HISTORY OF THE MOORISH EMPIRE IN EUROPE
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.