Much has been written by Arab authors regarding the great inundation, as they term it, of Arem or Mareb, possibly a tropical cyclone of more than ordinary destructiveness, like that of 1867 in the West Indies; and this event they love to assign as the proximate cause which dispersed the families of Yemen over northern Arabia, and led to the foundation of the kingdoms of Irak and Ghassan. But the reality of the events, physical or political, symbolised by the “flood of Arem” (a counterpart, after its fashion, of the biblical flood) cannot now be well deciphered.
This is however certain—in that the Yemenite Arabs, and especially those who tenanted the south of the peninsula, had, during the period now cursorily sketched, attained a very fair degree of civilisation—that arts and commerce flourished, that wealth was accumulated, literature cultivated, and talent held in esteem. On all these points we have not only the uncertain and distorted testimony of foreign authors, such as Strabo, Pliny, Diodorus, Ptolemy, and the like, but the more positive though fragmentary evidence afforded by the national writings, chiefly verse, that have survived to our day. In its general character and institutions the kingdom of Yemen seems to have borne a considerable resemblance to the neighbouring one of the Nile valley, on the other side of the Red Sea, and, like it, to have reached at a very early epoch a relatively high degree of prosperity and social culture, from which, however, it had long declined before its final extinction in the seventh century. But the daughter-kingdom of Hira had, as was natural, something of a Persian tinge; while that of Ghassan took a more Byzantine colouring. Lastly, the nomadic element predominated in the ill-cemented monarchy of Kindeh.
But while the sceptre of Yemen was yet, in one form or other, outstretched over the length and breadth of the land, and its children, the genuine or African Arabs, formed a complete and dense circle of population all around, the centre of Arabia remained the stronghold of a different though kindred race, in their mode of living wild and ferocious; less susceptible of culture, but gifted with greater energy and concentration of purpose than their southern cousins. The latest recorded emigration of this branch of the Arab stock had been not from the south but the north; and instead of the mythical Kahtan, they claimed a no less mythical Adnan, or his supposed grandson Nezar, for their ancestor; their language, though radically identical with that spoken by the genuine Arabs, was yet dialectically different in several respects, and nearer to the Syriac or Hebrew. Lastly, unlike the Arabs from the south, they had little disposition for agriculture, and even less for architecture and the fine arts; their instincts leading them to a pastoral and consequently a nomadic life. The almost infinite ramifications of these “Mustareb” or “adscititious Arab” tribes lead ultimately up to five principal stocks. These were Rabiah, which, however, laid some claim to a Yemenite kinsmanship in the east centre of the peninsula; Koreish, on the west; Kais, or Kais-Ailan, and Hawazin, on the north; and Tamin in the middle.
[500-570 A.D.]
History has left unrecorded the exact date of their arrival in Arabia; nor has she defined the period during which they remained tributaries, though often refractory, of the kings of Yemen. But in the fifth century of the Christian era there appeared among the Mustareb tribes a leader of extraordinary talent and energy named Kolaib, sprung from the tribe of Rabiah, who having, in the fashion of William Tell, slain with his own hand the insolent and licentious tax-gatherer sent them from Sana, raised the banner of general revolt in Nejd; and, in the battle of Hazat (500 A.D.), broke forever the bonds of Yemen from off the neck of the northern Arabs. This done, Kolaib aspired to unite his countrymen into one vast confederacy, over which he himself exercised for a time an almost kingly power; but the scheme was prematurely broken off by his own assassination. Left now without a master, but also without a ruler, the Mustareb tribes found themselves involved in a series of wars that lasted during the whole of the sixth century, their heroic period. Yet in spite of severe losses sustained in battle by this or that particular clan, their power as a whole went on increasing, till at the dawn of the seventh century they had wholly absorbed the feeble kingdom of Kindeh, and encroached yearly more and more on the narrowing bounds of Yemen, Irak, and Ghassan.
An Arab Chief
Nor, probably, would they have stayed till they had become absolute lords over the whole, or nearly the whole, of the peninsula, had there not developed itself from among themselves a still more energetic element which, before many years had passed, reduced both northern and southern Arabs alike to common obedience, then raised them to an unexpected height of common glory, and at last plunged them, along with itself, into one comprehensive decline and ruin. This new and potent element was the well-known clan of Fihr or Koreish. Its families, of Mustareb descent, had at an early period, which subsequent and Mohammedan chroniclers have tried to identify with the fortunes of the mythical Ismail, established themselves in the southerly Hedjaz, near the town of Mecca, a locality even then the principal religious and commercial centre of Arabia. Already, at the beginning of the fifth century, the chiefs of Koreish had, by a mixture of violence and craft very characteristic of their race, rendered themselves the masters and the acknowledged guardians of the sacred “Kaaba.” This square stone temple, or rather shrine, itself of unknown antiquity, was situated within the precincts of the town of Mecca; and to it the Arabs were in the habit of bringing yearly offerings, and of making devout pilgrimages, for centuries before Mohammed had adopted it into the new ritual of Islam as the house of the true God. The keys of the consecrated building had originally been in possession of delegates appointed by the monarch of Yemen; but the Koreish Arabs, having once obtained them, held them fast forever after, and successfully repelled every effort, both of their own pagan competitors and of the invading Christian Abyssinians (570 A.D.), to recapture or to seize them. Their possession of the temple keys not only gave the tribe of Koreish a semi-religious pre-eminence over all the other clans of Arabia, but also placed at their disposal the treasures of gold, silver, jewels, and other offerings accumulated by the pagan piety of ages in the temple of Mecca.
[500-600 A.D.]