A more important, as also a more creditable, source of wealth to the Koreish clan was their Red Sea coast traffic, particularly with the ports of Yemen and Abyssinia. Jiddah has been always the chief westerly seaport, and Mecca, which is only a few leagues distant, the principal inland emporium, of Arab trade; and under the dominating influence of the clever and active merchants of Koreish, both places acquired special prosperity and importance.
Lastly, only a day’s journey distant from Mecca, was held, in the pre-Islamitic times, the great yearly fair and gathering of Okad, so called from the name of the plain where it used to assemble—a national meeting, frequented by men of all conditions, from all quarters of the Arab peninsula, and lasting through the entire month of Dhul-kaadeh, which in pagan, as subsequently in Mohammedan reckoning, immediately preceded the ceremonies of the annual pilgrimage. Here horse races, athletic games, poetical recitals, and every kind of public amusement, diversified the more serious commercial transactions of an open fair, that, in its comprehensiveness, almost assumed the proportions of a national exhibition. Here, too, matters of the highest import, questions of peace and war, of treaty and alliance, of justice and revenge, were habitually treated by the chiefs of the northern Arabs; the “children of Mezar,” to give them their favourite Mustareb patronymic, assembled in a sort of amphictyonic council, not less ancient, but while it lasted much more influential throughout Arabia, than that of Thebes ever had been in classic Greece. In this assembly the immediate local proximity of the Koreish chiefs, joined to their personal wealth, courage, and address, assigned them a predominant position.
Of their pedigree, which, as is well known, includes that of Mohammed himself, we have a carefully (too carefully, indeed, for authenticity) constructed chronicle, bringing the family tree up in due form to Ishmael, the son of Abraham, of whom the Koreish figure as the direct descendants. In the same artificial annals the Yemenite, or genuine Arabs, appear under the cousinly character of the children of Joktan, the son of Eber. On these points all Mohammedan annalists are equally positive and distinct; all other Arab testimony is equally adverse or silent. That a fable so utterly defiant of reasonable chronology, and even of the common sense of history itself, should have been adopted as matter of fact by Arab vanity and ignorance, is less surprising than that it should have found favour in the eyes of not a few, indeed of most, of our own European writers. Enough here to say that Mohammedan chroniclers, by adopting as irrefragable historical authority the Jewish records, and then retouching them here and there in accordance with their own special predictions and tenets, have succeeded in concealing the truth of their own national identity and story from themselves and even from others, under an almost hopeless incrustation of childish fiction.
To sum up, at the opening of the seventh century of our era, and coincidently with the first appearance of the prophetic autocrat and destined remodeller of Arabia, the overteeming life and energy of the great peninsula was, broadly taken, thus divided: Foremost stood the tribe of Koreish, with their allies, a powerful confederacy composed of tribes belonging to the Mustareb or northern stock, and occupying the upper half of the westerly coast and region. Next in importance came the countless independent, and, thus far, uncentralised clans of the centre of the peninsula; they, too, are mostly of Mustareb origin; though a few claimed the more ancient and aristocratic kinsmanship of Yemen, but without, however, paying any allegiance to its rulers. Lastly, to the south, east, and north, still existed the noble but enfeebled relics of the old Yemenite kingdoms of Sana, Hira, and Ghassan, half-sunk into Persian or Byzantine vassalage, and exerting little authority, even within their own ancestral limits.
[25 B.C.-632 A.D.]
But, however important to the country itself and in their ultimate results to the world at large might be the events that took place within Arabia during the pre-Islamitic epoch, they had small bearing on the nations outside the peninsula. The Yemenite queen of Sheba’s ambassage to Solomon, even if an historical event, led at least to no historical results; and with other coeval rulers and nationalities, Greek, Persian, and Macedonian, the Arabs rarely came into any other contact than that of distant and desultory traffic. Nor do the frontier skirmishes by which an Antigonus or a Ptolemy attempted, without success, to gain a footing in Arabia, deserve more than a passing notice; and Pompey himself, victorious elsewhere, was foiled on its frontiers.
At last during the reign of Augustus, Ælius Gallus, the Roman prefect of Egypt, undertook a military expedition against Yemen itself, with the view of annexing that region, which report enriched with immense treasures, to the Roman Empire. With an army composed of ten thousand Roman infantry, five hundred Jews, and one thousand Nabatæans, he crossed the Red Sea in two hundred and ten galleys, and landed at Moilah, or Leuce Come, in 25° N. lat., near the modern Yambo. After some delay, the consequence of disease and disorganisation among his troops, he marched southward until he reached the inland district and city of Nejran, on the nearer frontier of Yemen. The town of Nejran he is said to have taken by assault, as well as a few neighbouring places, probably mere villages, of little note.
Meanwhile a large force of Arabs had assembled to oppose him, but Gallus easily defeated them, and advanced to Mareb itself, then, we may suppose, the capital of Yemen. But the Roman soldiers, unaccustomed to the heat of the tropical climate, and much reduced in numbers, were incapable of laying siege to that town; and their general thus found himself forced to retreat, and recrossed the sea to Egypt without having effected any permanent settlement on the Arab side. Later attempts, made by Roman governors or generals under Trajan and Severus, were restricted to the neighbourhood of the Assyrian frontier; and the ruined cities of Bosrah and Petra yet indicate the landmarks of the extreme southerly limits reached by imperial dominion over Arab territory.
More serious, and more lasting in its consequences, was the great Abyssinian invasion of Yemen in 529, when Aryat, son or lieutenant of the king of Abyssinia, landed in Aden with an army of seventy thousand men, to avenge his co-religionists, the Christians, who had been cruelly persecuted by Dhu-Nowas, king of Yemen, himself a proselyte to and an ardent propagator of the Jewish code. The expedition was successful; Dhu-Nowas perished, Christianity was proclaimed, and for seventy-six years the Ethiopian conquerors retained subject to their rule the southern and richer half of the peninsula. Their king Abraha even advanced, in 570 A.D. (the year of the birth of Mohammed) as far as Mecca; but beneath its walls suffered a repulse, which has been magnified by the Koran and Mohammedan tradition into the proportions of a miracle. Persian assistance, furnished by the great Chosroes, ultimately enabled the Arabs under Seif, son of Yezen, last direct lineal descendant of the old kings of Sana, to liberate their territory from its dusky usurpers (605 A.D.).