among strangers and natives; and the arts of controversy transform this
singular event into a prophecy and a miracle, in favor of the posterity
of Ismael. Some exceptions, that can neither be dismissed 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 Ismael and
his sons must have pitched their tents in the face of their brethren.
Yet these exceptions 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 Mahomet, their intrepid valor had
been severely felt by their neighbors 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 cimeter. 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 fourscore
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 Bedoweens 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 Mahomet 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. The historians of the age of Justinian represent
the state of the independent Arabs, who were divided by interest or
affection in the long quarrel of the East: the tribe of _Gassan_ was
allowed to encamp on the Syrian territory: the princes of _Hira_ were
permitted to form a city about forty miles to the southward of the ruins
of Babylon. Their service in the field was speedy and vigorous; but
their friendship was venal, their faith inconstant, their enmity
capricious: it was an easier task to excite than to disarm these roving
barbarians; and, in the familiar intercourse of war, they learned to
see, and to despise, the splendid weakness both of Rome and of Persia.
From Mecca to the Euphrates, the Arabian tribes were confounded by the
Greeks and Latins, under the general appellation of Saracens, a name
which every Christian mouth has been taught to pronounce with terror and
abhorrence.
Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.--Part II.
The slaves of domestic tyranny may vainly exult in their national
independence: but the Arab is personally free; and he enjoys, in some
degree, the benefits of society, without forfeiting the prerogatives
of nature. In every tribe, superstition, or gratitude, or fortune,
has exalted a particular family above the heads of their equals. The
dignities of sheick and emir invariably descend in this chosen race; but
the order of succession is loose and precarious; and the most worthy or
aged of the noble kinsmen are preferred to the simple, though important,
office of composing disputes by their advice, and guiding valor by their
example. Even a female of sense and spirit has been permitted to command
the countrymen of Zenobia. The momentary junction of several tribes
produces an army: their more lasting union constitutes a nation; and
the supreme chief, the emir of emirs, whose banner is displayed at their
head, may deserve, in the eyes of strangers, the honors of the kingly
name. If the Arabian princes abuse their power, they are quickly
punished by the desertion of their subjects, who had been accustomed to
a mild and parental jurisdiction. Their spirit is free, their steps are
unconfined, the desert is open, and the tribes and families are held
together by a mutual and voluntary compact. The softer natives of Yemen
supported the pomp and majesty of a monarch; but if he could not leave
his palace without endangering his life, the active powers of government
must have been devolved on his nobles and magistrates. The cities of
Mecca and Medina present, in the heart of Asia, the form, or rather the
substance, of a commonwealth. The grandfather of Mahomet, and his lineal
ancestors, appear in foreign and domestic transactions as the princes of
their country; but they reigned, like Pericles at Athens, or the
Medici at Florence, by the opinion of their wisdom and integrity;
their influence was divided with their patrimony; and the sceptre was
transferred from the uncles of the prophet to a younger branch of the
tribe of Koreish. On solemn occasions they convened the assembly of
the people; and, since mankind must be either compelled or persuaded to
obey, the use and reputation of oratory among the ancient Arabs is the
clearest evidence of public freedom. But their simple freedom was of a
very different cast from the nice and artificial machinery of the Greek
and Roman republics, in which each member possessed an undivided share
of the civil and political rights of the community. In the more simple
state of the Arabs, the nation is free, because each of her sons
disdains a base submission to the will of a master. His breast is
fortified by the austere virtues of courage, patience, and sobriety; the
love of independence prompts him to exercise the habits of self-command;
and the fear of dishonor guards him from the meaner apprehension of
pain, of danger, and of death. The gravity and firmness of the mind is
conspicuous in his outward demeanor; his speech is low, weighty, and
concise; he is seldom provoked to laughter; his only gesture is that of
stroking his beard, the venerable symbol of manhood; and the sense of
his own importance teaches him to accost his equals without levity, and
his superiors without awe. The liberty of the Saracens survived their
conquests: the first caliphs indulged the bold and familiar language
of their subjects; they ascended the pulpit to persuade and edify the
congregation; nor was it before the seat of empire was removed to the
Tigris, that the Abbasides adopted the proud and pompous ceremonial of
the Persian and Byzantine courts.
In the study of nations and men, we may observe the causes that render
them hostile or friendly to each other, that tend to narrow or enlarge,
to mollify or exasperate, the social character. The separation of the
Arabs from the rest of mankind has accustomed them to confound the ideas
of stranger and enemy; and the poverty of the land has introduced a
maxim of jurisprudence, which they believe and practise to the present
hour. They pretend, that, in the division of the earth, the rich and
fertile climates were assigned to the other branches of the human
family; and that the posterity of the outlaw Ismael might recover, by
fraud or force, the portion of inheritance of which he had been unjustly
deprived. According to the remark of Pliny, the Arabian tribes are
equally addicted to theft and merchandise; the caravans that traverse
the desert are ransomed or pillaged; and their neighbors, since the
remote times of Job and Sesostris, have been the victims of their
rapacious spirit. If a Bedoween discovers from afar a solitary
traveller, he rides furiously against him, crying, with a loud voice,
"Undress thyself, thy aunt (_my wife_) is without a garment." A ready
submission entitles him to mercy; resistance will provoke the aggressor,
and his own blood must expiate the blood which he presumes to shed in
legitimate defence. A single robber, or a few associates, are branded
with their genuine name; but the exploits of a numerous band assume the
character of lawful and honorable war. The temper of a people thus armed
against mankind was doubly inflamed by the domestic license of rapine,
murder, and revenge. In the constitution of Europe, the right of peace
and war is now confined to a small, and the actual exercise to a much
smaller, list of respectable potentates; but each Arab, with impunity
and renown, might point his javelin against the life of his countrymen.
The union of the nation consisted only in a vague resemblance of
language and manners; and in each community, the jurisdiction of
the magistrate was mute and impotent. Of the time of ignorance which
preceded Mahomet, seventeen hundred battles are recorded by tradition:
hostility was imbittered with the rancor of civil faction; and the
recital, in prose or verse, of an obsolete feud, was sufficient to
rekindle the same passions among the descendants of the hostile tribes.
In private life every man, at least every family, was the judge and
avenger of his own cause. The nice sensibility of honor, which weighs
the insult rather than the injury, sheds its deadly venom on the
quarrels of the Arabs: the honor of their women, and of their _beards_,
is most easily wounded; an indecent action, a contemptuous word, can be
expiated only by the blood of the offender; and such is their patient
inveteracy, that they expect whole months and years the opportunity of
revenge. A fine or compensation for murder is familiar to the Barbarians
of every age: but in Arabia the kinsmen of the dead are at liberty to
accept the atonement, or to exercise with their own hands the law of
retaliation. The refined malice of the Arabs refuses even the head
of the murderer, substitutes an innocent for the guilty person, and
transfers the penalty to the best and most considerable of the race
by whom they have been injured. If he falls by their hands, they are
exposed, in their turn, to the danger of reprisals, the interest and
principal of the bloody debt are accumulated: the individuals of
either family lead a life of malice and suspicion, and fifty years may
sometimes elapse before the account of vengeance be finally settled.
This sanguinary spirit, ignorant of pity or forgiveness, has been
moderated, however, by the maxims of honor, which require in every
private encounter some decent equality of age and strength, of numbers
and weapons. An annual festival of two, perhaps of four, months, was
observed by the Arabs before the time of Mahomet, during which their
swords were religiously sheathed both in foreign and domestic hostility;
and this partial truce is more strongly expressive of the habits of
anarchy and warfare.
But the spirit of rapine and revenge was attempered by the milder
influence of trade and literature. The solitary peninsula is encompassed
by the most civilized nations of the ancient world; the merchant is the
friend of mankind; and the annual caravans imported the first seeds
of knowledge and politeness into the cities, and even the camps of the
desert. Whatever may be the pedigree of the Arabs, their language is
derived from the same original stock with the Hebrew, the Syriac, and
the ChaldÊan tongues; the independence of the tribes was marked by their
peculiar dialects; but each, after their own, allowed a just preference
to the pure and perspicuous idiom of Mecca. In Arabia, as well as
in Greece, the perfection of language outstripped the refinement of
manners; and her speech could diversify the fourscore names of honey,
the two hundred of a serpent, the five hundred of a lion, the thousand
of a sword, at a time when this copious dictionary was intrusted to
the memory of an illiterate people. The monuments of the Homerites
were inscribed with an obsolete and mysterious character; but the Cufic
letters, the groundwork of the present alphabet, were invented on the
banks of the Euphrates; and the recent invention was taught at Mecca by
a stranger who settled in that city after the birth of Mahomet. The
arts of grammar, of metre, and of rhetoric, were unknown to the freeborn
eloquence of the Arabians; but their penetration was sharp, their fancy
luxuriant, their wit strong and sententious, and their more elaborate
compositions were addressed with energy and effect to the minds of their
hearers. The genius and merit of a rising poet was celebrated by
the applause of his own and the kindred tribes. A solemn banquet was
prepared, and a chorus of women, striking their tymbals, and displaying
the pomp of their nuptials, sung in the presence of their sons and
husbands the felicity of their native tribe; that a champion had now
appeared to vindicate their rights; that a herald had raised his voice
to immortalize their renown. The distant or hostile tribes resorted
to an annual fair, which was abolished by the fanaticism of the first
Moslems; a national assembly that must have contributed to refine and
harmonize the Barbarians. Thirty days were employed in the exchange,
not only of corn and wine, but of eloquence and poetry. The prize
was disputed by the generous emulation of the bards; the victorious
performance was deposited in the archives of princes and emirs; and
we may read in our own language, the seven original poems which were
inscribed in letters of gold, and suspended in the temple of Mecca. The
Arabian poets were the historians and moralists of the age; and if they
sympathized with the prejudices, they inspired and crowned the virtues,
of their countrymen. The indissoluble union of generosity and valor was
the darling theme of their song; and when they pointed their keenest
satire against a despicable race, they affirmed, in the bitterness of
reproach, that the men knew not how to give, nor the women to deny.
The same hospitality, which was practised by Abraham, and celebrated
by Homer, is still renewed in the camps of the Arabs. The ferocious
Bedoweens, the terror of the desert, embrace, without inquiry or
hesitation, the stranger who dares to confide in their honor and to
enter their tent. His treatment is kind and respectful: he shares the
wealth, or the poverty, of his host; and, after a needful repose, he
is dismissed on his way, with thanks, with blessings, and perhaps with
gifts. The heart and hand are more largely expanded by the wants of a
brother or a friend; but the heroic acts that could deserve the public
applause, must have surpassed the narrow measure of discretion and
experience. A dispute had arisen, who, among the citizens of Mecca, was
entitled to the prize of generosity; and a successive application was
made to the three who were deemed most worthy of the trial. Abdallah,
the son of Abbas, had undertaken a distant journey, and his foot was in
the stirrup when he heard the voice of a suppliant, "O son of the uncle
of the apostle of God, I am a traveller, and in distress!" He instantly
dismounted to present the pilgrim with his camel, her rich caparison,
and a purse of four thousand pieces of gold, excepting only the sword,
either for its intrinsic value, or as the gift of an honored kinsman.
The servant of Kais informed the second suppliant that his master was
asleep: but he immediately added, "Here is a purse of seven thousand
pieces of gold, (it is all we have in the house,) and here is an order,
that will entitle you to a camel and a slave;" the master, as soon as
he awoke, praised and enfranchised his faithful steward, with a gentle
reproof, that by respecting his slumbers he had stinted his bounty.
The third of these heroes, the blind Arabah, at the hour of prayer, was
supporting his steps on the shoulders of two slaves. "Alas!" he replied,
"my coffers are empty! but these you may sell; if you refuse, I renounce
them." At these words, pushing away the youths, he groped along the wall
with his staff. The character of Hatem is the perfect model of Arabian
virtue: he was brave and liberal, an eloquent poet, and a successful
robber; forty camels were roasted at his hospitable feast; and at the
prayer of a suppliant enemy he restored both the captives and the
spoil. The freedom of his countrymen disdained the laws of justice; they
proudly indulged the spontaneous impulse of pity and benevolence.
The religion of the Arabs, as well as of the Indians, consisted in
the worship of the sun, the moon, and the fixed stars; a primitive and
specious mode of superstition. The bright luminaries of the sky display
the visible image of a Deity: their number and distance convey to a
philosophic, or even a vulgar, eye, the idea of boundless space:
the character of eternity is marked on these solid globes, that seem
incapable of corruption or decay: the regularity of their motions may
be ascribed to a principle of reason or instinct; and their real, or
imaginary, influence encourages the vain belief that the earth and
its inhabitants are the object of their peculiar care. The science of
astronomy was cultivated at Babylon; but the school of the Arabs was
a clear firmament and a naked plain. In their nocturnal marches, they
steered by the guidance of the stars: their names, and order, and daily
station, were familiar to the curiosity and devotion of the Bedoween;
and he was taught by experience to divide, in twenty-eight parts, the
zodiac of the moon, and to bless the constellations who refreshed, with
salutary rains, the thirst of the desert. The reign of the heavenly orbs
could not be extended beyond the visible sphere; and some metaphysical
powers were necessary to sustain the transmigration of souls and the
resurrection of bodies: a camel was left to perish on the grave, that he
might serve his master in another life; and the invocation of departed
spirits implies that they were still endowed with consciousness and
power. I am ignorant, and I am careless, of the blind mythology of the
Barbarians; of the local deities, of the stars, the air, and the earth,
of their sex or titles, their attributes or subordination. Each tribe,
each family, each independent warrior, created and changed the rites and
the object of his fantastic worship; but the nation, in every age, has
bowed to the religion, as well as to the language, of Mecca. The genuine
antiquity of the Caaba ascends beyond the Christian Êra; in describing
the coast of the Red Sea, the Greek historian Diodorus has remarked,
between the Thamudites and the SabÊans, a famous temple, whose superior
sanctity was revered by _all_ the Arabians; the linen or silken veil,
which is annually renewed by the Turkish emperor, was first offered by a
pious king of the Homerites, who reigned seven hundred years before the
time of Mahomet. A tent, or a cavern, might suffice for the worship of
the savages, but an edifice of stone and clay has been erected in its
place; and the art and power of the monarchs of the East have been
confined to the simplicity of the original model. A spacious portico
encloses the quadrangle of the Caaba; a square chapel, twenty-four
cubits long, twenty-three broad, and twenty-seven high: a door and a
window admit the light; the double roof is supported by three pillars
of wood; a spout (now of gold) discharges the rain-water, and the well
Zemzen is protected by a dome from accidental pollution. The tribe of
Koreish, by fraud and force, had acquired the custody of the Caaba:
the sacerdotal office devolved through four lineal descents to the
grandfather of Mahomet; and the family of the Hashemites, from whence
he sprung, was the most respectable and sacred in the eyes of their
country. The precincts of Mecca enjoyed the rights of sanctuary; and, in
the last month of each year, the city and the temple were crowded with
a long train of pilgrims, who presented their vows and offerings in the
house of God. The same rites which are now accomplished by the faithful
Mussulman, were invented and practised by the superstition of the
idolaters. At an awful distance they cast away their garments: seven
times, with hasty steps, they encircled the Caaba, and kissed the black
stone: seven times they visited and adored the adjacent mountains; seven
times they threw stones into the valley of Mina; and the pilgrimage was
achieved, as at the present hour, by a sacrifice of sheep and camels,
and the burial of their hair and nails in the consecrated ground. Each
tribe either found or introduced in the Caaba their domestic worship:
the temple was adorned, or defiled, with three hundred and sixty idols
of men, eagles, lions, and antelopes; and most conspicuous was the
statue of Hebal, of red agate, holding in his hand seven arrows, without
heads or feathers, the instruments and symbols of profane divination.
But this statue was a monument of Syrian arts: the devotion of the ruder
ages was content with a pillar or a tablet; and the rocks of the desert
were hewn into gods or altars, in imitation of the black stone of Mecca,
which is deeply tainted with the reproach of an idolatrous origin. From
Japan to Peru, the use of sacrifice has universally prevailed; and the
votary has expressed his gratitude, or fear, by destroying or consuming,
in honor of the gods, the dearest and most precious of their gifts.
The life of a man is the most precious oblation to deprecate a public
calamity: the altars of Phnicia and Egypt, of Rome and Carthage, have
been polluted with human gore: the cruel practice was long preserved
among the Arabs; in the third century, a boy was annually sacrificed by
the tribe of the Dumatians; and a royal captive was piously slaughtered
by the prince of the Saracens, the ally and soldier of the emperor
Justinian. A parent who drags his son to the altar, exhibits the most
painful and sublime effort of fanaticism: the deed, or the intention,
was sanctified by the example of saints and heroes; and the father of
Mahomet himself was devoted by a rash vow, and hardly ransomed for the
equivalent of a hundred camels. In the time of ignorance, the Arabs,
like the Jews and Egyptians, abstained from the taste of swine's flesh;
they circumcised their children at the age of puberty: the same customs,
without the censure or the precept of the Koran, have been silently
transmitted to their posterity and proselytes. It has been sagaciously
conjectured, that the artful legislator indulged the stubborn prejudices
of his countrymen. It is more simple to believe that he adhered to the
habits and opinions of his youth, without foreseeing that a practice
congenial to the climate of Mecca might become useless or inconvenient
on the banks of the Danube or the Volga.
Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.--Part III.