SOHAIL

SOHAIL is the Arabic name of the star Canopus, to which a curious belief

belongs. It appears that in some fashion, known alone to Allah, the fate

of the Arab race is bound up with the star. Where it sheds its light

their empire flourishes, and there alone. Wherefore or why the thing is

so, no true believer seems to know, but that it is so he is well aware,

and that suffices him.

Questionings and doubts, changes of costume and religion, striving for

ideals, improvements, telegraphs and telephones, are well enough for

Christians, whose lives are passed in hurry and in hunting after gold.

For those who have changed but little for the last two thousand years, in

dress, in faith and customs, it is enough to know it is a talismanic

star. Let star-gazers and those who deal in books, dub the star Alpha

(or Beta) Argo, it is all one to Arabs. If you question knowledge, say

the Easterns, it falls from its estate. If this is so the empiric method

has much to answer for. Knowledge and virtue and a horse’s mouth should

not pass through too many hands. Knowledge is absolute, and even

argument but dulls it, and strips it of its authenticity, as the bloom of

a ripe peach is lost, almost by looking on it.

Of one thing there can be no doubt. When in the Yemen, ages before the

first historian penned the fable known as history, the Arabs, watching

their flocks, observed Sohail, it seems to have struck them as a star

differing from all the rest.

Al-Makkari writes of it on several occasions. The Dervish Abderahman

Sufi of Rai, in his _Introduction to the Starry Heavens_, remarks that,

at the feet of Sohail is seen, in the neighbourhood of Bagdad, a “curious

white spot.” The “curious white spot” astronomers have thought to be the

greater of the two Magellan clouds. Perhaps it is so, but I doubt if the

Arabs, as a race, were concerned about the matter, so that they saw the

star.

From wandering warring tribes Mohammed made a nation of them. Mohammed

died and joined the wife in paradise, of whom he said, “By Allah, she

shall sit at my right hand, because when all men laughed she clave to

me.” Then came Othman, Ali, and the rest, and led them into other lands,

to Irak, Damascus, El Hind, to Ifrikia, lastly to Spain, and still their

empire waxed, even across the “black waters” of the seas, and still

Sohail was there to shine upon them. In the great adventure, one of the

few in which a people has engaged; when first Tarik landed his Berbers on

the rock which bears his name; at the battle on the Guadalete where the

king, Don Roderick, disappeared from the eyes of men, leaving his golden

sandals by a stream; to Seville, Cordoba, and Murcia, the land of Teodmir

ben Gobdos, to which the Arabs gave the name of Masr, right up to

Zaragoza, Sohail accompanied the host. A curious host it must have been

with Muza riding on a mule, and with but two-and-twenty camels to carry

all its baggage. From Jativa to Huesca of the Bell, where King Ramiro,

at the instigation of Abbot Frotardo (a learned man), cut off his nobles’

heads as they were poppies in a field, they followed it across the

Pyrenees, halting at the spot where from his “Camp in Aquitaine” Muza

dispatched a messenger to Rome to tell the Pope that he was coming to

take him by the beard if he refused Islam. Then the wise men (who always

march with armies), looking aloft at night, declared the star was lost.

Although they smote the Christian dogs, taking their lands, their

daughters, horses, and their gold, on several occasions as Allah willed

it, yet victory was not so stable as in Spain. Perhaps beyond the

mountains their spirits fell from lack of sun, or their horses sickened

in the fat plains of France.

Then the conquering tide had spent itself and flowed back into Spain; at

Zaragoza the first Moorish kingdom rose. Al-Makkari writes that at that

time Sohail was visible in Upper Aragon, but low on the horizon. Again

the Christians conquered, and the royal race of Aben Hud fled from the

city. Ibn Jaldun relates that, shortly afterwards, Sohail became

invisible from Aragon. The Cid, Rodrigo Diaz, he of Vivar (may God

remember him), prevailed against Valencia, and from thence the star,

indignant, took its departure. And so of Jativa, Beni Carlo, and

Alpuixech.

Little by little Elche, with its palm-woods, and even Murcia bade it

good-bye, as one by one, in the centuries of strife, the Christians in

succession conquered each one of them. At last the belief gained ground

that, only at one place in Spain, called from the circumstance Sohail,

could the star be seen. At Fuengirola, between Malaga and Marbella,

still stands the little town the Arabs called Sohail, lost amongst

sand-hills, looking across at Africa, of which it seems to form a part;

cactus and olive, cane-brake and date palms, its chiefest vegetation; in

summer, hot as Bagdad, in winter, sheltered from the winds which come

from Christendom by the Sierras of the Alpujarra and Segura. Surely

there the star would stop, and let the Arab power flourish under its

influence, and there for centuries it did stand stationary. The City of

the Pomegranate was founded, the Alhambra, with its brilliant court, the

Generalife; and poets, travellers, and men of science gathered at

Granada, Cordoba, and at Isbilieh. Ab-Motacim, the poet king of Cordoba,

planted the hills with almond trees, to give the effect of snow, which

Romaiquia longed for. He wrote his _Kasidas_, and filled the courtyard

full of spices and sugar for his queen to trample on, when she saw the

women of the brick-makers kneading the clay with naked feet, and found

her riches but a burden to her. Averroes and Avicenna, the doctors of

medicine and of law, laid down their foolish rules of practice and of

conduct, and all went well. Medina-el-Azahra, now a pile of stones where

shepherds sleep or make believe to watch their sheep, where once the

Caliph entertained the ambassador from Constantinople, showing him the

golden basin full of quicksilver, “like a great ocean,” rose from the

arid hills, and seemed eternal. Allah appeared to smile upon his people,

and in proof of it let his star shine. Jehovah though was jealous. A

jealous God, evolved by Jews and taken upon trust by Christians, could

not endure the empire of Islam. Again town after town was conquered,

Baeza, Loja, Antequera, Guadix and Velez-Malaga, even Alhama (Woe is me,

Alhama), lastly Granada. Then came the kingdom of the Alpujarra, with

the persecutions and the rebellions, Arabs and Christians fighting like

wolves and torturing one another for the love of their respective Gods.

Yet the star lingered on at Fuengirola, and whilst it still was seen hope

was not lost. A century elapsed, and from Gibraltar—from the spot where

first they landed—the last Moors embarked. In Spain, where once they

ruled from Jaca to Tarifa, no Moor was left. Perhaps about the mountain

villages of Ronda a few remained, but christianized by force, the sword

and faggot ever the best spurs to the true faith. But they were not the

folk to think of stars or legends, so that no one (of the true faith)

could say whether Sohail still lingered over Spain.

Trains, telegraphs, and phonographs, elections and debates in parliament,

with clothes unsuited to the people they deform, give a false air of

Europe to the land. The palm-trees, cactus, canes, and olives, the tapia

walls, the women’s walk and eyes, the horses’ paces, and the fatalistic

air which hangs on everything, give them the lie direct. The empire of

the Arabs, though departed, yet retains its hold. The hands that built

the mosque at Cordoba, the Giralda, the Alhambra, and almost every parish

church in Southern Spain, from ruined aqueduct and mosque, sign to the

Christian half derisively. So all the land from the gaunt northern

mountains to the hot swamps along the Guad-el-Kebir (stretching from

Seville to San Lucar) is part of Africa. The reasons are set forth

lengthily by the ethnographers, economists, and the grave foolish rout of

those who write for people who know nothing, of what they do not

understand themselves.

But the star’s lingering is the real cause, and whilst it lingers things

can never really go on in Spain as they go on in England, where gloom

obscures all stars. The Arabs, issuing from the desert like the khamsin,

came, conquered, and possessed, their star shone on them, and its rays

sank deep into the land. Their empire waned, and they, retreating,

disappeared into the sands from whence they sprang. Spain knows them

not, but yet their influence remains. Only at Cadiz can the talisman be

seen, shining low down on the horizon, and still waiting till the

precession of the equinoxes takes it across the Straits. Let it recross,

and shine upon the old wild life of the vast plains, upon the horsemen

flying on the sands, whirling and circling like gulls, whilst the veiled

women raise the joyous cry which pierces ears and soul; upon the solemn

stately men who sit and look at nothing all a summer’s day, and above all

upon the waveless inland sea men call the Sahara.

There may it shine for ever on the life unchanged since the Moalakat,

when first the rude astronomers observed the talisman and framed the

legend on some starry night, all seated on the ground.

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