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. 31 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, 32 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. 33 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. 34 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.

31 (return) [ Saraceni... mulieres aiunt in eos regnare,
(Expositio totius Mundi, p. 3, in Hudson, tom. iii.) The reign of
Mavia is famous in ecclesiastical story Pocock, Specimen, p. 69,
83.]

32 (return) [ The report of Agatharcides, (de Mari Rubro, p. 63,
64, in Hudson, tom. i.) Diodorus Siculus, (tom. i. l. iii. c. 47,
p. 215,) and Strabo, (l. xvi. p. 1124.) But I much suspect that
this is one of the popular tales, or extraordinary accidents,
which the credulity of travellers so often transforms into a
fact, a custom, and a law.]

33 (return) [ Non gloriabantur antiquitus Arabes, nisi gladio,
hospite, et eloquentia (Sephadius apud Pocock, Specimen, p. 161,
162.) This gift of speech they shared only with the Persians; and
the sententious Arabs would probably have disdained the simple
and sublime logic of Demosthenes.]

34 (return) [ I must remind the reader that D’Arvieux,
D’Herbelot, and Niebuhr, represent, in the most lively colors,
the manners and government of the Arabs, which are illustrated by
many incidental passages in the Life of Mahomet. * Note: See,
likewise the curious romance of Antar, the most vivid and
authentic picture of Arabian manners.—M.]

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,
35 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 36
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. 37
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. 38

35 (return) [ Observe the first chapter of Job, and the long wall
of 1500 stadia which Sesostris built from Pelusium to Heliopolis,
(Diodor. Sicul. tom. i. l. i. p. 67.) Under the name of Hycsos,
the shepherd kings, they had formerly subdued Egypt, (Marsham,
Canon. Chron. p. 98-163) &c.) * Note: This origin of the Hycsos,
though probable, is by no means so certain here is some reason
for supposing them Scythians.—M]

36 (return) [ Or, according to another account, 1200,
(D’Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 75: ) the two historians
who wrote of the Ayam al Arab, the battles of the Arabs, lived in
the 9th and 10th century. The famous war of Dahes and Gabrah was
occasioned by two horses, lasted forty years, and ended in a
proverb, (Pocock, Specimen, p. 48.)]

37 (return) [ The modern theory and practice of the Arabs in the
revenge of murder are described by Niebuhr, (Description, p.
26-31.) The harsher features of antiquity may be traced in the
Koran, c. 2, p. 20, c. 17, p. 230, with Sale’s Observations.]

38 (return) [ Procopius (de Bell. Persic. l. i. c. 16) places the
two holy months about the summer solstice. The Arabians
consecrate four months of the year—the first, seventh, eleventh,
and twelfth; and pretend, that in a long series of ages the truce
was infringed only four or six times, (Sale’s Preliminary
Discourse, p. 147-150, and Notes on the ixth chapter of the
Koran, p. 154, &c. Casiri, Bibliot. Hispano-Arabica, tom. ii. p.
20, 21.)]

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 Chaldaean
tongues; the independence of the tribes was marked by their
peculiar dialects; 39 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,
40 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. 41 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. 42 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: 43
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.

39 (return) [ Arrian, in the second century, remarks (in Periplo
Maris Erythraei, p. 12) the partial or total difference of the
dialects of the Arabs. Their language and letters are copiously
treated by Pocock, (Specimen, p. 150-154,) Casiri, (Bibliot.
Hispano-Arabica, tom. i. p. 1, 83, 292, tom. ii. p. 25, &c.,) and
Niebuhr, (Description de l’Arabie, p. 72-36) I pass slightly; I
am not fond of repeating words like a parrot.]

40 (return) [ A familiar tale in Voltaire’s Zadig (le Chien et le
Cheval) is related, to prove the natural sagacity of the Arabs,
(D’Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 120, 121. Gagnier, Vie de
Mahomet, tom. i. p. 37-46: ) but D’Arvieux, or rather La Roque,
(Voyage de Palestine, p. 92,) denies the boasted superiority of
the Bedoweens. The one hundred and sixty-nine sentences of Ali
(translated by Ockley, London, 1718) afford a just and favorable
specimen of Arabian wit. * Note: Compare the Arabic proverbs
translated by Burckhardt. London. 1830—M.]

41 (return) [ Pocock (Specimen, p. 158-161) and Casiri (Bibliot.
Hispano-Arabica, tom. i. p. 48, 84, &c., 119, tom. ii. p. 17,
&c.) speak of the Arabian poets before Mahomet; the seven poems
of the Caaba have been published in English by Sir William Jones;
but his honorable mission to India has deprived us of his own
notes, far more interesting than the obscure and obsolete text.]

42 (return) [ Sale’s Preliminary Discourse, p. 29, 30]

43 (return) [ D’Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 458. Gagnier, Vie
de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 118. Caab and Hesnus (Pocock, Specimen,
p. 43, 46, 48) were likewise conspicuous for their liberality;
and the latter is elegantly praised by an Arabian poet: “Videbis
eum cum accesseris exultantem, ac si dares illi quod ab illo
petis.” * Note: See the translation of the amusing Persian
romance of Hatim Tai, by Duncan Forbes, Esq., among the works
published by the Oriental Translation Fund.—M.]

The religion of the Arabs, 44 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 aera; in describing the coast of the Red Sea, the Greek
historian Diodorus 45 has remarked, between the Thamudites and
the Sabaeans, 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. 46 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. 47 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. 48 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 49 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 50 is the most precious oblation to
deprecate a public calamity: the altars of Phoenicia 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; 51 and a royal captive was piously slaughtered by the
prince of the Saracens, the ally and soldier of the emperor
Justinian. 52 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; 53 they circumcised 54
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.

44 (return) [ Whatever can now be known of the idolatry of the
ancient Arabians may be found in Pocock, (Specimen, p. 89-136,
163, 164.) His profound erudition is more clearly and concisely
interpreted by Sale, (Preliminary Discourse, p. 14-24;) and
Assemanni (Bibliot. Orient tom. iv. p. 580-590) has added some
valuable remarks.]

45 (return) [ (Diodor. Sicul. tom. i. l. iii. p. 211.) The
character and position are so correctly apposite, that I am
surprised how this curious passage should have been read without
notice or application. Yet this famous temple had been overlooked
by Agatharcides, (de Mari Rubro, p. 58, in Hudson, tom. i.,) whom
Diodorus copies in the rest of the description. Was the Sicilian
more knowing than the Egyptian? Or was the Caaba built between
the years of Rome 650 and 746, the dates of their respective
histories? (Dodwell, in Dissert. ad tom. i. Hudson, p. 72.
Fabricius, Bibliot. Graec. tom. ii. p. 770.) * Note: Mr. Forster
(Geography of Arabia, vol. ii. p. 118, et seq.) has raised an
objection, as I think, fatal to this hypothesis of Gibbon. The
temple, situated in the country of the Banizomeneis, was not
between the Thamudites and the Sabaeans, but higher up than the
coast inhabited by the former. Mr. Forster would place it as far
north as Moiiah. I am not quite satisfied that this will agree
with the whole description of Diodorus—M. 1845.]

46 (return) [ Pocock, Specimen, p. 60, 61. From the death of
Mahomet we ascend to 68, from his birth to 129, years before the
Christian aera. The veil or curtain, which is now of silk and
gold, was no more than a piece of Egyptian linen, (Abulfeda, in
Vit. Mohammed. c. 6, p. 14.)]

47 (return) [ The original plan of the Caaba (which is servilely
copied in Sale, the Universal History, &c.) was a Turkish
draught, which Reland (de Religione Mohammedica, p. 113-123) has
corrected and explained from the best authorities. For the
description and legend of the Caaba, consult Pocock, (Specimen,
p. 115-122,) the Bibliotheque Orientale of D’Herbelot, (Caaba,
Hagir, Zemzem, &c.,) and Sale (Preliminary Discourse, p.
114-122.)]

48 (return) [ Cosa, the fifth ancestor of Mahomet, must have
usurped the Caaba A.D. 440; but the story is differently told by
Jannabi, (Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 65-69,) and by
Abulfeda, (in Vit. Moham. c. 6, p. 13.)]

49 (return) [ In the second century, Maximus of Tyre attributes
to the Arabs the worship of a stone, (Dissert. viii. tom. i. p.
142, edit. Reiske;) and the reproach is furiously reechoed by the
Christians, (Clemens Alex. in Protreptico, p. 40. Arnobius contra
Gentes, l. vi. p. 246.) Yet these stones were no other than of
Syria and Greece, so renowned in sacred and profane antiquity,
(Euseb. Praep. Evangel. l. i. p. 37. Marsham, Canon. Chron. p.
54-56.)]

50 (return) [ The two horrid subjects are accurately discussed by
the learned Sir John Marsham, (Canon. Chron. p. 76-78, 301-304.)
Sanchoniatho derives the Phoenician sacrifices from the example
of Chronus; but we are ignorant whether Chronus lived before, or
after, Abraham, or indeed whether he lived at all.]

51 (return) [ The reproach of Porphyry; but he likewise imputes
to the Roman the same barbarous custom, which, A. U. C. 657, had
been finally abolished. Dumaetha, Daumat al Gendai, is noticed by
Ptolemy (Tabul. p. 37, Arabia, p. 9-29) and Abulfeda, (p. 57,)
and may be found in D’Anville’s maps, in the mid-desert between
Chaibar and Tadmor.]

52 (return) [ Prcoopius, (de Bell. Persico, l. i. c. 28,)
Evagrius, (l. vi. c. 21,) and Pocock, (Specimen, p. 72, 86,)
attest the human sacrifices of the Arabs in the vith century. The
danger and escape of Abdallah is a tradition rather than a fact,
(Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 82-84.)]

53 (return) [ Suillis carnibus abstinent, says Solinus,
(Polyhistor. c. 33,) who copies Pliny (l. viii. c. 68) in the
strange supposition, that hogs can not live in Arabia. The
Egyptians were actuated by a natural and superstitious horror for
that unclean beast, (Marsham, Canon. p. 205.) The old Arabians
likewise practised, post coitum, the rite of ablution, (Herodot.
l. i. c. 80,) which is sanctified by the Mahometan law, (Reland,
p. 75, &c., Chardin, or rather the Mollah of Shah Abbas, tom. iv.
p. 71, &c.)]

54 (return) [ The Mahometan doctors are not fond of the subject;
yet they hold circumcision necessary to salvation, and even
pretend that Mahomet was miraculously born without a foreskin,
(Pocock, Specimen, p. 319, 320. Sale’s Preliminary Discourse, p.
106, 107.)]