We can no longer see the true Arab as he was in ‘the Time of Ignorance,’ and we cannot but regret our loss; for the Pagan Arab is a noble type of man, though there be nobler. There is much that is admirable in his high mettle, his fine sense of honour, his knightliness, his ‘open-handed, both-handed,’ generosity, his frank friendship, and his manly independent spirit; and the faults of this wild reckless nature are not to be weighed against its many excellencies. When Moḥammad turned abroad the current of Arab life, he changed the character of the people. The mixture with foreign nations, and the quiet town-life that succeeded to the tumult of conquest, gradually effaced many of the leading ideas of the old Arab nature, and the remnant that still dwell in the land of their fathers have lost much of that nobleness of character which in their ancestors covered a multitude of sins. Moḥammad in part destroyed the Arab and created the Muslim. The last is no amends for the first. The modern Bedawee is neither the one nor the other; he has lost the greatness of the old type without gaining that of the new. As far as the Arabs alone are concerned, Moḥammad effected a temporary good and a lasting harm. As to the world at large, that is matter for another chapter.
II.—MOḤAMMAD.
For every fiery prophet in old times,
And all the sacred madness of the bard,
When God made music through them, could but speak
His music by the framework and the chord;
And as he saw it he hath spoken truth.
—The Holy Grail.