A vast country of Asia, extending one thousand five hundred
miles from north to south, and one thousand two hundred from east to
west; containing a surface equal to four times that of France. The near
approach of the Euphrates to the Mediterranean constitutes it a
peninsula, the largest in the world. It is called Jezirat-el-Arab by the
Arabs; and by the Persians and Turks, Arebistan. This is one of the most
interesting countries on the face of the earth. It has, in agreement
with prophecy, never been subdued; and its inhabitants, at once
pastoral, commercial, and warlike, are the same wild, wandering people
as the immediate descendants of their great ancestor Ishmael are
represented to have been.
Arabia, or at least the eastern and northern parts of it, were first
peopled by some of the numerous families of Cush, who appear to have
extended themselves, or to have given their name as the land of Cush, or
Asiatic Ethiopia, to all the country from the Indus on the east, to the
borders of Egypt on the west, and from Armenia on the north to Arabia
Deserta on the south. By these Cushites, whose first plantations were on
both sides of the Euphrates and Gulf of Persia, and who were the first
that traversed the desert of Arabia, the earliest commercial
communications were established between the east and the west. But of
their Arabian territory, and of the occupation dependent on it, they
were deprived by the sons of Abraham, Ishmael, and Midian; by whom they
were obliterated in this country as a distinct race, either by
superiority of numbers after mingling with them, or by obliging them to
recede altogether to their more eastern possessions, or over the Gulf of
Arabia into Africa. From this time, that is, about five hundred and
fifty years after the flood, we read only of Ishmaelites and Midianites
as the shepherds and carriers of the deserts; who also appear to have
been intermingled, and to have shared both the territory and the
traffic, as the traders who bought Joseph are called by both names, and
the same are probably referred to by Jeremiah, xxv, as “the mingled
people that dwell in the desert.” But Ishmael maintained the
superiority, and succeeded in giving his name to the whole people.
Arabia, it is well known, is divided by geographers into three separate
regions, called Arabia Petræa, Arabia Deserta, and Arabia Felix.
The first, or Arabia Petræa, is the north-western division, and is
bounded on the north by Palestine and the Dead Sea, on the east by
Arabia Deserta, on the south by Arabia Felix, and on the west by the
Heroopolitan branch of the Red Sea and the Isthmus of Suez. The greater
part of this division was more exclusively the possession of the
Midianites, or land of Midian; where Moses, having fled from Egypt,
married the daughter of Jethro, and spent forty years keeping the flocks
of his father-in-law: no humiliating occupation in those days, and
particularly in Midian, which was a land of shepherds; the whole people
having no other way of life than that of rearing and tending their
flocks, or in carrying the goods they received from the east and south
into Phenicia and Egypt. The word flock, used here, must not convey the
idea naturally entertained in our own country of sheep only, but,
together with these or goats, horned cattle and camels, the most
indispensable of animals to the Midianite. It was a mixed flock of this
kind which was the sole care of Moses, during a third part of his long
life; in which he must have had abundance of leisure, by night and by
day, to reflect on the unhappy condition of his own people, still
enduring all the rigours of slavery in Egypt. It was a similar flock
also which the daughters of Jethro were watering when first encountered
by Moses; a trifling event in itself, but important in the history of
the future leader of the Jews; and showing, at the same time, the simple
life of the people among whom he was newly come, as well as the scanty
supply of water in their country, and the strifes frequently occasioned
in obtaining a share of it. Through a considerable part of this region,
the Israelites wandered after they had escaped from Egypt; and in it
were situated the mountains Horeb and Sinai. Beside the tribes of
Midian, which gradually became blended with those of Ishmael, this was
the country of the Edomites, the Amalekites, and the Nabathæi, the only
tribe of pure Ishmaelites within its precincts. But all those families
have long since been confounded under the general name of Arabs. The
greater part of this district consists of naked rocks and sandy and
flinty plains; but it contained also some fertile spots, particularly in
the peninsula of Mount Sinai, and through the long range of Mount Seir.
[Illustration:
Map of the
JOURNEYINGS & ENCAMPMENTS
_of the_ ISRAELITES _from_
EGYPT TO CANAAN
Through the Desert of
_Arabia Petræa_
]
The second region, or Arabia Deserta, is bounded on the north and
north-east by the Euphrates, on the east by a ridge of mountains which
separates it from Chaldea, on the south by Arabia Felix, and on the west
by Syria, Judea, and Arabia Petræa. This was more particularly the
country first of the Cushites, and afterward of the Ishmaelites; as it
is still of their descendants, the modern Bedouins, who maintain the
same predatory and wandering habits. It consists almost entirely of one
vast and lonesome wilderness, a boundless level of sand, whose dry and
burning surface denies existence to all but the Arab and his camel. Yet,
widely scattered over this dreary waste, some spots of comparative
fertility are to be found, where, spread around a feeble spring of
brackish water, a stunted verdure, or a few palm trees, fix the
principal settlement of a tribe, and afford stages of refreshment in
these otherwise impassable deserts. Here, with a few dates, the milk of
his faithful camel, and perhaps a little corn, brought by painful
journeys from distant regions, or plundered from a passing caravan, the
Arab supports a hard existence, until the failure of his resources
impels him to seek another _oasis_, or the scanty herbage furnished on a
patch of soil by transient rains; or else, which is frequently the case,
to resort, by more distant migration, to the banks of the Euphrates; or,
by hostile inroads on the neighbouring countries, to supply those wants
which the recesses of the desert have denied. The numbers leading this
wandering and precarious mode of life are incredible. From these deserts
Zerah drew his army of a million of men; and the same deserts, fifteen
hundred years after, poured forth the countless swarms, which, under
Mohammed and his successors, devastated half of the then known world.
The third region, or Arabia Felix, so denominated from the happier
condition of its soil and climate, occupies the southern part of the
Arabian peninsula. It is bounded on the north by the two other divisions
of the country; on the south and south-east by the Indian Ocean; on the
east by part of the same ocean and the Persian Gulf; and on the west by
the Red Sea. This division is subdivided into the kingdoms or provinces
of Yemen, at the southern extremity of the peninsula; Hejaz, on the
north of the former, and toward the Red Sea; Nejed, in the central
region; and Hadramant and Oman, on the shores of the Indian Ocean. The
four latter subdivisions partake of much of the character of the other
greater divisions of the country, though of a more varied surface, and
with a larger portion capable of cultivation. But Yemen seems to belong
to another country and climate. It is very mountainous, is well watered
with rains and springs, and is blessed with an abundant produce in corn
and fruits, and especially in coffee, of which vast quantities are
exported. In this division were the ancient cities of Nysa, Musa or
Moosa, and Aden. This is also supposed to have been the country of the
queen of Sheba. In Hejaz are the celebrated cities of Mecca and Medina.
Arabia Felix is inhabited by a people who claim Jotkan for their father,
and so trace their descent direct from Shem, instead of Abraham and Ham.
They are indeed a totally different people from those inhabiting the
other quarters, and pride themselves on being the only pure and unmixed
Arabs. Instead of being shepherds and robbers, they are fixed in towns
and cities; and live by agriculture and commerce, chiefly maritime. Here
were the people who were found by the Greeks of Egypt enjoying an entire
monopoly of the trade with the east, and possessing a high degree of
wealth and consequent refinement. It was here, in the ports of Sabæa,
that the spices, muslins, and precious stones of India, were for many
ages obtained by the Greek traders of Egypt, before they had acquired
skill or courage sufficient to pass the straits of the Red Sea; which
were long considered by the nations of Europe to be the produce of
Arabia itself. These articles, before the invention of shipping, or the
establishment of a maritime intercourse, were conveyed across the
deserts by the Cushite, Ishmaelite, and Midianite carriers. It was the
produce partly of India, and partly of Arabia, which the travelling
merchants, to whom Joseph was sold, were carrying into Egypt. The balm
and myrrh were probably Arabian, as they are still the produce of the
same country; but the spicery was undoubtedly brought farther from the
east. These circumstances are adverted to, to show how extensive was the
communication, in which the Arabians formed the principal link: and that
in the earliest ages of which we have any account, in those of Joseph,
of Moses, of Isaiah, and of Ezekiel, “the mingled people” inhabiting the
vast Arabian deserts, the Cushites, Ishmaelites, and Midianites, were
the chief agents in that commercial intercourse which has, from the most
remote period of antiquity, subsisted between the extreme east and west.
And although the current of trade is now turned, caravans of merchants,
the descendants of these people, may still be found traversing the same
deserts, conveying the same articles, and in the same manner as
described by Moses!
The singular and important fact that Arabia has never been conquered,
has already been cursorily adverted to. But Mr. Gibbon, unwilling to
pass by an opportunity of cavilling at revelation, says, “The perpetual
independence of the Arabs has been the theme of praise among strangers
and natives; and the arts of controversy transform this singular event
into a prophecy and a miracle in favour of the posterity of Ishmael.
Some exceptions, that can neither be dissembled nor eluded, render this
mode of reasoning as indiscreet as it is superfluous. The kingdom of
Yemen has been successively subdued by the Abyssinians, the Persians,
the Sultans of Egypt, and the Turks; the holy cities of Mecca and Medina
have repeatedly bowed under a Scythian tyrant; and the Roman province of
Arabia embraced the peculiar wilderness in which Ishmael and his sons
must have pitched their tents in the face of their brethren.” But this
learned writer has, with a peculiar infelicity, annulled his own
argument; and we have only to follow on the above passage, to obtain a
complete refutation of the unworthy position with which it begins: “Yet
these exceptions,” says Mr. Gibbon, “are temporary or local; the body of
the nation has escaped the yoke of the most powerful monarchies: the
arms of Sesostris and Cyrus, of Pompey, and Trajan, could never achieve
the conquest of Arabia; the present sovereign of the Turks may exercise
a shadow of jurisdiction, but his pride is reduced to solicit the
friendship of a people whom it is dangerous to provoke, and fruitless to
attack. The obvious causes of their freedom are inscribed on the
character and country of the Arabs. Many ages before Mohammed, their
intrepid valour had been severely felt by their neighbours, in offensive
and defensive war. The patient and active virtues of a soldier are
insensibly nursed in the habits and discipline of a pastoral life. The
care of the sheep and camels is abandoned to the women of the tribe; but
the martial youth, under the banner of the emir, is ever on horseback
and in the field, to practise the exercise of the bow, the javelin, and
the scimitar. The long memory of their independence is the firmest
pledge of its perpetuity; and succeeding generations are animated to
prove their descent, and to maintain their inheritance. Their domestic
feuds are suspended on the approach of a common enemy; and in their last
hostilities against the Turks, the caravan of Mecca was attacked and
pillaged by four score thousand of the confederates. When they advance
to battle, the hope of victory is in the front, in the rear the
assurance of a retreat. Their horses and camels, who in eight or ten
days can perform a march of four or five hundred miles, disappear before
the conqueror; the secret waters of the desert elude his search; and his
victorious troops are consumed with thirst, hunger, and fatigue, in the
pursuit of an invisible foe, who scorns his efforts, and safely reposes
in the heart of the burning solitude. The arms and deserts of the
Bedouins are not only the safeguards of their own freedom, but the
barriers also of the happy Arabia, whose inhabitants, remote from war,
are enervated by the luxury of the soil and climate. The legions of
Augustus melted away in disease and lassitude; and it is only by a naval
power that the reduction of Yemen has been successfully attempted. When
Mohammed erected his holy standard, that kingdom was a province of the
Persian empire; yet seven princes of the Homerites still reigned in the
mountains; and the vicegerent of Chosroes was tempted to forget his
distant country and his unfortunate master.”
Yemen was the only Arabian province which had the appearance of
submitting to a foreign yoke; but even here, as Mr. Gibbon himself
acknowledges, seven of the native princes remained unsubdued: and even
admitting its subjugation to have been complete, the perpetual
independence of the Ishmaelites remains unimpeached. For this is not
their country. Petra, the capital of the Stony Arabia, and the principal
settlement of the Nabathæi, it is true, was long in the hands of the
Persians and Romans; but this never made them masters of the country.
Hovering troops of Arabs confined the intruders within their walls, and
cut off their supplies; and the possession of this fortress gave as
little reason to the Romans to exult as the conquerors of Arabia Petræa,
as that of Gibraltar does to us to boast of the conquest of Spain.
The Arabian tribes were confounded by the Greeks and Romans under the
indiscriminate appellation of Saracens; a name whose etymology has been
variously, but never satisfactorily, explained. This was their general
name when Mohammed appeared in the beginning of the seventh century.
Their religion at this time was Sabianism, or the worship of the sun,
moon, &c; variously transformed by the different tribes, and
intermingled with some Jewish and Christian maxims and traditions. The
tribes themselves were generally at variance, from some hereditary and
implacable animosities; and their only warfare consisted in desultory
skirmishes arising out of these feuds, and in their predatory
excursions, where superiority of numbers rendered courage of less value
than activity and vigilance. Yet of such materials Mohammed constructed
a mighty empire; converted the relapsed Ishmaelites into good Musselmen;
united the jarring tribes under one banner; supplied what was wanting in
personal courage by the ardour of religious zeal; and out of a banditti,
little known and little feared beyond their own deserts, raised an armed
multitude, which proved the scourge of the world.
Mohammed was born in the year 569, of the noble tribe of the Koreish,
and descended, according to eastern historians, in a direct line from
Ishmael. His person is represented as beautiful, his manners engaging,
and his eloquence powerful; but he was illiterate, like the rest of his
countrymen, and indebted to a Jewish or Christian scribe for penning his
Koran. Whatever the views of Mohammed might have been in the earlier
part of his life, it was not till the fortieth year of his age that he
avowed his mission as the Apostle of God: when so little credit did he
gain for his pretensions, that in the first three years he could only
number fourteen converts; and even at the end of ten years his labours
and his friends were alike confined within the walls of Mecca, when the
designs of his enemies compelled him to fly to Medina, where he was
favourably received by a party of the most considerable inhabitants, who
had recently imbibed his doctrines at Mecca. This flight, or _Hegira_,
was made the Mohammedan æra, from which time is computed, and
corresponds with the 16th of July, 622, of the Christian æra. Mohammed
now found himself sufficiently powerful to throw aside all reserve;
declared that he was commanded to compel unbelievers by the sword to
receive the faith of one God, and his prophet Mohammed; and confirming
his credulous followers by the threats of eternal pain on the one hand,
and the allurements of a sensual paradise on the other, he had, before
his death, which happened in the year 632, gained over the whole of
Arabia to his imposture. His death threw a temporary gloom over his
cause, and the disunion of his followers threatened its extinction. Any
other empire placed in the same circumstances would have crumbled to
pieces; but the Arabs felt their power; they revered their founder as
the chosen prophet of God; and their ardent temperament, animated by a
religious enthusiasm, gave an earnest of future success, and encouraged
the zeal or the ambition of their leaders. The succession, after some
bloodshed, was settled, and unnumbered hordes of barbarians were ready
to carry into execution the sanguinary dictates of their prophet; and,
with “the Koran, tribute, or death,” as their motto, to invade the
countries of the infidels. During the whole of the succeeding century,
their rapid career was unchecked; the disciplined armies of the Greeks
and Romans were unable to stand against them; the Christian churches of
Asia and Africa were annihilated; and from India to the Atlantic,
through Persia, Arabia, Syria, Palestine, Asia Minor, Egypt, with the
whole of northern Africa, Spain, and part of France, the impostor was
acknowledged. Constantinople was besieged; Rome itself was plundered;
and nothing less than the subjection of the whole Christian world was
meditated on the one hand and tremblingly expected on the other.
All this was wonderful; but the avenging justice of an incensed Deity,
and the sure word of prophecy, relieve our astonishment. It was to
punish an apostate race, that the Saracen locusts were let loose upon
the earth; and the countries which they were permitted to ravage were
those in which the pure light of revelation had been most abused. The
eastern church was sunk in gross idolatry; vice and wickedness prevailed
in their worst forms; and those who still called themselves Christians
trusted more to images, relics, altars, austerities, and pilgrimages,
than to a crucified Saviour.
About a hundred and eighty years from the foundation of Bagdad, during
which period the power of the Saracens had gradually declined, a
dreadful reaction took place in the conquered countries. The Persians on
the east, and the Greeks on the west, were simultaneously roused from
their long thraldom, and, assisted by the Turks, who, issuing from the
plains of Tartary, now for the first time made their appearance in the
east, extinguished the power of the caliphate, and virtually put an end
to the Arabian monarchy in the year 936. A succession of nominal caliphs
continued to the year 1258: but the provinces were lost; their power was
confined to the walls of their capital; and they were in real subjection
to the Turks and the Persians until the above year, when Mostacem, the
last of the Abbassides, was dethroned and murdered by Holagou, or
Hulaku, the Tartar, the grandson of Zingis. This event, although it
terminated the foreign dominion of the Arabians, left their native
independence untouched. They were no longer, indeed, the masters of the
finest parts of the three great divisions of the ancient world: their
work was finished; and returning to the state in which Mohammed found
them three centuries before, with the exception of the change in their
religion, they remained, and still remain, the unconquered rovers of the
desert.
It is not the least singular circumstance in the history of this
extraordinary people, that those who, in the enthusiasm of their first
successes, were the sworn foes of literature, should become for several
ages its exclusive patrons. Almansor, the founder of Bagdad, has the
merit of first exciting this spirit, which was encouraged in a still
greater degree by his grandson Almamon. This caliph employed his agents
in Armenia, Syria, Egypt, and at Constantinople, in collecting the most
celebrated works on Grecian science, and had them translated into the
Arabic language. Philosophy, astronomy, geometry, and medicine, were
thus introduced and taught; public schools were established; and
learning, which had altogether fled from Europe, found an asylum on the
banks of the Tigris. Nor was this spirit confined to the capital: native
works began to appear; and by the hands of copyists were multiplied out
of number, for the information of the studious, or the pride of the
wealthy. The rage for literature extended to Egypt and to Spain. In the
former country, the Fatimites collected a library of a hundred thousand
manuscripts, beautifully transcribed, and very elegantly bound; and in
the latter, the Ommiades formed another of six hundred thousand volumes;
forty-four of which were employed in the catalogue. Their capital,
Cordova, with the towns of Malaga, Almeria, and Murcia, produced three
hundred writers; and seventy public libraries were established in the
cities of Andalusia. What a change since the days of Omar, when the
splendid library of the Ptolemies was wantonly destroyed by the same
people! A retribution, though a slight one, was thus made for their
former devastations; and many Grecian works, lost in the original, have
been recovered in their Arabic dress. Neither was this learning confined
to mere parade, though much of it must undoubtedly have been so. Their
proficiency in astronomy and geometry is attested by their astronomical
tables, and by the accuracy with which, in the plain of Chaldea, a
degree of the great circle of the earth was measured. But it was in
medicine that, in this dark age, the Arabians shone most: the works of
Hippocrates and Galen had been translated and commented on; their
physicians were sought after by the princes of Asia and Europe; and the
names of Rhazis, Albucasis, and Avicenna are still revered by the
members of the healing art. So little, indeed, did the physicians of
Europe in that age know of the history of their own science, that they
were astonished, on the revival of learning, to find in the ancient
Greek authors those systems for which they thought themselves indebted
to the Arabians!
The last remnant of Arabian science was found in Spain; from whence it
was expelled in the beginning of the seventeenth century, by the
intemperate bigots of that country, who have never had any thing of
their own with which to supply its place. The Arabians are the only
people who have preserved their descent, their independence, their
language, and their manners and customs, from the earliest ages to the
present times; and it is among them that we are to look for examples of
patriarchal life and manners. A very lively sketch of this mode of life
is given by Sir R. K. Porter, in the person and tribe of an Arab sheik,
whom he encountered in the neighbourhood of the Euphrates. “I had met
this warrior,” says Sir R. K. P., “at the house of the British resident
at Bagdad; and came, according to his repeated wish, to see him in a
place more consonant with his habits, the tented field; and, as he
expressed it, ‘at the head of his children.’ As soon as we arrived in
sight of his camp, we were met by crowds of its inhabitants, who, with a
wild and hurrying delight, led us toward the tent of their chief. The
venerable old man came forth to the door, attended by his subjects of
all sizes and descriptions, and greeted us with a countenance beaming
kindness; while his words, which our interpreter explained, were
demonstrative of patriarchal welcome. One of my Hindoo troopers spoke
Arabic; hence the substance of our succeeding discourse was not lost on
each other. Having entered, I sat down by my host; and the whole of the
persons present, to far beyond the boundaries of the tent, (the sides of
which were open,) seated themselves also, without any regard to those
more civilized ceremonies of subjection, the crouching of slaves, or the
standing of vassalage. These persons, in rows beyond rows, appeared just
as he had described, the offspring of his house, the descendants of his
fathers, from age to age; and like brethren, whether holding the highest
or the lowest rank, they seemed to gather round their common parent. But
perhaps their sense of perfect equality in the mind of their chief could
not be more forcibly shown, than in the share they took in the objects
which appeared to interest his feelings; and as I looked from the elders
or leaders of the people, seated immediately around him, to the circles
beyond circles of brilliant faces, bending eagerly toward him and his
guest, (all, from the most respectably clad to those with hardly a
garment covering their active limbs, earnest to evince some attention to
the stranger he bade welcome,) I thought I had never before seen so
complete an assemblage of fine and animated countenances, both old and
young: nor could I suppose a better specimen of the still existing state
of the true Arab; nor a more lively picture of the scene which must have
presented itself, ages ago, in the fields of Haran, when Terah sat in
his tent door, surrounded by his sons, and his sons’ sons, and the
people born in his house. The venerable Arabian sheik was also seated on
the ground with a piece of carpet spread under him; and, like his
ancient Chaldean ancestor, turned to the one side and the other,
graciously answering or questioning the groups around him, with an
interest in them all which clearly showed the abiding simplicity of his
government, and their obedience. On the smallest computation, such must
have been the manners of these people for more than three thousand
years; thus, in all things, verifying the prediction given of Ishmael at
his birth, that he, in his posterity, should ‘be a wild man,’ and always
continue to be so, though ‘he shall dwell for ever in the presence of
his brethren.’ And that an acute and active people, surrounded for ages
by polished and luxurious nations, should from their earliest to their
latest times, be still found _a wild people, dwelling in the presence of
all their brethren_, (as we may call these nations,) unsubdued and
unchangeable, is, indeed, a standing miracle: one of those mysterious
facts which establish the truth of prophecy.” But although the manners
of the Arabians have remained unaltered through so many ages, and will
probably so continue, their religion, as we have seen, has sustained an
important change; and must again, in the fulness of time, give place to
a faith more worthy of the people.
St. Paul first preached the Gospel in Arabia, Gal. i, 17. Christian
churches were subsequently founded, and many of their tribes embraced
Christianity prior to the fifth century; most of which appear to have
been tinctured with the Nestorian heresy. At this time, however, it does
not appear that the Arabians had any version of the Scriptures in their
own language, to which some writers attribute the ease with which they
were drawn into the Mohammedan delusion; while the “Greeks, Syrians,
Armenians, Abyssinians, Copts, and others,” who enjoyed that privilege,
were able to resist it.
miles from north to south, and one thousand two hundred from east to
west; containing a surface equal to four times that of France. The near
approach of the Euphrates to the Mediterranean constitutes it a
peninsula, the largest in the world. It is called Jezirat-el-Arab by the
Arabs; and by the Persians and Turks, Arebistan. This is one of the most
interesting countries on the face of the earth. It has, in agreement
with prophecy, never been subdued; and its inhabitants, at once
pastoral, commercial, and warlike, are the same wild, wandering people
as the immediate descendants of their great ancestor Ishmael are
represented to have been.
Arabia, or at least the eastern and northern parts of it, were first
peopled by some of the numerous families of Cush, who appear to have
extended themselves, or to have given their name as the land of Cush, or
Asiatic Ethiopia, to all the country from the Indus on the east, to the
borders of Egypt on the west, and from Armenia on the north to Arabia
Deserta on the south. By these Cushites, whose first plantations were on
both sides of the Euphrates and Gulf of Persia, and who were the first
that traversed the desert of Arabia, the earliest commercial
communications were established between the east and the west. But of
their Arabian territory, and of the occupation dependent on it, they
were deprived by the sons of Abraham, Ishmael, and Midian; by whom they
were obliterated in this country as a distinct race, either by
superiority of numbers after mingling with them, or by obliging them to
recede altogether to their more eastern possessions, or over the Gulf of
Arabia into Africa. From this time, that is, about five hundred and
fifty years after the flood, we read only of Ishmaelites and Midianites
as the shepherds and carriers of the deserts; who also appear to have
been intermingled, and to have shared both the territory and the
traffic, as the traders who bought Joseph are called by both names, and
the same are probably referred to by Jeremiah, xxv, as “the mingled
people that dwell in the desert.” But Ishmael maintained the
superiority, and succeeded in giving his name to the whole people.
Arabia, it is well known, is divided by geographers into three separate
regions, called Arabia Petræa, Arabia Deserta, and Arabia Felix.
The first, or Arabia Petræa, is the north-western division, and is
bounded on the north by Palestine and the Dead Sea, on the east by
Arabia Deserta, on the south by Arabia Felix, and on the west by the
Heroopolitan branch of the Red Sea and the Isthmus of Suez. The greater
part of this division was more exclusively the possession of the
Midianites, or land of Midian; where Moses, having fled from Egypt,
married the daughter of Jethro, and spent forty years keeping the flocks
of his father-in-law: no humiliating occupation in those days, and
particularly in Midian, which was a land of shepherds; the whole people
having no other way of life than that of rearing and tending their
flocks, or in carrying the goods they received from the east and south
into Phenicia and Egypt. The word flock, used here, must not convey the
idea naturally entertained in our own country of sheep only, but,
together with these or goats, horned cattle and camels, the most
indispensable of animals to the Midianite. It was a mixed flock of this
kind which was the sole care of Moses, during a third part of his long
life; in which he must have had abundance of leisure, by night and by
day, to reflect on the unhappy condition of his own people, still
enduring all the rigours of slavery in Egypt. It was a similar flock
also which the daughters of Jethro were watering when first encountered
by Moses; a trifling event in itself, but important in the history of
the future leader of the Jews; and showing, at the same time, the simple
life of the people among whom he was newly come, as well as the scanty
supply of water in their country, and the strifes frequently occasioned
in obtaining a share of it. Through a considerable part of this region,
the Israelites wandered after they had escaped from Egypt; and in it
were situated the mountains Horeb and Sinai. Beside the tribes of
Midian, which gradually became blended with those of Ishmael, this was
the country of the Edomites, the Amalekites, and the Nabathæi, the only
tribe of pure Ishmaelites within its precincts. But all those families
have long since been confounded under the general name of Arabs. The
greater part of this district consists of naked rocks and sandy and
flinty plains; but it contained also some fertile spots, particularly in
the peninsula of Mount Sinai, and through the long range of Mount Seir.
[Illustration:
Map of the
JOURNEYINGS & ENCAMPMENTS
_of the_ ISRAELITES _from_
EGYPT TO CANAAN
Through the Desert of
_Arabia Petræa_
]
The second region, or Arabia Deserta, is bounded on the north and
north-east by the Euphrates, on the east by a ridge of mountains which
separates it from Chaldea, on the south by Arabia Felix, and on the west
by Syria, Judea, and Arabia Petræa. This was more particularly the
country first of the Cushites, and afterward of the Ishmaelites; as it
is still of their descendants, the modern Bedouins, who maintain the
same predatory and wandering habits. It consists almost entirely of one
vast and lonesome wilderness, a boundless level of sand, whose dry and
burning surface denies existence to all but the Arab and his camel. Yet,
widely scattered over this dreary waste, some spots of comparative
fertility are to be found, where, spread around a feeble spring of
brackish water, a stunted verdure, or a few palm trees, fix the
principal settlement of a tribe, and afford stages of refreshment in
these otherwise impassable deserts. Here, with a few dates, the milk of
his faithful camel, and perhaps a little corn, brought by painful
journeys from distant regions, or plundered from a passing caravan, the
Arab supports a hard existence, until the failure of his resources
impels him to seek another _oasis_, or the scanty herbage furnished on a
patch of soil by transient rains; or else, which is frequently the case,
to resort, by more distant migration, to the banks of the Euphrates; or,
by hostile inroads on the neighbouring countries, to supply those wants
which the recesses of the desert have denied. The numbers leading this
wandering and precarious mode of life are incredible. From these deserts
Zerah drew his army of a million of men; and the same deserts, fifteen
hundred years after, poured forth the countless swarms, which, under
Mohammed and his successors, devastated half of the then known world.
The third region, or Arabia Felix, so denominated from the happier
condition of its soil and climate, occupies the southern part of the
Arabian peninsula. It is bounded on the north by the two other divisions
of the country; on the south and south-east by the Indian Ocean; on the
east by part of the same ocean and the Persian Gulf; and on the west by
the Red Sea. This division is subdivided into the kingdoms or provinces
of Yemen, at the southern extremity of the peninsula; Hejaz, on the
north of the former, and toward the Red Sea; Nejed, in the central
region; and Hadramant and Oman, on the shores of the Indian Ocean. The
four latter subdivisions partake of much of the character of the other
greater divisions of the country, though of a more varied surface, and
with a larger portion capable of cultivation. But Yemen seems to belong
to another country and climate. It is very mountainous, is well watered
with rains and springs, and is blessed with an abundant produce in corn
and fruits, and especially in coffee, of which vast quantities are
exported. In this division were the ancient cities of Nysa, Musa or
Moosa, and Aden. This is also supposed to have been the country of the
queen of Sheba. In Hejaz are the celebrated cities of Mecca and Medina.
Arabia Felix is inhabited by a people who claim Jotkan for their father,
and so trace their descent direct from Shem, instead of Abraham and Ham.
They are indeed a totally different people from those inhabiting the
other quarters, and pride themselves on being the only pure and unmixed
Arabs. Instead of being shepherds and robbers, they are fixed in towns
and cities; and live by agriculture and commerce, chiefly maritime. Here
were the people who were found by the Greeks of Egypt enjoying an entire
monopoly of the trade with the east, and possessing a high degree of
wealth and consequent refinement. It was here, in the ports of Sabæa,
that the spices, muslins, and precious stones of India, were for many
ages obtained by the Greek traders of Egypt, before they had acquired
skill or courage sufficient to pass the straits of the Red Sea; which
were long considered by the nations of Europe to be the produce of
Arabia itself. These articles, before the invention of shipping, or the
establishment of a maritime intercourse, were conveyed across the
deserts by the Cushite, Ishmaelite, and Midianite carriers. It was the
produce partly of India, and partly of Arabia, which the travelling
merchants, to whom Joseph was sold, were carrying into Egypt. The balm
and myrrh were probably Arabian, as they are still the produce of the
same country; but the spicery was undoubtedly brought farther from the
east. These circumstances are adverted to, to show how extensive was the
communication, in which the Arabians formed the principal link: and that
in the earliest ages of which we have any account, in those of Joseph,
of Moses, of Isaiah, and of Ezekiel, “the mingled people” inhabiting the
vast Arabian deserts, the Cushites, Ishmaelites, and Midianites, were
the chief agents in that commercial intercourse which has, from the most
remote period of antiquity, subsisted between the extreme east and west.
And although the current of trade is now turned, caravans of merchants,
the descendants of these people, may still be found traversing the same
deserts, conveying the same articles, and in the same manner as
described by Moses!
The singular and important fact that Arabia has never been conquered,
has already been cursorily adverted to. But Mr. Gibbon, unwilling to
pass by an opportunity of cavilling at revelation, says, “The perpetual
independence of the Arabs has been the theme of praise among strangers
and natives; and the arts of controversy transform this singular event
into a prophecy and a miracle in favour of the posterity of Ishmael.
Some exceptions, that can neither be dissembled nor eluded, render this
mode of reasoning as indiscreet as it is superfluous. The kingdom of
Yemen has been successively subdued by the Abyssinians, the Persians,
the Sultans of Egypt, and the Turks; the holy cities of Mecca and Medina
have repeatedly bowed under a Scythian tyrant; and the Roman province of
Arabia embraced the peculiar wilderness in which Ishmael and his sons
must have pitched their tents in the face of their brethren.” But this
learned writer has, with a peculiar infelicity, annulled his own
argument; and we have only to follow on the above passage, to obtain a
complete refutation of the unworthy position with which it begins: “Yet
these exceptions,” says Mr. Gibbon, “are temporary or local; the body of
the nation has escaped the yoke of the most powerful monarchies: the
arms of Sesostris and Cyrus, of Pompey, and Trajan, could never achieve
the conquest of Arabia; the present sovereign of the Turks may exercise
a shadow of jurisdiction, but his pride is reduced to solicit the
friendship of a people whom it is dangerous to provoke, and fruitless to
attack. The obvious causes of their freedom are inscribed on the
character and country of the Arabs. Many ages before Mohammed, their
intrepid valour had been severely felt by their neighbours, in offensive
and defensive war. The patient and active virtues of a soldier are
insensibly nursed in the habits and discipline of a pastoral life. The
care of the sheep and camels is abandoned to the women of the tribe; but
the martial youth, under the banner of the emir, is ever on horseback
and in the field, to practise the exercise of the bow, the javelin, and
the scimitar. The long memory of their independence is the firmest
pledge of its perpetuity; and succeeding generations are animated to
prove their descent, and to maintain their inheritance. Their domestic
feuds are suspended on the approach of a common enemy; and in their last
hostilities against the Turks, the caravan of Mecca was attacked and
pillaged by four score thousand of the confederates. When they advance
to battle, the hope of victory is in the front, in the rear the
assurance of a retreat. Their horses and camels, who in eight or ten
days can perform a march of four or five hundred miles, disappear before
the conqueror; the secret waters of the desert elude his search; and his
victorious troops are consumed with thirst, hunger, and fatigue, in the
pursuit of an invisible foe, who scorns his efforts, and safely reposes
in the heart of the burning solitude. The arms and deserts of the
Bedouins are not only the safeguards of their own freedom, but the
barriers also of the happy Arabia, whose inhabitants, remote from war,
are enervated by the luxury of the soil and climate. The legions of
Augustus melted away in disease and lassitude; and it is only by a naval
power that the reduction of Yemen has been successfully attempted. When
Mohammed erected his holy standard, that kingdom was a province of the
Persian empire; yet seven princes of the Homerites still reigned in the
mountains; and the vicegerent of Chosroes was tempted to forget his
distant country and his unfortunate master.”
Yemen was the only Arabian province which had the appearance of
submitting to a foreign yoke; but even here, as Mr. Gibbon himself
acknowledges, seven of the native princes remained unsubdued: and even
admitting its subjugation to have been complete, the perpetual
independence of the Ishmaelites remains unimpeached. For this is not
their country. Petra, the capital of the Stony Arabia, and the principal
settlement of the Nabathæi, it is true, was long in the hands of the
Persians and Romans; but this never made them masters of the country.
Hovering troops of Arabs confined the intruders within their walls, and
cut off their supplies; and the possession of this fortress gave as
little reason to the Romans to exult as the conquerors of Arabia Petræa,
as that of Gibraltar does to us to boast of the conquest of Spain.
The Arabian tribes were confounded by the Greeks and Romans under the
indiscriminate appellation of Saracens; a name whose etymology has been
variously, but never satisfactorily, explained. This was their general
name when Mohammed appeared in the beginning of the seventh century.
Their religion at this time was Sabianism, or the worship of the sun,
moon, &c; variously transformed by the different tribes, and
intermingled with some Jewish and Christian maxims and traditions. The
tribes themselves were generally at variance, from some hereditary and
implacable animosities; and their only warfare consisted in desultory
skirmishes arising out of these feuds, and in their predatory
excursions, where superiority of numbers rendered courage of less value
than activity and vigilance. Yet of such materials Mohammed constructed
a mighty empire; converted the relapsed Ishmaelites into good Musselmen;
united the jarring tribes under one banner; supplied what was wanting in
personal courage by the ardour of religious zeal; and out of a banditti,
little known and little feared beyond their own deserts, raised an armed
multitude, which proved the scourge of the world.
Mohammed was born in the year 569, of the noble tribe of the Koreish,
and descended, according to eastern historians, in a direct line from
Ishmael. His person is represented as beautiful, his manners engaging,
and his eloquence powerful; but he was illiterate, like the rest of his
countrymen, and indebted to a Jewish or Christian scribe for penning his
Koran. Whatever the views of Mohammed might have been in the earlier
part of his life, it was not till the fortieth year of his age that he
avowed his mission as the Apostle of God: when so little credit did he
gain for his pretensions, that in the first three years he could only
number fourteen converts; and even at the end of ten years his labours
and his friends were alike confined within the walls of Mecca, when the
designs of his enemies compelled him to fly to Medina, where he was
favourably received by a party of the most considerable inhabitants, who
had recently imbibed his doctrines at Mecca. This flight, or _Hegira_,
was made the Mohammedan æra, from which time is computed, and
corresponds with the 16th of July, 622, of the Christian æra. Mohammed
now found himself sufficiently powerful to throw aside all reserve;
declared that he was commanded to compel unbelievers by the sword to
receive the faith of one God, and his prophet Mohammed; and confirming
his credulous followers by the threats of eternal pain on the one hand,
and the allurements of a sensual paradise on the other, he had, before
his death, which happened in the year 632, gained over the whole of
Arabia to his imposture. His death threw a temporary gloom over his
cause, and the disunion of his followers threatened its extinction. Any
other empire placed in the same circumstances would have crumbled to
pieces; but the Arabs felt their power; they revered their founder as
the chosen prophet of God; and their ardent temperament, animated by a
religious enthusiasm, gave an earnest of future success, and encouraged
the zeal or the ambition of their leaders. The succession, after some
bloodshed, was settled, and unnumbered hordes of barbarians were ready
to carry into execution the sanguinary dictates of their prophet; and,
with “the Koran, tribute, or death,” as their motto, to invade the
countries of the infidels. During the whole of the succeeding century,
their rapid career was unchecked; the disciplined armies of the Greeks
and Romans were unable to stand against them; the Christian churches of
Asia and Africa were annihilated; and from India to the Atlantic,
through Persia, Arabia, Syria, Palestine, Asia Minor, Egypt, with the
whole of northern Africa, Spain, and part of France, the impostor was
acknowledged. Constantinople was besieged; Rome itself was plundered;
and nothing less than the subjection of the whole Christian world was
meditated on the one hand and tremblingly expected on the other.
All this was wonderful; but the avenging justice of an incensed Deity,
and the sure word of prophecy, relieve our astonishment. It was to
punish an apostate race, that the Saracen locusts were let loose upon
the earth; and the countries which they were permitted to ravage were
those in which the pure light of revelation had been most abused. The
eastern church was sunk in gross idolatry; vice and wickedness prevailed
in their worst forms; and those who still called themselves Christians
trusted more to images, relics, altars, austerities, and pilgrimages,
than to a crucified Saviour.
About a hundred and eighty years from the foundation of Bagdad, during
which period the power of the Saracens had gradually declined, a
dreadful reaction took place in the conquered countries. The Persians on
the east, and the Greeks on the west, were simultaneously roused from
their long thraldom, and, assisted by the Turks, who, issuing from the
plains of Tartary, now for the first time made their appearance in the
east, extinguished the power of the caliphate, and virtually put an end
to the Arabian monarchy in the year 936. A succession of nominal caliphs
continued to the year 1258: but the provinces were lost; their power was
confined to the walls of their capital; and they were in real subjection
to the Turks and the Persians until the above year, when Mostacem, the
last of the Abbassides, was dethroned and murdered by Holagou, or
Hulaku, the Tartar, the grandson of Zingis. This event, although it
terminated the foreign dominion of the Arabians, left their native
independence untouched. They were no longer, indeed, the masters of the
finest parts of the three great divisions of the ancient world: their
work was finished; and returning to the state in which Mohammed found
them three centuries before, with the exception of the change in their
religion, they remained, and still remain, the unconquered rovers of the
desert.
It is not the least singular circumstance in the history of this
extraordinary people, that those who, in the enthusiasm of their first
successes, were the sworn foes of literature, should become for several
ages its exclusive patrons. Almansor, the founder of Bagdad, has the
merit of first exciting this spirit, which was encouraged in a still
greater degree by his grandson Almamon. This caliph employed his agents
in Armenia, Syria, Egypt, and at Constantinople, in collecting the most
celebrated works on Grecian science, and had them translated into the
Arabic language. Philosophy, astronomy, geometry, and medicine, were
thus introduced and taught; public schools were established; and
learning, which had altogether fled from Europe, found an asylum on the
banks of the Tigris. Nor was this spirit confined to the capital: native
works began to appear; and by the hands of copyists were multiplied out
of number, for the information of the studious, or the pride of the
wealthy. The rage for literature extended to Egypt and to Spain. In the
former country, the Fatimites collected a library of a hundred thousand
manuscripts, beautifully transcribed, and very elegantly bound; and in
the latter, the Ommiades formed another of six hundred thousand volumes;
forty-four of which were employed in the catalogue. Their capital,
Cordova, with the towns of Malaga, Almeria, and Murcia, produced three
hundred writers; and seventy public libraries were established in the
cities of Andalusia. What a change since the days of Omar, when the
splendid library of the Ptolemies was wantonly destroyed by the same
people! A retribution, though a slight one, was thus made for their
former devastations; and many Grecian works, lost in the original, have
been recovered in their Arabic dress. Neither was this learning confined
to mere parade, though much of it must undoubtedly have been so. Their
proficiency in astronomy and geometry is attested by their astronomical
tables, and by the accuracy with which, in the plain of Chaldea, a
degree of the great circle of the earth was measured. But it was in
medicine that, in this dark age, the Arabians shone most: the works of
Hippocrates and Galen had been translated and commented on; their
physicians were sought after by the princes of Asia and Europe; and the
names of Rhazis, Albucasis, and Avicenna are still revered by the
members of the healing art. So little, indeed, did the physicians of
Europe in that age know of the history of their own science, that they
were astonished, on the revival of learning, to find in the ancient
Greek authors those systems for which they thought themselves indebted
to the Arabians!
The last remnant of Arabian science was found in Spain; from whence it
was expelled in the beginning of the seventeenth century, by the
intemperate bigots of that country, who have never had any thing of
their own with which to supply its place. The Arabians are the only
people who have preserved their descent, their independence, their
language, and their manners and customs, from the earliest ages to the
present times; and it is among them that we are to look for examples of
patriarchal life and manners. A very lively sketch of this mode of life
is given by Sir R. K. Porter, in the person and tribe of an Arab sheik,
whom he encountered in the neighbourhood of the Euphrates. “I had met
this warrior,” says Sir R. K. P., “at the house of the British resident
at Bagdad; and came, according to his repeated wish, to see him in a
place more consonant with his habits, the tented field; and, as he
expressed it, ‘at the head of his children.’ As soon as we arrived in
sight of his camp, we were met by crowds of its inhabitants, who, with a
wild and hurrying delight, led us toward the tent of their chief. The
venerable old man came forth to the door, attended by his subjects of
all sizes and descriptions, and greeted us with a countenance beaming
kindness; while his words, which our interpreter explained, were
demonstrative of patriarchal welcome. One of my Hindoo troopers spoke
Arabic; hence the substance of our succeeding discourse was not lost on
each other. Having entered, I sat down by my host; and the whole of the
persons present, to far beyond the boundaries of the tent, (the sides of
which were open,) seated themselves also, without any regard to those
more civilized ceremonies of subjection, the crouching of slaves, or the
standing of vassalage. These persons, in rows beyond rows, appeared just
as he had described, the offspring of his house, the descendants of his
fathers, from age to age; and like brethren, whether holding the highest
or the lowest rank, they seemed to gather round their common parent. But
perhaps their sense of perfect equality in the mind of their chief could
not be more forcibly shown, than in the share they took in the objects
which appeared to interest his feelings; and as I looked from the elders
or leaders of the people, seated immediately around him, to the circles
beyond circles of brilliant faces, bending eagerly toward him and his
guest, (all, from the most respectably clad to those with hardly a
garment covering their active limbs, earnest to evince some attention to
the stranger he bade welcome,) I thought I had never before seen so
complete an assemblage of fine and animated countenances, both old and
young: nor could I suppose a better specimen of the still existing state
of the true Arab; nor a more lively picture of the scene which must have
presented itself, ages ago, in the fields of Haran, when Terah sat in
his tent door, surrounded by his sons, and his sons’ sons, and the
people born in his house. The venerable Arabian sheik was also seated on
the ground with a piece of carpet spread under him; and, like his
ancient Chaldean ancestor, turned to the one side and the other,
graciously answering or questioning the groups around him, with an
interest in them all which clearly showed the abiding simplicity of his
government, and their obedience. On the smallest computation, such must
have been the manners of these people for more than three thousand
years; thus, in all things, verifying the prediction given of Ishmael at
his birth, that he, in his posterity, should ‘be a wild man,’ and always
continue to be so, though ‘he shall dwell for ever in the presence of
his brethren.’ And that an acute and active people, surrounded for ages
by polished and luxurious nations, should from their earliest to their
latest times, be still found _a wild people, dwelling in the presence of
all their brethren_, (as we may call these nations,) unsubdued and
unchangeable, is, indeed, a standing miracle: one of those mysterious
facts which establish the truth of prophecy.” But although the manners
of the Arabians have remained unaltered through so many ages, and will
probably so continue, their religion, as we have seen, has sustained an
important change; and must again, in the fulness of time, give place to
a faith more worthy of the people.
St. Paul first preached the Gospel in Arabia, Gal. i, 17. Christian
churches were subsequently founded, and many of their tribes embraced
Christianity prior to the fifth century; most of which appear to have
been tinctured with the Nestorian heresy. At this time, however, it does
not appear that the Arabians had any version of the Scriptures in their
own language, to which some writers attribute the ease with which they
were drawn into the Mohammedan delusion; while the “Greeks, Syrians,
Armenians, Abyssinians, Copts, and others,” who enjoyed that privilege,
were able to resist it.