Over us presided kings, far removed from baseness, and stern chastisers of reprobate and wicked men. They noted down for us according to the doctrine of Heber,
Good judgments, written in books to be kept; and we proclaimed our belief in miracles, in the resurrection, in the return into the nostrils of the breath of life.
Made an inroad robbers, and would do us violence; we rode forth, we and our generous youth, with stiff and sharp-pointed spears; rushing onward.
Proud champions of our families and wives; fighting valiantly upon coursers with long necks, dun-colored, iron-gray, and bright bay.
With our swords still wounding and piercing our adversaries, until charging home, we conquered and crushed this refuse of mankind.
[23] Silk is the only material used for human clothing which Mohammed, the impostor, introduces among the luxuries of Paradise. (See the Koran, chap. 35.)
On the subject of these inscriptions, Mr. Forster, in the dedication of his book to the Archbishop of Canterbury, thus remarks: “What Job (who, living in the opposite quarter of Arabia, amid the sands of the great Northern desert, had no lasting material within reach on which to perpetuate his thoughts,) so earnestly desired, stands here realized.” “Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were printed in a Book! That (like the kindred creed of the lost tribe of Ad) they were graven with an iron pen, and lead, in the rock forever. (For mine is a better and brighter revelation than theirs.) For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though, after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in the flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another.”
That the Arabians should have understood the manufacture of silken textures at as remote a period as that supposed by Mr. Forster, viz., 500 years after the flood, is, to say the least of it, exceedingly questionable, yet it cannot be denied that we are indebted to them for many useful inventions, and among which may be mentioned the art of making cotton paper[24]. It is no less true that we first received our cotton-wool from countries where the Arabic language was spoken.
To the Arabs also we are indebted for that almost indispensable article of apparel, the shirt, the Arabic name for which is camees, whence the Italian camiscia, and the French chemise[25].
In the attempt here made to trace from the dark ages of antiquity the progress of trades and manufactures so widely diffused over the civilised world as those of cotton, linen, silk, wool, &c., chronological order is followed as closely as the nature of the inquiry will permit.