CHAPTER XI
ANCIENT ARABIANS WERE CANNIBALISTIC—DAUGHTERS TOO EXPENSIVE TO REAR—CONDITIONS BEFORE THE COMING OF THE PROPHET—THE INJUNCTIONS OF MOHAMMED—HIS LAW AS FOUND IN “AL HIDAYA.”
OF the one remaining tribe of the Semites, a name that has meant so much to the civilization of the world, it is hardly necessary to offer a prelude. Coming, however, in the mouth of the defenders of the latest religion and as the youngest of the Semitic languages, it is necessary to say of the Arabic language that it is nearer akin than any of the others to the original archetype, the Ursemitisch, from which they are all derived; “just as the Arabs, by reason of their geographical situation and the monotonous uniformity of the desert life, have, in some respects, preserved the Semitic character more purely and exhibited it more distinctly than any people of the same family.”[252]
Arabic history divides itself into three periods, first the Sabean and Himyarite period, from 800 B. C., the date of the oldest south Arabic inscription; second, the Pre-Islamic period, 500 to 622 A. D.; and third, the Mohammedan period, beginning with the Flight, or Hijra (or Hegira). Of the first periods the little that we know except the inscriptions coming to us by tradition is preserved in the Pre-Islamic poems and the Koran.[253]
The second period is known as the Jahiliyya, or Age of Ignorance or Barbarism, and, in the ample remnant of the poetry of that day, we are enabled “to picture the life of those wild days in its larger aspects, accurately enough.”[254]
The pagan Arabs had long been in the habit of burying their infant daughters alive, the excuse offered being that it cost too much to marry them and that their lives were too closely attended with the possibility of disgrace “if they should happen to be made captives or to become scandalous by their behaviour.”[255] For these reasons there was never any disguising the fact that the birth of a daughter was considered a great misfortune and the death of one a great happiness.
According to one authority, the method employed by the Arabs to get rid of the female infant was to have the mother who was about to give birth to a child lie down by a pit when she was about to deliver the child, and if it was a daughter, it was thrown into the pit without any more ado.[256]
Another version is that when a daughter was born the father, if he intended to keep her, would have her clothed in a garment of wool or hair as an indication that later he intended to have her keep camels or sheep in the desert. If, on the other hand, he intended to do away with her, he would allow her to live until she was six years of age, and then said to her mother:
“Perfume her and adorn her, that I may carry her to her mothers.”