The fierceness of the Arab warrior was tempered by those virtues in which more civilised nations are found wanting. If he was swift to strike, the Arab was also prompt to succour, ready to give shelter and protection even to his worst enemy. The hospitality of the Arab is a proverb, but unlike many proverbs it is strictly true. The last milch-camel must be killed rather than the duties of the host neglected. The chief of a clan—not necessarily the richest man in it, but the strongest and wisest—set the example in all Arab virtues, and his tent was so placed in the camp that it was the first the enemy would attack, and also the first that the wayworn traveller would approach. Beacons were lighted hard by to guide wanderers to the hospitable haven, and any man, of whatever condition, who came to the Arab nobleman’s tent and said, “I throw myself on your honour,” was safe from pursuit even at the cost of his host’s life. Honour, like hospitality, meant more than it does now; and the Arab chieftain’s pledge of welcome meant protection, unswerving fidelity, help, and succour. Like his pride of birth, devotion to the clan, courage, and generosity, this hospitable trusty friendship of the Arab belongs no doubt to the barbarous virtues of the old world; but it is just these parts of barbarism which civilisation might profitably emulate.
As a friend and as an enemy there was no ambiguity about the Arab. In both relations he was frank, generous, and fearless. And the same may be said of his love. The Arab of the Days of Ignorance, as Mohammadans style the time before the birth of their prophet, was the forerunner of the best side of mediæval chivalry, which indeed is forced to own an Arabian origin. The Arab chief was as much a knight-errant in love as he was a chivalrous opponent in fight. The position of the women of Arabia before the coming of Mohammad has often been commiserated. That women were probably held in low esteem in the town-life which formed an important factor in the Arabian polity is probably true; savage virtues are apt to disappear in the civilised society of cities. But poetry is a good test of a nation’s character,—not, perhaps, of a highly civilised nation, for then affectation and the vogue come into play,—but undoubtedly of a partly savage nation, where poets only say what they and their fellow men feel. Arabian poetry is full of a chivalrous reverence for women. Allowing for difference of language and the varieties of human nature, it is much more reverent than a great deal of the poetry of our own country to-day. In the old days, says an ancient writer, the true Arab had but one love, and her he loved till death. The Bedawy or Arab of the desert, though he was not above a certain amount of gallantry of a romantic and exciting order, regarded women as divinities to be worshipped, not as chattels to possess. The poems are full of instances of the courtly respect, “full of state and ancientry,” displayed by the heroes of the desert towards defenceless maidens, and the mere existence of so general an ideal of conduct in the poems is a strong argument for Arab chivalry; for with the Arabs the abyss between the ideal accepted of the mind and the attaining thereof in action was narrower than it is among more advanced nations. We remember the story of Antar, the Bayard of pagan Arabia, who gave his life to guard some helpless women; and recall these verses of Muweylik, which breathe a tender chivalrous regret for an only love:—
Take thou thy way by the grave wherein thy dear one lies—
Umm el-´Alā—and lift up thy voice: ah! if she could hear!
How art thou come, for very fearful wast thou, to dwell
in a land where not the most valiant goes but with quaking heart?
God’s love be thine and His mercy, O thou dear lost one!
not meet for thee is the place of shadow and loneliness.
And a little one hast thou left behind—God’s ruth on her!
she knows not what to bewail thee means, yet weeps for thee,