Bleeding Armenia: Its history and horrors under the curse of Islam

by Augustus Warner Williams; M. Smbat Gabrielean

Our first thought of Arabia is of a barren, desert country inhabited by a few wandering tribes, of little importance. But it is an immense country, almost as large as India, with a population of millions. Among its mountains are beautiful and fertile valleys, towns and castles surrounded by orchards and vineyards, groves of palm trees and date-palms, fields of grain and well-stocked pastures. In the south were the people of Yemen—or Arabia the Happy—that land of spices, perfumes and frankincense; the Sheba of the Scriptures.

These were the most active and skillful navigators of the eastern seas and brought the wealth of the far East to their ports: thence by caravans all these mingled products were distributed to Syria, Egypt and other lands on the borders of the Mediterranean. The caravans were generally fitted out and conducted by the nomadic tribes, who added to the merchandise of other lands the exquisite and costly garments woven from the finest fleeces of their countless flocks and herds. In Arabia, above all the other lands in the East, the track of the caravan has borne on it greater riches even than the ships of Tarshish.

At the intersection of two such tracks where the goods of India and of Africa were interchanged, and where the gold of the Roman Empire was weighed against the spices of “Araby the Blest,” was situated the great emporium of Mecca.

Mecca was both the commercial and religious center of the whole peninsula. Although there was no political capital, the tribe feeling had led to the establishment of a form of government aristocratic rather than despotic. The noblest tribe among them all was the Koreish; the noblest family of the Koreish was that of Hashem: and the family of Hashem at the time of which we are writing were the rulers of Mecca and the guardians of its Kaaba.

The original religion of Arabia appears to have been the patriarchal monotheism in which there was still retained some knowledge of one, true, living, personal Deity. One supreme God was still worshiped, but in the language of the Koran they “gave Him companions,” they paid adoration to various subordinate powers, as to the host of heaven—to three female intelligences spoken of as the daughters of God, and to various family, local and national idols of which three hundred and sixty were found in the temple at Mecca.

This ancient temple, built according to Arabian tradition by the patriarch Abraham, contained besides these molten and graven images, the Black Stone—one of the stones of Paradise which fell down with Adam, but being taken up at the deluge, it was brought to Abraham by the angel Gabriel as a sacred ornament for his restored temple. At any rate, here at this temple in Mecca was the great center of worship, of sacrifice, and to it thronged in vast numbers the idolaters of Arabia.

The wild Arab of the desert and the comparatively civilized Arab of the cities show, though in different degrees, the same great elements of national character. Among them all the virtues and the vices of the half savage state, its revenge and its rapacity, its hospitality and its bounty were to be seen in their full force. How often have we had pictured before us the simplicity and beauty of such a natural life.

This wild man has been described as generous and hospitable. He delighted in giving gifts; his door was always open to the wayfarer, with whom he was ready to share his last morsel; and his deadliest foe, having once broken bread with him, might repose securely beneath the inviolable sanctity of his tent.

His social life, however, was most degraded. Drunkenness, gambling and unrestrained licentiousness abounded: the horrible practice of female infanticide was prevalent among the pagan tribes: while polygamy, that curse of the East, everywhere prevailed.

Though speaking a language, copious in the extreme, the words of which have been compared to gems and flowers, literature in the strict sense of that word can hardly be said to have existed; but the Arab had a quick intellect, was always ready with a native vein of rhetoric and was easily aroused by the appeals of eloquence and charmed by the graces of poetry. He was naturally an orator, delighted in proverbs and clothed his ideas in florid oriental style with apologue and parable.