain of the heavenly bodies or to the months of the year; and it is known that the word Keturah means simply “frankincense.” No doubt now exists that the Jew and the Arab are of common ancestry. For a period of twenty-five hundred years before the Hegira the former had been established in Yemen. The trade of that kingdom, with all its vast ramifications, was in his hands. His power enabled him constantly to dictate the policy of its sovereigns.

His worship, equally idolatrous with that of the Bedouin--for he was the descendant of the Simeonites, against whom, among others, the anathemas of the Bible were directed--surpassed the latter in the splendor of its appointments and the insolence of its priests. In a land where toleration was otherwise universal, he was enabled to persecute, with implacable enmity, Christian exiles, whom even the rapacity of the desert freebooter had spared. The rich settlements of northwestern Arabia were, to all intents and purposes, Jewish colonies. In the barren and inhospitable region of the Hedjaz, the Jew founded the towns of Medina and Mecca. In such a congenial atmosphere, the superstitions of Asia Minor obtained a ready acceptance. He established the worship of Baal, the most renowned of the Phœnician divinities. He introduced the rite of circumcision, hitherto unknown in Arabia. He communicated his idolatrous observances to the population of the country which had offered him a refuge. He gave a name to its principal city, for the word Mecca is Hebrew, signifying “Great Field of Battle;” the Pagan ceremonial of the Hedjaz can be traced to Palestine, and the Kaaba was originally known as Beth-El, “The House of God.” Quick to recognize the advantages to be derived by commerce from religious pilgrimage, he made that city the centre of national devotion as well as the chief distributing point of the vast trade of Europe, Asia Minor, Ethiopia, and India. The excellent commercial situation of Mecca, near the Red Sea and on the great caravan highway connecting Syria and Yemen, could scarcely compensate, however, for the serious physical disadvantages which unfriendly nature had imposed upon it. Its houses were crowded into a narrow valley two miles long by only nine hundred feet wide. The rays of a vertical sun beat pitilessly down upon a landscape destitute of verdure. Water, the most priceless of blessings in the Desert, was scarce and unpalatable. A salt effervescence covered the neighboring plains. The seasons were irregular; storms were violent; the coast of the Hedjaz possessed the unenviable reputation of being one of the most pestilential in the world. The city was dependent upon trade for the necessaries of life, and the unexpected delay of the caravan often menaced the population with famine. Yet, with all these drawbacks, the commerce of Mecca flourished almost beyond precedent. Caravans of more than two thousand camels were no uncommon sight in its narrow streets. Each of these beasts of burden carried a load of four hundred pounds of rare and costly commodities,--silks, spices, ivory, gold-dust, and perfumes. The annual exports of the town in the closing days of Pagan ascendency reached the enormous sum of fifteen million dollars, half of which was profit. Not the least of the sources of gain to the people of Mecca were the valuable offerings left by pilgrims and merchants in their temples. For a distance of leagues the ground was holy, and all who trod upon it could claim the right of sanctuary. The blood of neither man nor beast could be shed within these sacred precincts without incurring the imputation of sacrilege and the punishment of death. There was no traveller, from whatever country he came, who could not find, among the innumerable idols of the Kaaba, a familiar divinity upon whom to bestow the tribute of his devotion or gratitude. Of the immense profits resulting from the politic combination of traffic and superstition, the Hebrew exacted the lion’s share. His rulers met each day at the Kaaba to exchange views on finance and theology. The heathen legends of Palestine were incorporated into the new system, with the astral worship of the Sabeans and the polytheism of the aboriginal inhabitants of the Desert, itself derived from a thousand different and uncertain sources. The monotheism of Israel was not recognized by the tribe of Simeon, which had been driven into exile long before the Pentateuch was written. Ideas thus blended in the popular mind for centuries might, under favorable conditions, be modified, but never obliterated. There is no question that Islam is largely Hebrew in origin, although a considerable number of its ceremonies can be deduced from the customs of Pagan Arabia. In their migrations, which closed with the settlement of the Hedjaz, the Jews, while wandering far, had at last returned to the cradle of their race.

The arbitrary rules of ceremonial cleanliness; the exclusion of blood from the precincts of the temple; the classification of certain animals as “holy,” which an error of the translator has transformed into “unclean;” the penalties for many offences; the adoration of Phœnician divinities; the nomenclature disclosed by family genealogies; the correspondence in meaning of many terms used in their languages--peculiarities common to both the Arab and the Jew--go farther to prove an intimate relationship between the two races than the uncertainties of tradition or the association of neighborhood would tend to establish. The antipathy to the Hebrew, subsequently so bitter among Mohammedans, did not exist in ancient Arabia. The Jew served with distinction in the armies of Khaled and Amru. Mutual aversion, however great in subsequent times, was never sufficient to induce the Israelite to destroy those whom he regarded as his kinsmen. As his myths had formed the basis of a new religion, his enterprise and assistance contributed, in no insignificant degree, to the foundation of a new and magnificent empire. He guided the councils of the most renowned Mohammedan princes. Without the dogmas he furnished, the history of Islam would never have been written. Without the suggestions he voluntarily offered, and the treasure he poured into the Moslem camps, the conquest of Spain could never have been achieved. The fairest of Mussulman writers have rarely failed to acknowledge the obligations of their countrymen to an unfortunate race which the prejudices of nearly twenty centuries have subjected to universal proscription.

Christianity made no progress in Arabia until after its political alliance with Constantine had imparted such a tremendous impulse to the dissemination of its doctrines. The latter do not seem to be adapted to the Asiatic mind, and have never been able either to appeal to the reason or to arouse the enthusiasm of nations of Semitic blood. It offered little that was congenial with, and much that was abhorrent to, the lax and tolerant code of the independent and polytheistic rovers of the Desert. At the birth of Mohammed it had already, for four centuries, been established in the Peninsula, and still, in the very shadow of its temples, the mocking Arab bowed before his thousand gods. The principles of the Ebionite sect, which prevailed in the Arabian churches, so far from attracting the curiosity or awakening the reverence of the sarcastic Bedouin, only served to excite his ridicule. The sublime truths of the religion of the Bible, the eloquence of its teachers, the piety of its saints, the pomp of its ritual, the promises and threats of its revelation, were lost upon the reckless freebooters, devoted to sensual pleasures, to escapades of gallantry, to the generous rivalry of poesy, to daring feats of arms. The only mark of attention its adherents received was their classification with the despised Hebrew as Ahl-al-Kitab, “The People of the Book.” In its adaptability to the requirements and the mental capacity of the multitude, it was ill-fitted to cope with the religion that eventually supplanted it. On one side were the incomprehensible dogmas of a debased Christianity, indispensable to its acceptance; on the other, the simplicity of the profession of Islam, which even a child could understand. For these reasons it made comparatively few proselytes in the Peninsula, and at no time was acknowledged over any considerable area, except during the short period which intervened between the Abyssinian conquest of Yemen and the rise of Mohammedanism.

Many of the rites and customs adopted by the great Lawgiver, or preserved by his followers and generally regarded as peculiar to Islam, antedated the Koran by centuries. The Mohammedan attitudes of worship are the same as those depicted upon the eternal monuments of the Pharaohs. The heathen pilgrims, clad in the Ihram, or sacred garment, seven times made the circuit of the Kaaba; embraced the Black Stone; ran the courses between the holy stations of Al-Safa and Al-Marwa; cast stones in the valley of Mina; performed the ancient duties of sacrifice and local pilgrimage, and were systematically plundered by the greedy and scoffing Meccans, just as all good Moslem pilgrims are to-day. The primitive Arabs inculcated the duty of personal cleanliness by frequent ablution. They shaved their heads, and used the depilatory for the removal of superfluous hair from the body. Like the Egyptians, they stained their hands and feet with henna, and blackened their eyelids with antimony. They removed their sandals, as Moses did, when they stood on holy ground. They scrupulously abstained from certain kinds of food, and their actions were often governed by regulations practically identical, in their general character, with those prescribed by the canons of Jewish and Moslem law.

The spirit of Arabian genius, destined in subsequent ages to effect such a revolution in the literary and scientific history of the world, had in the sixth century of the Christian era disclosed no indications of its gigantic powers. No condition of existence could be less suggestive of a capacity for intellectual achievement than that whose main dependence was violence and plunder. The Arab of that epoch had no written records save a few obscure inscriptions in the Himyarite dialect, which have been deciphered by the plodding industry of modern scholars, and are, for the most part, epitaphs. Traditions, modified or corrupted by the vanity or the prejudice of each successive generation, were the sole and uncertain reliance of the chronicler. The power of memory by which these were retained and transmitted from an unknown antiquity seems absolutely miraculous and incredible.

Although destitute of authentic history, and even unskilled in the common arts by which a nation’s glory may be perpetuated, the early Arab excelled in a species of literary composition in which barbarian races have always exhibited the greatest proficiency. A talent for poetry, which invariably attains its highest development among those least exposed to the practical ideas and refined vices of civilization, was considered by the Bedouin as the most noble of human accomplishments. His temperament, his situation, his pursuits, rendered him peculiarly susceptible to the charms of the Muse. His spirit was impetuous, his invention inexhaustible, his imagination riotous, his enthusiasm unbounded. From an abnormally sensitive nervous organization which nature had bestowed upon him, on occasions of prolonged mental excitement often proceeded an hysterical frenzy, a state declared by the most renowned of poets to be indispensable for perfection in his art. The scenery of the Desert; its impressive solitudes; the enchanting illusions of the mirage; the magnificent constellations of the tropical heavens; the life of incessant peril; the exploits of romantic gallantry; the nocturnal excursion,--the surprise, the battle, the retreat, the rescue,--these all stimulated the imaginative faculty of the Arab, and urged him to the cultivation of a talent which might transmit to posterity events whose immortality was at once his personal title to honor, the pastime of his camp-fire, and the glory of his tribe. In the means at his disposal the poet enjoyed a rare, almost a unique advantage. The energy and softness of the Arabian language, its melodious character, the abundance and variety of its metaphors, render it peculiarly available as the vehicle of poetic sentiment. There is perhaps no idiom which lends itself with such facility to the construction of rhyme; for its very prose is frequently musical. The researches of modern philology have brought to the notice of Europe the complexity and perfection of its grammatical construction, the richness of its vocabulary, its boundless scope and graceful imagery. Most appropriately did the old philosopher, Mohammed-al-Damiri, referring to the native eloquence and exuberant diction of his countrymen, exclaim: “Wisdom hath lighted on three things,--the brain of the Franks, the hands of the Chinese, and the tongues of the Arabs.”

The poetry of the Arabs is even more obscure in its origin than the primitive history of their race. Without the assistance of writing, no literature, however popular, can maintain its integrity for even a single generation. Even the phenomenal memory of that people--a gift so universal as not to elicit comment among them, and which was strengthened by the daily rehearsal of favorite compositions--could only imperfectly supply the place of permanent and authentic records. The matter of the Arabian poems was therefore constantly changing, while the subjects and versification remained the same. Their form was generally that of the dramatic pastoral; sometimes the elegiac ode, which offered an opportunity for the enumeration of the virtues of the deceased and, incidentally, of the achievements of his tribe, was adopted. The genius of the pre-Islamitic poet never attempted the epic, which so often profits by the inexhaustible resources of the fabulous; and, although surrounded by an atmosphere eminently favorable to the inspiration of such productions, it does not seem to have had an adequate conception of them. Its representations exhibited to the enraptured listener the stirring events of his adventurous life, which his pride taught him to regard as vastly superior, in all that promotes the dignity of humanity, to the corrupt and inert existence of civilization. The universal possession of the poetic faculty was one of the peculiarities of the Arab nation. Old and young alike seemed gifted with it. The rules of prosody, and even the simplest canons of metrical composition, were unknown. Yet such was the instinctive perception of rhythmical correctness, that the versification of the most humble was characterized by propriety and elegance, qualities which tended to enhance the fierce enthusiasm, the sublimity of thought, the touching pathos, the burning passion, which pervade the noble poems of the Desert. Many of the latter bear a striking resemblance to the Song of Solomon; some are remarkable for their rhapsodies; others for their weighty and sententious wisdom; others again for their sparkling wit and pointed epigrams. The seven poems called Moallakat, “The Suspended,”--a word of doubtful significance so far as its relation to these productions is concerned--have always been considered the masterpieces of the ancient Arabs, and form the principal source from which our ideas of their attainments in the art of poetry must be derived. Popular credulity ascribed the name of these compositions to their presumed suspension in the Kaaba as evidence of the triumphs of their authors over all competitors; the more rational conjecture, however, connects the title of Moallakat with a necklace or pendant, of which each poem formed a jewel, a figurative mode of designating literary works among Orientals, and one especially affected by poets and historians. The entire body of tradition, combined with facts accumulated by subsequent writers of every race and creed, does not afford such a thorough insight into the public and domestic life, the prevailing sentiments and prejudices, the habits and customs of the inhabitants of the Peninsula, as do the Moallakat. They enable us partially to reconstruct the political and religious systems of the early Arabians, and to establish, by comparison, their identity with the conditions of modern existence, in localities where the sword of Islam has never been able to exterminate the detested practice of idolatry. They place before us, in all its impressiveness, the silent majesty of the Desert, its dazzling sky, its waves of quivering vapor, its interminable waste of sand; they pass in review the indolent life of the camp, varied only by a nocturnal alarm or by some daring intrigue; they relate the exciting scenes of the foray; they delineate with erotic freedom the charms of the lovely Bedouin maid; they describe the fate of the female prisoner whose captivity was often the result of artifice or barter; they rehearse the midnight march under the starry firmament, which in the florid language of the East “appeared like the folds of a silken sash variously decked with gems.” Nor is the excellence of the Moallakat confined to mere description. The proud boast of exploits not unworthy of the Age of Chivalry, which, in fact, received its inspiration from this source; the sacred duties of a lavish hospitality; the rare qualities of a favorite horse or camel; the absorbing passion of love, its perils and its pleasures; the Herculean feats of virile manhood,--these were the chosen themes of the Arab poet. His verses abound in moral precepts and philosophical apothegms, conveying lessons of worldly wisdom which recall, in both their phraseology and their profound acquaintance with human nature, the Suras of the Koran and the Proverbs of Solomon. In addition to maxims of a moral tone, scattered through these productions, they exhibit, on the other hand, much that is repulsive, cruel, and barbarous. Epicureanism is, however, the prominent characteristic of the Moallakat, as, indeed, it is of all primitive Arabic poems which have descended to us. The charms of wine and women, and an indulgence in the pleasures of the banquet to the extreme limit of bacchanalian revelry, are everywhere celebrated with a license worthy of the grossest couplets of Catullus and Martial. In the relation of scenes of intrigue and midnight assignation, often laid in the camp of a hostile tribe, where discovery would have led to instant death, the adventurous spirit of the lover is deemed worthy to rank with that which sustains the hero in the front of battle. The most fulsome adulation characterizes the homage tendered by the ardent lover to the object of his idolatry. Modern fastidiousness would not tolerate the descriptions given by the poet of the physical perfections of his lady-love in all their circumstantial details; though translations exist, they are mere paraphrases; and the voluptuous images of the poet’s fancy still remain discreetly hidden in the obscurity of the original idiom.

There is much similarity and repetition in Arab poetry, which the interpolations and substitutions inevitable among a people dependent for the preservation of their literature upon oral tradition will hardly account for.

The existence of the Bedouin was bounded by a narrow horizon, the Desert was his world. Its familiar objects and localities, which never changed; the deeds which they recalled; the hopes which they inspired; the memory of ancestral renown with which they were associated, suggested the topics of his song. The haughtiness which was one of his most offensive characteristics, and forbade his permanent alliance or his intermarriage with other races, strengthened the feelings of reserve which had been a national peculiarity for countless generations. His ideas, his aspirations, his joys, his sorrows, evoked by the monotonous circumstances of his environment, were little subject to deviation during the course of centuries. While his religion was a compound of all degrees of fetichism, idolatry, and astral worship, his poetry was original, pure, artless, and natural. His aptitude for versification was disclosed by the most trivial occurrences of life. A rhyming stanza, which set forth an appropriate sentiment, was often the reply to an ordinary question. Where allusion was made to an historical incident, the speaker was often challenged to confirm his statement by the recitation of an original verse, or by an apt poetical quotation, as the most reliable authority. The quick perception of the Arab was shown by his ability to finish instantly a couplet corresponding in sense and measure with a line repeated by a competitor. Its general similarity to all others renders the assignment of any Arabic poem to a certain epoch impossible, for the natural taste has never varied, and a composition that was popular three hundred years before the Hegira would be equally acceptable to-day to the mountain tribes of Central Arabia.

In the opening lines of most Arabic poems, and in those of the Moallakat especially, there is a dearth of individuality, and a common resemblance which would almost suggest that they had been written by the same person. The purity of style which characterizes the latter was, however, universally admitted; they were the recognized standards of grammatical correctness; they were consulted whenever a dispute arose concerning the meaning of a word or the construction of a sentence in later authors was in doubt; and among Mohammedans the authority of those Pagan compositions was never entirely superseded even by that of the Koran, whose sublimity of thought and elegance of diction were reverently ascribed to the direct inspiration of God.

We owe the survival of the Moallakat to the capricious taste of some self-appointed critic, who selected them from a number of poems with which he was familiar; and, through his arbitrary choice, we are deprived of the opportunity of forming an opinion of the others which his rejection has tacitly pronounced inferior. We know nothing of his qualifications for such a task, and are even ignorant of his name; but, from the remaining fragments of these productions, we may safely conclude that some of them, at least, were as fully entitled to preservation as the seven more fortunate ones which have descended to posterity.

It is a remarkable fact that no Arabic poem shows traces of Hebrew influence or contains ideas borrowed from either the Scriptures or the Talmud. The wealth and political power of the Jews; their intimate association with the nomadic tribes of the Peninsula; a close similarity of traditions, customs, and language, produced no perceptible effect upon the prehistoric literature of the Arabs. The Hebrews of Arabia, nevertheless, had their poets, whose productions, on the other hand, exhibit a marked coincidence of thought and style with those of their Arab kinsmen. Their sentiments are lofty and admirable, their language pure, and their merit, while inferior to that of the Moallakat, is still far from contemptible. The Book of Job, which has no apparent connection with the rest of the Scriptures, has been pronounced by competent critics a translation of an Arabic poem.

Improvisation, a talent possessed only by those endowed with unusual readiness of perception, a lively imagination, and an inexhaustible command of language, was practised with great success by the itinerant poets of Arabia. From their auditors, a couplet happily applied, by the inspiration of the moment, to some well-known event, elicited far more applause than efforts, however meritorious, which had cost days of arduous labor. This art of extemporaneous composition, which, when thoroughly developed, implies the possession of extraordinary mental ability, carried into Europe by the Moslems, and long employed by the troubadours, now survives only among the lowest class of the Italian peasantry. It is, in our day, most difficult to determine what degree of authenticity may properly be ascribed to the poetry of the ancient Arabs, none of which ascends to a higher antiquity than two hundred years before the Hegira. The unreliability of oral tradition, the variety of dialects, the frequent substitutions of modern phraseology, the bad faith, interpolations, and mistakes of unscrupulous commentators, the corruption and suppression of passages through tribal prejudice--all of these causes have had their share in effecting the gradual deterioration of the grand and stirring poems of Arabia.

It is impossible for us to appreciate the influence exercised by those who had attained to eminence in the poetic art over their imaginative and passionate countrymen. The Arab bard was without exception the most important personage of his tribe. Wealth, rank, beauty, personal popularity, military distinction alike paid tribute to his genius. To his talent for improvisation and versification, he often united the threefold character of statesman, warrior, and knight-errant, and thus became the model of his associates, the idol of the fair sex, and the terror of his enemies, who were as sensitive to the poisoned shafts of his satire as to the keenness of his sword. The most famous of these rhyming paladins, and the author of one of the Moallakat, whose life and achievements have been made the subject of a romance which approaches more nearly to the nature of an epic than any other production in the Arabic language, was Antar. By instinct and training a Bedouin, he was, however, of Arab blood only on his father’s side, his mother having been an Abyssinian slave. According to the custom of his country, he shared her lot until his bravery in battle induced his father to emancipate him. His amatory exploits, as well as his daring enterprises against the enemy, made him the admiration of the fiery Arabian youth. It was the regret of Mohammed, often expressed, that he had never seen this knight-errant of the Desert, who shrank from no danger, however appalling, who redressed the wrongs of woman, who restored the property of the plundered, and whose favorite maxim was, “Bear not malice, for of malice good never came.”

The unbridled license of the Arabian poet offers a curious commentary on national manners. The most exalted dignity, the sacred attributes of the gods, the pride of opulence, the delicacy of the sex, were not exempt from the attacks of his venom and sarcasm. He exposed with relentless severity the frailties of the wife and daughters of the sheik. He boasted of his own intrigues with a shameless audacity which, under more refined social conditions, could only be atoned for with blood. The immunity he enjoyed was one of the prerogatives of his calling. A certain sacredness of character was believed to attach to the latter by reason of the demoniac possession to which was popularly attributed the inspiration of the poetic faculty. His verses abounded in chivalrous sentiments, but uniformly ignored the claims of religion to the veneration of mankind. No beautiful mythology, like that of ancient Greece, was at hand to prompt the efforts of his muse. The maxims of the luxurious Epicurean were those that exerted the greatest power over his imagination and his life. An idea may be formed of the influence of poetry. on the public mind when we remember that the Koreish in vain attempted to bribe the pagan bard Ascha to deliver a panegyric on Mohammed at the commencement of the latter’s career, and, unable to secure his compliance, succeeded with much difficulty in purchasing his neutrality and silence at the expense of a hundred camels. The Prophet was so sensitive to the keen thrusts of the satirist, that when Mecca was captured and a general amnesty proclaimed, one of the four unfortunates whom he expressly excluded from this act of clemency was an obscure poet, Habbar-Ibn-Aswad by name, who had published a lampoon against him. The Arabian bard, like his literary descendant the troubadour, was attended by minstrels who chanted his verses, often to the accompaniment of musical instruments. The latter vocation, regarded as degrading by the Bedouin, was always exercised by a slave.

Islamism, while in other directions it zealously promoted the intellectual development of its adherents, fell like a blight upon the poetic taste and genius of Arabia. The dreams of the poet disappeared before the stern fanaticism of the soldier, who had no time for rhapsodies, and cared for nothing save indulgence in rapine, the acquisition of empire, and the extension of the Faith.

It is now generally admitted that the literary contests said to have taken place during the annual fair at Okhad, where, from poems read before an immense concourse, the one to be suspended in the Kaaba was selected, are apocryphal. Tribes of vagrant robbers who passed ten months of the year in plundering their neighbors would hardly consent to spend the other two in an orderly assembly, composed mainly of their enemies, in determining by a popular vote the comparative merit of their respective poets. The settlement of such rival claims for intellectual precedency by the voice of the people implies a degree of culture and critical acumen certainly not possessed by the Arabs of that age. This idle tale has doubtless been suggested by the literary exhibitions of the Olympian games, and is perhaps indebted to the imagination of some garrulous and mendacious Greek for its origin. It is, however, unquestionable that the poet, as well as the story-teller--that other important personage in the East--was in high favor at all the fairs and assemblies of Arabia. The mixed multitude which, impelled by motives partly mercenary, partly religious, collected on these occasions, and in its hours of leisure listened to the verses of the poet, constantly promoted his inspiration and refined his lays by the hope of applause, the fear of censure, the collision with foreigners, and the powerful influence of tribal emulation.

The later history of the Arabs is decked with all the gorgeous imagery of the East. The fascinations of romance invest and embellish it. With the commonplace facts incident to the various stages of national progress are interwoven narratives of indisputable truth, but which, in their demands upon human credulity, almost surpass the fabulous legends of chivalry or the enchanting tales of Scheherezade. The primitive life of the Arabian people previous to the advent of Mohammed offered no indication of their extraordinary capability for improvement. Commercial intercourse with other nations for ages had, however, enlarged their experience, expanded their faculties, and aroused their ambition. The caravan winding amidst the lonely sand-hills of the Desert--the precursor of those great expeditions which subsequently interchanged the commodities of Asia Minor, Egypt, Andalusia, and India--was also the more important agent of science, of refinement, of civilization. It increased the sum of geographical and historical knowledge. It familiarized the trader and his customers with the manners, the laws, the social systems, the mechanical skill, the arts, and the inventions of the most enterprising nations of the globe. These associations assisted in no small degree to generate the practical utility which, the most important feature of Arab learning, afterwards conferred such substantial blessings on mankind. The phenomenal advance of the race to maturity, impossible without previous preparation, was stimulated by perpetual wars and excitement. Less than one hundred and twenty years intervened between the vagabondage and ignorance of the Desert and the stability and intellectual culture of the great Abbaside and Ommeyade capitals. The career of the Arab was too rapid to be permanent. In four generations it had covered the ground ordinarily traversed in twenty. Its delusive splendor concealed the decay which was coincident with the era of its greatest prosperity. The same causes which facilitated the foundation and advancement of his power and culture were active during their decline, and contributed to their ultimate destruction.

The statement may appear paradoxical, in view of the acknowledged influence of mercantile associations upon the faculties of the human mind; but a certain degree of isolation seems to be necessary, at least in tropical and semi-tropical regions, for the complete development of the arts of civilization; and these arts have usually attained their highest perfection among nations which inhabit peninsulas. Egypt and China, whose reliance was entirely upon their own resources, were the most exclusive of nations in the ancient world, as were Mexico and Peru in the modern. The vast majority of the populations of India, Japan, and Spain had but little intercourse with those outside their boundaries, which were defended by stormy and mysterious seas. In no other countries have the powers of the human intellect, in the creation of all that is grand and imposing, of all that is beautiful, of all that is artistic, of all that contributes to the benefit, the cultivation, and the material improvement of mankind, been manifested as in Greece and Italy. And Arabia, although denied by Nature the advantages of soil and climate enjoyed by more favored lands, yet possessed what, in the crisis of her fate, rendered her superior to all her adversaries,--a race of bold and hardy warriors inured to hardship by the privations of an abstemious life, and by habit and inclination capable of the most arduous and desperate enterprises. Their experience with the surrounding effeminate nations had taught them not only the weakness of the latter, but also how their coveted wealth might be obtained; and at a propitious moment, under the guidance of an impassioned enthusiast, a horde of outlaws, driven from their homes by their scandalized neighbors, became the nucleus of victorious armies the fame of whose gallantry filled the world. And yet, while glorying in the deeds of martial heroism which insured the establishment and maintenance of her Prophet’s faith, she was conscious of the instability of an empire sustained by arms alone, and labored to raise upon more substantial and enduring foundations the splendid fabric of her greatness. The same fervid impulse which prompted and carried to a successful issue the conquest or extermination of those designated by the comprehensive term of infidel was able to adapt itself with singular facility to all the conditions of peace, and to enable the posterity of the half-naked banditti that swarmed around the banner of Mohammed to accomplish results worthy of the most exalted genius, and in every department of knowledge to ascend to the highest rank of those celebrated for their literary and scientific attainments in the most polished communities of Asia and Europe.