Chapter I: The Ancient Arabians (2)

The pre-Islamitic religion of the Arabs was mainly a debasing idolatry polluted by human sacrifices, and ascending, by ill-defined gradations, from the lowest forms of fetichism to the adoration of the stars. Their faith was far from uniform, and almost every tribe had special objects of veneration and peculiar modes of worship. Some were absolutely destitute of the idea of a God; some grovelled before roughly-hewn blocks of stone; others worshipped trees and springs,--the most grateful gifts of nature in a parched and thirsty land; others, again, greeted with praise the rising sun as its beams illuminated the purple mists of the Desert, or bowed reverently at night before the glittering majesty of the heavens. The members of certain tribes were materialists; not a few accepted the metempsychosis; many were familiar with the philosophical creed of the Buddhist, which regarded death as the irrevocable end of all spiritual activity, the beginning of a state of absolute quiescence, of eternal and immutable rest. The majority of the Arab races, however, looked upon their idols as mediators between the Supreme Being and man. Hence they erected temples in their honor, named their children for them, made pilgrimages to their shrines, and solicited their good offices with precious gifts and offerings. The heavenly bodies were placed in the same category. Their intercession with the Deity was also invoked by frequent applications; and to their power, thus indirectly exercised, were attributed the most important as well as the most trivial occurrences of life, the benefits of fortune, the infliction of calamities, the mysterious and terrifying effects of natural phenomena. It is a superstition as old as the human race to imagine the universe to be peopled with mysterious beings, and the lives of men to be moulded by the beneficent or malignant influence of the stars. The worship of the Sun, the genial dispenser of light, of warmth, of health, in whose train follow the increase of flocks, the bursting of buds, the welcome sight of refreshing verdure, the author of all that is useful and attractive in every species of organic life, a worship which in ages of primeval simplicity has always most strongly appealed to the gratitude and veneration of man, was highly popular in Pagan Arabia. Classic historians have established the fact that it was at one time almost universal in the Peninsula, where the idol which was the terrestrial manifestation of that great luminary was designated by the appellation Nur-Allah, “The Light of God.” His authority was everywhere paramount, whether openly worshipped, represented by fire the great purifying agent, or exhibited under various symbols of force and power, which all nations, however separated, and differing in physical and mental characteristics, have, with wonderful unanimity, adopted as his peculiar emblems. Temples were also raised to the Moon, Sirius, Canopus, the Hyades, Mercury, and Jupiter. But of all the starry bodies none enjoyed greater favor, or was worshipped with more splendor, than Saturn. His attributes were often confounded by his votaries with those of his kindred divinities Mars and the Sun. It has been proved by the learned researches of Dozy, that the famous Kaaba was originally a shrine dedicated to that deity. He was the Baal of the Hebrews, and once their tutelary god as well as that of the Phœnicians--carried by the former during their sojourn in the wilderness, venerated by the latter in the magnificent temples of Sidon and Tyre. The extent of his worship in the East was, it might be said, coincident with the view of the brilliant planet by which he was represented in the tropical heavens. The giver of all material blessings, he was, in this capacity, invoked as the creator and preserver of terrestrial life; but he was also propitiated as the avenger of sacrilege and crime. Among different peoples he was adored under innumerable manifestations. The familiar word Israel is a synonym of Saturn; the Hebrew priests knew him as Sabbathai--whence is derived our Sabbath; and in Judea, as in Egypt, the first day of the week was dedicated to and named for him. In Arabia, this popular divinity was known as Hobal, a word indisputably derived from the Hebrew language. Occupying the most exalted position in the Arabic Pantheon, while his image was anthropomorphic, he was, in reality, a representative of the monotheistic principle. His name and his worship in the Peninsula were alike of Jewish origin. Antiquarian ingenuity and research have traced his various migrations from the eastern shore of the Mediterranean to the province of Hedjaz, and have elucidated certain obscure Scriptural texts relative to his shrine, his worship, and his festivals. Among the multitudinous divinities which claimed the reverence of the ancient Arabians was also the Hebrew Jehovah, adored under the form of a he-goat, sculptured in gold, as well as the profligate Venus, known to the Babylonians as Mylitta, and to the Phœnicians as Astarte. As a tribute to their eminence in the Christian world, the Virgin and the Child occupied a post of honor among the three hundred and sixty idols which crowded the sanctuary of Mecca. In the religious system of the Peninsula there was no mythology, a fact which perhaps contributed not a little to its speedy overthrow. But, though polytheistic to the last degree, the Arabs recognized a Supreme Being whose majesty was confined to no particular locality, to whom no altar was dedicated, and who, too awful to be directly addressed, could be approached only through his celestial ministers the stars. This was the great Al-Lah, whose name, corresponding to the El and the Elohim of the Jews, was pre-eminent in honor and dignity, both in the Age of Ignorance and in the Age of Islam. The most superstitious races of men, and those that are the highest in intelligence among the most civilized, have and require no shrines. In Arabia the whole Desert was the temple of the Supreme God.

Associated with the most exalted ideas of divine power were to be found superstitions usually encountered only in the primitive epochs of society. The wide-spread worship of the generative forces of nature, whose remaining monuments seem to the uninstructed sense of our cavilling age mere evidences of a depraved imagination, had its share of public favor in Arabia, where the male and female principles were adored under various symbolical forms. Many of these have survived in the monoliths scattered throughout the Peninsula, whose towering masses are regarded, even by devout Moslems, with no small degree of superstitious awe. The stone-circles and menhirs mentioned by travellers as existing in Oman and Nedjd are evidently of the same general type as those of Carnac and Stonehenge, and, from the descriptions given of them, of scarcely inferior dimensions, and perhaps of still higher antiquity. It is a singular circumstance, that gigantic structures, bearing such a common resemblance as to suggest that they were erected by the same race of builders and designed for similar purposes, should be found in countries so different in physical features, climate, inhabitants, religious traditions, language, and history, as Central Arabia and Western Europe.

Like other nations of ancient times, the Arabs invested certain trees with a sacred character, a custom indicative of the lingering influence of phallicism; a worship whose original principles, long forgotten in the Peninsula, survived only in the exhibition of its peculiar emblems and in the practice of a gross and shameless immorality. Among the Pagan Arabs, no form of superstition was too debasing to claim its votaries. They raised altars to fire. They attributed supernatural powers to the crocodile and the serpent. Each tent had its image; every hovel of sun-dried bricks was filled with tutelary deities. Shapeless masses of stone, which tradition had associated with remarkable events or endowed with celestial origin, were approached with a reverence not vouchsafed to idols of the most costly materials and elaborate workmanship. Of these blocks, which partook of the nature of the fetich, the black were sacred to the Sun, the white to the Moon. In the Pagan world two of the former were especially famous; over one was erected a splendid temple on the mountain near Emesa in Syria, whence the infamous Roman emperor Heliogabalus derived his name; the other was built into the wall of the Kaaba of Mecca. The latter was the most remarkable object of the kind known to antiquity. A plain fragment of basalt, seven inches in diameter, whose composition is apparently identical with that of a neighboring mountain, it had acquired, in the eyes of the people of Arabia, a sanctity not shared by any other emblem of idolatrous worship. It was probably, in its origin, a phallic symbol, and stood alone in an open square of the city, ages preceding the building of the Kaaba, an event which tradition has assigned to a date four hundred years before the foundation of the temple of Solomon. Thus invested with the sanction of immemorial prescription and the virtues of a miraculous relic, it has received the reverent homage of millions upon millions of idolaters and Moslems. It has survived the accidents of conquest, of iconoclasm, of conflagration. The silver bands which unite its fragments bear witness to the vicissitudes and rough usage to which it has been subjected. The healing power it was supposed to possess attracted the sick and the disabled from regions far beyond the limits of Arabia. It was the starting-point of ceremonial and pilgrimage. It imparted its virtues to the Kaaba, that temple where alone, in all the Peninsula, hereditary feuds were suspended; where violence was forgotten; where rudeness gave way to courtesy; where the temporary surrender of individual freedom, and the voluntary relinquishment of tribal animosity, seemed to announce the existence of national sentiment and the possibility of national union. The recognition by Mohammed of the claims of the Black Stone and the Kaaba--the ancient temple of Saturn--to public veneration, in a creed otherwise uncompromisingly hostile to idolatry, demonstrated the high estimation in which they were held by the Arabs. The latter, with their numerous shrines, their swarms of deities, their elaborate paraphernalia of worship and imposture, were, however, far from being a religious people. They evinced a decided aversion to metaphysics. Their ideas of personal liberty were not consistent with unquestioning submission to the tyranny of a priesthood. Their native intelligence rendered them. skeptical; their nomadic habits were unfavorable to the maintenance of a permanent ecclesiastical establishment. The multiplicity of deities had, as is invariably the case, weakened the faith of the masses in any. The genuine piety of a people is always in an inverse ratio to the number of its gods.

The early Arabians practised magic and divination, had recourse to oracles, maintained wizards and sorcerers--charlatans whose ascendency was largely due to the narcotics they made use of to open a pretended communication with the spirit world. Amulets were universally worn as a protection against the baneful consequences of the evil eye. Hand in hand with presages and magical arts, auguries, and incantations, came the incipient doctrine of the influence of the planets upon mineral substances, as well as a belief in their power to affect the destiny and welfare of man; theories which, eventually developing into the vain pursuits of alchemy and judicial astrology, indicate an acquaintance with the principles of science only acquired by much study and repeated experiments. The practice of these rites, so severely reprobated in the Koran, was associated in the minds of the people with the ceremonies of public worship during the age of polytheism. The words altar and talisman are practically synonymous in Arabic, a fact which discloses the intimate alliance originally existing between divination, sorcery, and religion in the Peninsula.

Human sacrifices, so repugnant to all our ideas of piety and justice, but common to nations of Semitic origin, were of frequent occurrence among the Arabs before Mohammed. The mode of death was by fire, which removed every earthly impurity; but it was only in the fulfilment of a solemn vow, on an occasion of national rejoicing, or to avert some impending calamity, that such a costly expiation was exacted. The Israelites, allied to the Arabs by the ties of consanguinity, and by similar religious conceptions, had also long been familiar with these revolting and cruel rites; instances of whose observance will at once suggest themselves to all who are familiar with the Pentateuch.

The Hebrew has always exerted a remarkable influence upon the public sentiment, the religious faith, and the foreign and domestic relations of the inhabitants of Arabia. A great analogy exists between the languages of the two nations, and the Hebrew alphabet was used by the prehistoric Arabs. It is believed by many Oriental scholars that Israel was not the founder of the people who bear his name; that the twelve tribes have a mystic relation to certain of the heavenly bodies or to the months of the year; and it is known that the word Keturah means simply “frankincense.” No doubt now exists that the Jew and the Arab are of common ancestry. For a period of twenty-five hundred years before the Hegira the former had been established in Yemen. The trade of that kingdom, with all its vast ramifications, was in his hands. His power enabled him constantly to dictate the policy of its sovereigns.

His worship, equally idolatrous with that of the Bedouin--for he was the descendant of the Simeonites, against whom, among others, the anathemas of the Bible were directed--surpassed the latter in the splendor of its appointments and the insolence of its priests. In a land where toleration was otherwise universal, he was enabled to persecute, with implacable enmity, Christian exiles, whom even the rapacity of the desert freebooter had spared. The rich settlements of northwestern Arabia were, to all intents and purposes, Jewish colonies. In the barren and inhospitable region of the Hedjaz, the Jew founded the towns of Medina and Mecca. In such a congenial atmosphere, the superstitions of Asia Minor obtained a ready acceptance. He established the worship of Baal, the most renowned of the Phœnician divinities. He introduced the rite of circumcision, hitherto unknown in Arabia. He communicated his idolatrous observances to the population of the country which had offered him a refuge. He gave a name to its principal city, for the word Mecca is Hebrew, signifying “Great Field of Battle;” the Pagan ceremonial of the Hedjaz can be traced to Palestine, and the Kaaba was originally known as Beth-El, “The House of God.” Quick to recognize the advantages to be derived by commerce from religious pilgrimage, he made that city the centre of national devotion as well as the chief distributing point of the vast trade of Europe, Asia Minor, Ethiopia, and India. The excellent commercial situation of Mecca, near the Red Sea and on the great caravan highway connecting Syria and Yemen, could scarcely compensate, however, for the serious physical disadvantages which unfriendly nature had imposed upon it. Its houses were crowded into a narrow valley two miles long by only nine hundred feet wide. The rays of a vertical sun beat pitilessly down upon a landscape destitute of verdure. Water, the most priceless of blessings in the Desert, was scarce and unpalatable. A salt effervescence covered the neighboring plains. The seasons were irregular; storms were violent; the coast of the Hedjaz possessed the unenviable reputation of being one of the most pestilential in the world. The city was dependent upon trade for the necessaries of life, and the unexpected delay of the caravan often menaced the population with famine. Yet, with all these drawbacks, the commerce of Mecca flourished almost beyond precedent. Caravans of more than two thousand camels were no uncommon sight in its narrow streets. Each of these beasts of burden carried a load of four hundred pounds of rare and costly commodities,--silks, spices, ivory, gold-dust, and perfumes. The annual exports of the town in the closing days of Pagan ascendency reached the enormous sum of fifteen million dollars, half of which was profit. Not the least of the sources of gain to the people of Mecca were the valuable offerings left by pilgrims and merchants in their temples. For a distance of leagues the ground was holy, and all who trod upon it could claim the right of sanctuary. The blood of neither man nor beast could be shed within these sacred precincts without incurring the imputation of sacrilege and the punishment of death. There was no traveller, from whatever country he came, who could not find, among the innumerable idols of the Kaaba, a familiar divinity upon whom to bestow the tribute of his devotion or gratitude. Of the immense profits resulting from the politic combination of traffic and superstition, the Hebrew exacted the lion’s share. His rulers met each day at the Kaaba to exchange views on finance and theology. The heathen legends of Palestine were incorporated into the new system, with the astral worship of the Sabeans and the polytheism of the aboriginal inhabitants of the Desert, itself derived from a thousand different and uncertain sources. The monotheism of Israel was not recognized by the tribe of Simeon, which had been driven into exile long before the Pentateuch was written. Ideas thus blended in the popular mind for centuries might, under favorable conditions, be modified, but never obliterated. There is no question that Islam is largely Hebrew in origin, although a considerable number of its ceremonies can be deduced from the customs of Pagan Arabia. In their migrations, which closed with the settlement of the Hedjaz, the Jews, while wandering far, had at last returned to the cradle of their race.

The arbitrary rules of ceremonial cleanliness; the exclusion of blood from the precincts of the temple; the classification of certain animals as “holy,” which an error of the translator has transformed into “unclean;” the penalties for many offences; the adoration of Phœnician divinities; the nomenclature disclosed by family genealogies; the correspondence in meaning of many terms used in their languages--peculiarities common to both the Arab and the Jew--go farther to prove an intimate relationship between the two races than the uncertainties of tradition or the association of neighborhood would tend to establish. The antipathy to the Hebrew, subsequently so bitter among Mohammedans, did not exist in ancient Arabia. The Jew served with distinction in the armies of Khaled and Amru. Mutual aversion, however great in subsequent times, was never sufficient to induce the Israelite to destroy those whom he regarded as his kinsmen. As his myths had formed the basis of a new religion, his enterprise and assistance contributed, in no insignificant degree, to the foundation of a new and magnificent empire. He guided the councils of the most renowned Mohammedan princes. Without the dogmas he furnished, the history of Islam would never have been written. Without the suggestions he voluntarily offered, and the treasure he poured into the Moslem camps, the conquest of Spain could never have been achieved. The fairest of Mussulman writers have rarely failed to acknowledge the obligations of their countrymen to an unfortunate race which the prejudices of nearly twenty centuries have subjected to universal proscription.

Christianity made no progress in Arabia until after its political alliance with Constantine had imparted such a tremendous impulse to the dissemination of its doctrines. The latter do not seem to be adapted to the Asiatic mind, and have never been able either to appeal to the reason or to arouse the enthusiasm of nations of Semitic blood. It offered little that was congenial with, and much that was abhorrent to, the lax and tolerant code of the independent and polytheistic rovers of the Desert. At the birth of Mohammed it had already, for four centuries, been established in the Peninsula, and still, in the very shadow of its temples, the mocking Arab bowed before his thousand gods. The principles of the Ebionite sect, which prevailed in the Arabian churches, so far from attracting the curiosity or awakening the reverence of the sarcastic Bedouin, only served to excite his ridicule. The sublime truths of the religion of the Bible, the eloquence of its teachers, the piety of its saints, the pomp of its ritual, the promises and threats of its revelation, were lost upon the reckless freebooters, devoted to sensual pleasures, to escapades of gallantry, to the generous rivalry of poesy, to daring feats of arms. The only mark of attention its adherents received was their classification with the despised Hebrew as Ahl-al-Kitab, “The People of the Book.” In its adaptability to the requirements and the mental capacity of the multitude, it was ill-fitted to cope with the religion that eventually supplanted it. On one side were the incomprehensible dogmas of a debased Christianity, indispensable to its acceptance; on the other, the simplicity of the profession of Islam, which even a child could understand. For these reasons it made comparatively few proselytes in the Peninsula, and at no time was acknowledged over any considerable area, except during the short period which intervened between the Abyssinian conquest of Yemen and the rise of Mohammedanism.

Many of the rites and customs adopted by the great Lawgiver, or preserved by his followers and generally regarded as peculiar to Islam, antedated the Koran by centuries. The Mohammedan attitudes of worship are the same as those depicted upon the eternal monuments of the Pharaohs. The heathen pilgrims, clad in the Ihram, or sacred garment, seven times made the circuit of the Kaaba; embraced the Black Stone; ran the courses between the holy stations of Al-Safa and Al-Marwa; cast stones in the valley of Mina; performed the ancient duties of sacrifice and local pilgrimage, and were systematically plundered by the greedy and scoffing Meccans, just as all good Moslem pilgrims are to-day. The primitive Arabs inculcated the duty of personal cleanliness by frequent ablution. They shaved their heads, and used the depilatory for the removal of superfluous hair from the body. Like the Egyptians, they stained their hands and feet with henna, and blackened their eyelids with antimony. They removed their sandals, as Moses did, when they stood on holy ground. They scrupulously abstained from certain kinds of food, and their actions were often governed by regulations practically identical, in their general character, with those prescribed by the canons of Jewish and Moslem law.

The spirit of Arabian genius, destined in subsequent ages to effect such a revolution in the literary and scientific history of the world, had in the sixth century of the Christian era disclosed no indications of its gigantic powers. No condition of existence could be less suggestive of a capacity for intellectual achievement than that whose main dependence was violence and plunder. The Arab of that epoch had no written records save a few obscure inscriptions in the Himyarite dialect, which have been deciphered by the plodding industry of modern scholars, and are, for the most part, epitaphs. Traditions, modified or corrupted by the vanity or the prejudice of each successive generation, were the sole and uncertain reliance of the chronicler. The power of memory by which these were retained and transmitted from an unknown antiquity seems absolutely miraculous and incredible.

Although destitute of authentic history, and even unskilled in the common arts by which a nation’s glory may be perpetuated, the early Arab excelled in a species of literary composition in which barbarian races have always exhibited the greatest proficiency. A talent for poetry, which invariably attains its highest development among those least exposed to the practical ideas and refined vices of civilization, was considered by the Bedouin as the most noble of human accomplishments. His temperament, his situation, his pursuits, rendered him peculiarly susceptible to the charms of the Muse. His spirit was impetuous, his invention inexhaustible, his imagination riotous, his enthusiasm unbounded. From an abnormally sensitive nervous organization which nature had bestowed upon him, on occasions of prolonged mental excitement often proceeded an hysterical frenzy, a state declared by the most renowned of poets to be indispensable for perfection in his art. The scenery of the Desert; its impressive solitudes; the enchanting illusions of the mirage; the magnificent constellations of the tropical heavens; the life of incessant peril; the exploits of romantic gallantry; the nocturnal excursion,--the surprise, the battle, the retreat, the rescue,--these all stimulated the imaginative faculty of the Arab, and urged him to the cultivation of a talent which might transmit to posterity events whose immortality was at once his personal title to honor, the pastime of his camp-fire, and the glory of his tribe. In the means at his disposal the poet enjoyed a rare, almost a unique advantage. The energy and softness of the Arabian language, its melodious character, the abundance and variety of its metaphors, render it peculiarly available as the vehicle of poetic sentiment. There is perhaps no idiom which lends itself with such facility to the construction of rhyme; for its very prose is frequently musical. The researches of modern philology have brought to the notice of Europe the complexity and perfection of its grammatical construction, the richness of its vocabulary, its boundless scope and graceful imagery. Most appropriately did the old philosopher, Mohammed-al-Damiri, referring to the native eloquence and exuberant diction of his countrymen, exclaim: “Wisdom hath lighted on three things,--the brain of the Franks, the hands of the Chinese, and the tongues of the Arabs.”

The poetry of the Arabs is even more obscure in its origin than the primitive history of their race. Without the assistance of writing, no literature, however popular, can maintain its integrity for even a single generation. Even the phenomenal memory of that people--a gift so universal as not to elicit comment among them, and which was strengthened by the daily rehearsal of favorite compositions--could only imperfectly supply the place of permanent and authentic records. The matter of the Arabian poems was therefore constantly changing, while the subjects and versification remained the same. Their form was generally that of the dramatic pastoral; sometimes the elegiac ode, which offered an opportunity for the enumeration of the virtues of the deceased and, incidentally, of the achievements of his tribe, was adopted. The genius of the pre-Islamitic poet never attempted the epic, which so often profits by the inexhaustible resources of the fabulous; and, although surrounded by an atmosphere eminently favorable to the inspiration of such productions, it does not seem to have had an adequate conception of them. Its representations exhibited to the enraptured listener the stirring events of his adventurous life, which his pride taught him to regard as vastly superior, in all that promotes the dignity of humanity, to the corrupt and inert existence of civilization. The universal possession of the poetic faculty was one of the peculiarities of the Arab nation. Old and young alike seemed gifted with it. The rules of prosody, and even the simplest canons of metrical composition, were unknown. Yet such was the instinctive perception of rhythmical correctness, that the versification of the most humble was characterized by propriety and elegance, qualities which tended to enhance the fierce enthusiasm, the sublimity of thought, the touching pathos, the burning passion, which pervade the noble poems of the Desert. Many of the latter bear a striking resemblance to the Song of Solomon; some are remarkable for their rhapsodies; others for their weighty and sententious wisdom; others again for their sparkling wit and pointed epigrams. The seven poems called Moallakat, “The Suspended,”--a word of doubtful significance so far as its relation to these productions is concerned--have always been considered the masterpieces of the ancient Arabs, and form the principal source from which our ideas of their attainments in the art of poetry must be derived. Popular credulity ascribed the name of these compositions to their presumed suspension in the Kaaba as evidence of the triumphs of their authors over all competitors; the more rational conjecture, however, connects the title of Moallakat with a necklace or pendant, of which each poem formed a jewel, a figurative mode of designating literary works among Orientals, and one especially affected by poets and historians. The entire body of tradition, combined with facts accumulated by subsequent writers of every race and creed, does not afford such a thorough insight into the public and domestic life, the prevailing sentiments and prejudices, the habits and customs of the inhabitants of the Peninsula, as do the Moallakat. They enable us partially to reconstruct the political and religious systems of the early Arabians, and to establish, by comparison, their identity with the conditions of modern existence, in localities where the sword of Islam has never been able to exterminate the detested practice of idolatry. They place before us, in all its impressiveness, the silent majesty of the Desert, its dazzling sky, its waves of quivering vapor, its interminable waste of sand; they pass in review the indolent life of the camp, varied only by a nocturnal alarm or by some daring intrigue; they relate the exciting scenes of the foray; they delineate with erotic freedom the charms of the lovely Bedouin maid; they describe the fate of the female prisoner whose captivity was often the result of artifice or barter; they rehearse the midnight march under the starry firmament, which in the florid language of the East “appeared like the folds of a silken sash variously decked with gems.” Nor is the excellence of the Moallakat confined to mere description. The proud boast of exploits not unworthy of the Age of Chivalry, which, in fact, received its inspiration from this source; the sacred duties of a lavish hospitality; the rare qualities of a favorite horse or camel; the absorbing passion of love, its perils and its pleasures; the Herculean feats of virile manhood,--these were the chosen themes of the Arab poet. His verses abound in moral precepts and philosophical apothegms, conveying lessons of worldly wisdom which recall, in both their phraseology and their profound acquaintance with human nature, the Suras of the Koran and the Proverbs of Solomon. In addition to maxims of a moral tone, scattered through these productions, they exhibit, on the other hand, much that is repulsive, cruel, and barbarous. Epicureanism is, however, the prominent characteristic of the Moallakat, as, indeed, it is of all primitive Arabic poems which have descended to us. The charms of wine and women, and an indulgence in the pleasures of the banquet to the extreme limit of bacchanalian revelry, are everywhere celebrated with a license worthy of the grossest couplets of Catullus and Martial. In the relation of scenes of intrigue and midnight assignation, often laid in the camp of a hostile tribe, where discovery would have led to instant death, the adventurous spirit of the lover is deemed worthy to rank with that which sustains the hero in the front of battle. The most fulsome adulation characterizes the homage tendered by the ardent lover to the object of his idolatry. Modern fastidiousness would not tolerate the descriptions given by the poet of the physical perfections of his lady-love in all their circumstantial details; though translations exist, they are mere paraphrases; and the voluptuous images of the poet’s fancy still remain discreetly hidden in the obscurity of the original idiom.

There is much similarity and repetition in Arab poetry, which the interpolations and substitutions inevitable among a people dependent for the preservation of their literature upon oral tradition will hardly account for.

The existence of the Bedouin was bounded by a narrow horizon, the Desert was his world. Its familiar objects and localities, which never changed; the deeds which they recalled; the hopes which they inspired; the memory of ancestral renown with which they were associated, suggested the topics of his song. The haughtiness which was one of his most offensive characteristics, and forbade his permanent alliance or his intermarriage with other races, strengthened the feelings of reserve which had been a national peculiarity for countless generations. His ideas, his aspirations, his joys, his sorrows, evoked by the monotonous circumstances of his environment, were little subject to deviation during the course of centuries. While his religion was a compound of all degrees of fetichism, idolatry, and astral worship, his poetry was original, pure, artless, and natural. His aptitude for versification was disclosed by the most trivial occurrences of life. A rhyming stanza, which set forth an appropriate sentiment, was often the reply to an ordinary question. Where allusion was made to an historical incident, the speaker was often challenged to confirm his statement by the recitation of an original verse, or by an apt poetical quotation, as the most reliable authority. The quick perception of the Arab was shown by his ability to finish instantly a couplet corresponding in sense and measure with a line repeated by a competitor. Its general similarity to all others renders the assignment of any Arabic poem to a certain epoch impossible, for the natural taste has never varied, and a composition that was popular three hundred years before the Hegira would be equally acceptable to-day to the mountain tribes of Central Arabia.

In the opening lines of most Arabic poems, and in those of the Moallakat especially, there is a dearth of individuality, and a common resemblance which would almost suggest that they had been written by the same person. The purity of style which characterizes the latter was, however, universally admitted; they were the recognized standards of grammatical correctness; they were consulted whenever a dispute arose concerning the meaning of a word or the construction of a sentence in later authors was in doubt; and among Mohammedans the authority of those Pagan compositions was never entirely superseded even by that of the Koran, whose sublimity of thought and elegance of diction were reverently ascribed to the direct inspiration of God.

We owe the survival of the Moallakat to the capricious taste of some self-appointed critic, who selected them from a number of poems with which he was familiar; and, through his arbitrary choice, we are deprived of the opportunity of forming an opinion of the others which his rejection has tacitly pronounced inferior. We know nothing of his qualifications for such a task, and are even ignorant of his name; but, from the remaining fragments of these productions, we may safely conclude that some of them, at least, were as fully entitled to preservation as the seven more fortunate ones which have descended to posterity.

It is a remarkable fact that no Arabic poem shows traces of Hebrew influence or contains ideas borrowed from either the Scriptures or the Talmud. The wealth and political power of the Jews; their intimate association with the nomadic tribes of the Peninsula; a close similarity of traditions, customs, and language, produced no perceptible effect upon the prehistoric literature of the Arabs. The Hebrews of Arabia, nevertheless, had their poets, whose productions, on the other hand, exhibit a marked coincidence of thought and style with those of their Arab kinsmen. Their sentiments are lofty and admirable, their language pure, and their merit, while inferior to that of the Moallakat, is still far from contemptible. The Book of Job, which has no apparent connection with the rest of the Scriptures, has been pronounced by competent critics a translation of an Arabic poem.

Improvisation, a talent possessed only by those endowed with unusual readiness of perception, a lively imagination, and an inexhaustible command of language, was practised with great success by the itinerant poets of Arabia. From their auditors, a couplet happily applied, by the inspiration of the moment, to some well-known event, elicited far more applause than efforts, however meritorious, which had cost days of arduous labor. This art of extemporaneous composition, which, when thoroughly developed, implies the possession of extraordinary mental ability, carried into Europe by the Moslems, and long employed by the troubadours, now survives only among the lowest class of the Italian peasantry. It is, in our day, most difficult to determine what degree of authenticity may properly be ascribed to the poetry of the ancient Arabs, none of which ascends to a higher antiquity than two hundred years before the Hegira. The unreliability of oral tradition, the variety of dialects, the frequent substitutions of modern phraseology, the bad faith, interpolations, and mistakes of unscrupulous commentators, the corruption and suppression of passages through tribal prejudice--all of these causes have had their share in effecting the gradual deterioration of the grand and stirring poems of Arabia.

It is impossible for us to appreciate the influence exercised by those who had attained to eminence in the poetic art over their imaginative and passionate countrymen. The Arab bard was without exception the most important personage of his tribe. Wealth, rank, beauty, personal popularity, military distinction alike paid tribute to his genius. To his talent for improvisation and versification, he often united the threefold character of statesman, warrior, and knight-errant, and thus became the model of his associates, the idol of the fair sex, and the terror of his enemies, who were as sensitive to the poisoned shafts of his satire as to the keenness of his sword. The most famous of these rhyming paladins, and the author of one of the Moallakat, whose life and achievements have been made the subject of a romance which approaches more nearly to the nature of an epic than any other production in the Arabic language, was Antar. By instinct and training a Bedouin, he was, however, of Arab blood only on his father’s side, his mother having been an Abyssinian slave. According to the custom of his country, he shared her lot until his bravery in battle induced his father to emancipate him. His amatory exploits, as well as his daring enterprises against the enemy, made him the admiration of the fiery Arabian youth. It was the regret of Mohammed, often expressed, that he had never seen this knight-errant of the Desert, who shrank from no danger, however appalling, who redressed the wrongs of woman, who restored the property of the plundered, and whose favorite maxim was, “Bear not malice, for of malice good never came.”

The unbridled license of the Arabian poet offers a curious commentary on national manners. The most exalted dignity, the sacred attributes of the gods, the pride of opulence, the delicacy of the sex, were not exempt from the attacks of his venom and sarcasm. He exposed with relentless severity the frailties of the wife and daughters of the sheik. He boasted of his own intrigues with a shameless audacity which, under more refined social conditions, could only be atoned for with blood. The immunity he enjoyed was one of the prerogatives of his calling. A certain sacredness of character was believed to attach to the latter by reason of the demoniac possession to which was popularly attributed the inspiration of the poetic faculty. His verses abounded in chivalrous sentiments, but uniformly ignored the claims of religion to the veneration of mankind. No beautiful mythology, like that of ancient Greece, was at hand to prompt the efforts of his muse. The maxims of the luxurious Epicurean were those that exerted the greatest power over his imagination and his life. An idea may be formed of the influence of poetry. on the public mind when we remember that the Koreish in vain attempted to bribe the pagan bard Ascha to deliver a panegyric on Mohammed at the commencement of the latter’s career, and, unable to secure his compliance, succeeded with much difficulty in purchasing his neutrality and silence at the expense of a hundred camels. The Prophet was so sensitive to the keen thrusts of the satirist, that when Mecca was captured and a general amnesty proclaimed, one of the four unfortunates whom he expressly excluded from this act of clemency was an obscure poet, Habbar-Ibn-Aswad by name, who had published a lampoon against him. The Arabian bard, like his literary descendant the troubadour, was attended by minstrels who chanted his verses, often to the accompaniment of musical instruments. The latter vocation, regarded as degrading by the Bedouin, was always exercised by a slave.

Islamism, while in other directions it zealously promoted the intellectual development of its adherents, fell like a blight upon the poetic taste and genius of Arabia. The dreams of the poet disappeared before the stern fanaticism of the soldier, who had no time for rhapsodies, and cared for nothing save indulgence in rapine, the acquisition of empire, and the extension of the Faith.

It is now generally admitted that the literary contests said to have taken place during the annual fair at Okhad, where, from poems read before an immense concourse, the one to be suspended in the Kaaba was selected, are apocryphal. Tribes of vagrant robbers who passed ten months of the year in plundering their neighbors would hardly consent to spend the other two in an orderly assembly, composed mainly of their enemies, in determining by a popular vote the comparative merit of their respective poets. The settlement of such rival claims for intellectual precedency by the voice of the people implies a degree of culture and critical acumen certainly not possessed by the Arabs of that age. This idle tale has doubtless been suggested by the literary exhibitions of the Olympian games, and is perhaps indebted to the imagination of some garrulous and mendacious Greek for its origin. It is, however, unquestionable that the poet, as well as the story-teller--that other important personage in the East--was in high favor at all the fairs and assemblies of Arabia. The mixed multitude which, impelled by motives partly mercenary, partly religious, collected on these occasions, and in its hours of leisure listened to the verses of the poet, constantly promoted his inspiration and refined his lays by the hope of applause, the fear of censure, the collision with foreigners, and the powerful influence of tribal emulation.

The later history of the Arabs is decked with all the gorgeous imagery of the East. The fascinations of romance invest and embellish it. With the commonplace facts incident to the various stages of national progress are interwoven narratives of indisputable truth, but which, in their demands upon human credulity, almost surpass the fabulous legends of chivalry or the enchanting tales of Scheherezade. The primitive life of the Arabian people previous to the advent of Mohammed offered no indication of their extraordinary capability for improvement. Commercial intercourse with other nations for ages had, however, enlarged their experience, expanded their faculties, and aroused their ambition. The caravan winding amidst the lonely sand-hills of the Desert--the precursor of those great expeditions which subsequently interchanged the commodities of Asia Minor, Egypt, Andalusia, and India--was also the more important agent of science, of refinement, of civilization. It increased the sum of geographical and historical knowledge. It familiarized the trader and his customers with the manners, the laws, the social systems, the mechanical skill, the arts, and the inventions of the most enterprising nations of the globe. These associations assisted in no small degree to generate the practical utility which, the most important feature of Arab learning, afterwards conferred such substantial blessings on mankind. The phenomenal advance of the race to maturity, impossible without previous preparation, was stimulated by perpetual wars and excitement. Less than one hundred and twenty years intervened between the vagabondage and ignorance of the Desert and the stability and intellectual culture of the great Abbaside and Ommeyade capitals. The career of the Arab was too rapid to be permanent. In four generations it had covered the ground ordinarily traversed in twenty. Its delusive splendor concealed the decay which was coincident with the era of its greatest prosperity. The same causes which facilitated the foundation and advancement of his power and culture were active during their decline, and contributed to their ultimate destruction.

The statement may appear paradoxical, in view of the acknowledged influence of mercantile associations upon the faculties of the human mind; but a certain degree of isolation seems to be necessary, at least in tropical and semi-tropical regions, for the complete development of the arts of civilization; and these arts have usually attained their highest perfection among nations which inhabit peninsulas. Egypt and China, whose reliance was entirely upon their own resources, were the most exclusive of nations in the ancient world, as were Mexico and Peru in the modern. The vast majority of the populations of India, Japan, and Spain had but little intercourse with those outside their boundaries, which were defended by stormy and mysterious seas. In no other countries have the powers of the human intellect, in the creation of all that is grand and imposing, of all that is beautiful, of all that is artistic, of all that contributes to the benefit, the cultivation, and the material improvement of mankind, been manifested as in Greece and Italy. And Arabia, although denied by Nature the advantages of soil and climate enjoyed by more favored lands, yet possessed what, in the crisis of her fate, rendered her superior to all her adversaries,--a race of bold and hardy warriors inured to hardship by the privations of an abstemious life, and by habit and inclination capable of the most arduous and desperate enterprises. Their experience with the surrounding effeminate nations had taught them not only the weakness of the latter, but also how their coveted wealth might be obtained; and at a propitious moment, under the guidance of an impassioned enthusiast, a horde of outlaws, driven from their homes by their scandalized neighbors, became the nucleus of victorious armies the fame of whose gallantry filled the world. And yet, while glorying in the deeds of martial heroism which insured the establishment and maintenance of her Prophet’s faith, she was conscious of the instability of an empire sustained by arms alone, and labored to raise upon more substantial and enduring foundations the splendid fabric of her greatness. The same fervid impulse which prompted and carried to a successful issue the conquest or extermination of those designated by the comprehensive term of infidel was able to adapt itself with singular facility to all the conditions of peace, and to enable the posterity of the half-naked banditti that swarmed around the banner of Mohammed to accomplish results worthy of the most exalted genius, and in every department of knowledge to ascend to the highest rank of those celebrated for their literary and scientific attainments in the most polished communities of Asia and Europe.