Robert Alexander Wahab, Griffithes Wheeler Thatcher and Michael Jan de Goeje

“ The other Arab tribes became increasingly jealous of the Koreish, while among the Koreish themselves the Hāshimite family came to hate the Omayyad, which now had much power, although it had been among the last to accept Islam and never was very strict in its religious duties. But the quarrels which led to the murder of Othmān were fomented not so much in Arabia as in Kūfa and Baṣra and Fostat. In these cities the rival parties were composed of the most energetic fighting men, who were brought into the most intimate contact with one another, and who kept up their quarrels from the home land. ”

“ Population.—The people, according to their own traditions, are derived from two stocks, the pure Arabs, descended from Kahtan or Joktan, fourth in descent from Shem; and the Mustarab or naturalized Arabs, from Ishmael. The former are represented at the present day by the inhabitants of Yemen, Hadramut and Oman, in general a settled agricultural population; the latter by those of Hejaz, Nejd, El Hasa, the Syrian desert and Mesopotamia, consisting of the Bedouin or pastoral tribes (see Arabs and Bedouins) . ”

“ Fauna.—The wild animals of Arabia are all of the desert-loving type: antelopes and gazelles are found in small numbers throughout the peninsula; the latter are similar to the chikara or ravine deer of India. The larger antelopes, so common on the African side of the Gulf of Aden, are not found, except one variety, the Oryx beatrix (called by the Arabs, wild cow) , which is an inhabitant of the Nafud between Tema and Hail; it is about the size of a donkey, white, and with long straight horns. Hares are numerous both in the desert and in cultivated tracts. ”

“ Deep valleys winding through the barren foothills lead gradually up to the higher mountains, and as the track ascends the scenery and vegetation change their character; the trees which line the banks of the wadi are overgrown with creepers, and the running stream is dammed at frequent intervals, and led off in artificial channels to irrigate the fields on either side; the steeper parts of the road are paved with large stones, substantially built villages, with their masonry towers or dars, crowning every height, replace the collection of mud walls and brushwood huts of the low country ”

“ A second type of Arabian historiography is that in which an author combines the different traditions about one occurrence into one continuous narrative, but prefixes a statement as to the lines of authorities used and states which of them he mainly follows. In this case the writer recurs to the first method, already described, only when the different traditions are greatly at variance with one another. In yet a third type of history the old method is entirely forsaken and we have a continuous narrative only occasionally interrupted by citation of the authority for some particular point. ”

“ By training and temperament he was better qualified to appreciate and describe the social life of the people than their physical surroundings, and if the results of his great journey are disappointing to the geographer, his account of the society of the oasis towns, and of the remarkable men who were then ruling in Hail and Riad, must always possess an absorbing interest as a portrait of Arab life in its freest development. ”

“ The language of the poems, as of all the best Arabian literature, was that of the desert Arabs of central Arabia; and to use it aright was the ambition of poets and scholars even in the Abbasid period. For the man of the towns its vocabulary was too copious to be easily understood, and in the age of linguistic studies many commentaries were written to explain words and idioms. ”

“ In Nejd the number of horses is, comparatively speaking, very small; the want of water in the Nafud where alone forage is obtainable, and the absence of forage in the neighbourhood of the towns makes Horse.horse-breeding on a large scale impracticable there. Horses are in fact only kept by the principal sheiks, and by far the larger proportion of those now in Nejd are the property of the amir and his family. These are kept most of the year in the Nafud, five or ten days’ march from Hail, where they find their own food on the desert herbage. ”

“ Arabia cannot be said to be “destitute of antiquities,” but the material for the study of these is still very incomplete. The difficulties in the way of travelling in Arabia with a view to scientific investigation are such that little or nothing is being done, and the systematic work which has given such good results in Egypt, Palestine and Babylonia-Assyria is unknown in Arabia. Yet the passing notes of travellers from the time of Carsten Niebuhr show that antiquities are to be found. ”

“ The country falls naturally into three main divisions, a northern, a central and a southern; the first includes the area between the Midian coast on the west and the head of the Persian Gulf on the east, a desert tract throughout, stony in the north, sandy in the south, but furnishing at certain seasons excellent pasturage; its population is almost entirely nomad and pastoral. The central zone includes Hejaz (or Hijaz) , Nejd and El Hasa; much of it is a dry, stony or sandy steppe, with few wells or watering-places, and only occupied by nomad tribes ”

“ The population of Khaibar consists almost entirely of the latter, and in Hail Huber estimates the pure Arab inhabitants at only one-third of the whole. In the desert, too, there is a widely scattered tribe, the Salubi, which from its name (Salib, cross) is conjectured to be of early Christian origin; they are great hunters, killing ostriches and gazelles; the Arabs despise them as an inferior race, but do not harm them; they pay a small tax to the tribe under whose protection they live, and render service as labourers, for which they receive in the spring milk and cheese ”

“ Outside the two cities anarchy prevailed, and the pilgrimage was frequently unsafe owing to marauding Bedouins. In 1517 the Osmānlī Turkish sultan Selīm conquered Egypt, and having received the right of succession to the caliphate was solemnly presented by the sherīf of Mecca with the keys of the city, and recognized as the spiritual head of Islam and ruler of the Hejaz. At the same time Yemen, which since the 9th century had been in the power of a number of small dynasties ruling in Zubed, Sanʽā, Saʽda and Aden, passed into the hands of the Turk. ”

“ The powerful Bedouin tribes of Hejaz have always asserted their independence, and are only kept quiet by the large money payments made them by the sultan on the occasion of the annual pilgrimage to the holy cities. A large part of Asir and northern Yemen has never been visited by Turkish troops, and such revenues as are collected, mainly from vexatious customs and transit duties, are quite insufficient to meet the salaries of the officials, while the troops, ill-fed and their pay indefinitely in arrears, live on the country as best they can. ”

“ The prevailing winds in northern Arabia as far as is known are from the west; along the southern coast they are from the east; at Sana there is generally a light breeze from the north-north-west from 9 to 11 a.m., from noon till 4 p.m. a steady and often strong wind blows from the south-south-east, which dies away later. The climate is extremely dry, but this is compensated for by the heavy mists which sweep up from the plains during the rainless months and exercise a most beneficial effect in the coffee-growing districts. ”

“ In winter it is cold and snow often lies for some time.
Hejaz, if we except the Taif district in the south, which is properly a part of the Yemen plateau, forms a well-marked physical division, lying on the western slope of the peninsula, where that slope is at its widest, between the Harra and the Red Sea. A high range of granite hills, known as the Tehama range, the highest Hejaz.point of which, J. Shar, in Midian, exceeds 6500 ft., divides it longitudinally into a narrow littoral and a broader upland zone 2000 or 3000 ft. above the sea. ”

“ The Yemen pilgrim route, known as the Haj el Kabsi, led from Sada through Asir to Taif and Mecca, but it is no longer used.
The principal trade routes are those leading from Damascus to Jauf and across the Nafud to Hail. Other important routes leading to Nejd are those from Kuwet to Hail, and from El Hasa to Riad respectively. In the west and south the principal routes, other than those already mentioned, are from Yambu to Medina, from Jidda to Mecca, Hodeda to Sana, Aden to Sana, and from Mukalla to the Hadramut valley. ”

“ The dynasty of the Lakhmids, famed in Arabian history and literature, arose towards the end of the 3rd century and lasted until about 602. The names of twenty kings are given by Hishām al-Kalbī in Ṭabari’s history. Although so many of their subjects were Christian, the Lakhmids remained heathen until Nu’mān, the last of the dynasty. The kingdom of Hīra was never really independent, but always stood in a relation of dependence on Persia, probably receiving pay from it and employing Persian soldiers. At the height of its power it was able to render valuable aid to its suzerain. ”

“ The great wealth of the Arabs is in their flocks of sheep and goats; they are led out to pasture soon after sunrise, and in the hotter months drink every second day. In the spring when the succulent ashub and adar grow plentifully in the desert, they go for weeks without drinking. They are milked once a day about sunset by the women (the men milk the camels) , and a large proportion of the milk is made into samn, clarified butter, or marisi, dried curd. The wool is not of much value, and is spun by the women and woven into rugs, and made up into saddlebags or into the black Bedouin tents. ”

“ Individual experiences of life and matters of human interest become more usual subjects. Cynicism, often followed by religion in a poet’s later life, is common. The tumultuous mixture of interests and passions to be found in a city like Bagdad are the subjects of a poet’s verse. One of the earliest of these poets, Mutiʽ ibn Ayās, shows the new depth of personal feeling and refinement of expression. Bashshār ibn Burd (d. 783) , a blind poet of Persian descent, shows the ascendancy of Persian influence as he openly rails at the Arabs and makes clear his own leaning to the Persian religion. ”

“ Considerable forests are said to exist in Asir, and Burton found a few fine specimens which he regarded as the remains of an old forest, on the Tehama range in Midian. On the rocky hill-sides in Yemen the Adenium Obesum is worthy of notice, with its enormous bulb-like stems and brilliant red flowers. Some fine aloes or agaves are also found. In the cultivated upland valleys all over Arabia the Zizyphus jujuba, called by some travellers lotus, grows to a large tree; its thorny branches are clipped yearly and used to fence the cornfields among which it grows. ”

“ An extinct volcano occurs at Aden, and volcanic rocks are found at other places near the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb. Throughout the whole of Arabia, so far as is known, the sedimentary beds show no signs of any but the most gentle folding. Faulting, however, is by no means absent, and some of the faults are of considerable magnitude. The Gulf of Akaba is a strip of country which has been let down between two parallel faults, and several similar faulted troughs occur in the Sinai peninsula. The Red Sea itself is a great trough bounded by faults along each side. ”

“ In the interior of northern and central Arabia, however, where the average level of the country exceeds 3000 ft., the fiery heat of the summer days is followed by cool nights, and the winter climate is fresh and invigorating; while in the highlands of Asir and Yemen in the south-west, and of Oman in the east, the summer heat is never excessive, and the winters are, comparatively speaking, cold. ”

“ The ruling dynasty of Julanda in their capital Suhār lasted on till the Abbasid period. No Persian officials are mentioned in this country; whether Persians exercised authority over it is doubtful. On the west coast of Arabia the influence of the kingdom of Yemen was felt in varying degree according to the strength of the rulers of that land. Apart from this influence the Hejaz was simply a collection of cities each with its own government, while outside the cities the various tribes governed themselves and fought continual battles with one another. ”

“ On the north-east and east the plateau shelves gradually to the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf; only in the extreme east is this general easterly slope arrested by the lofty range of Jebel Akhdar, which from Ras Musandan to Ras el Had borders the coast of Oman.
Its chief characteristic is the bareness and aridity of its surface; one-third of the whole desert, and of the remainder only a small proportion is suited to settled life, owing to its scanty water-supply and uncertain rainfall. ”

“ Wells and Dikes.—From the earliest times the conservation of water has been one of the serious cares of the Arabs. All over the country wells are to be found, and the masonry of some of them is undoubtedly ancient. Inscriptions are still found in some of these in the south. The famous well Zemzem at Mecca is said to belong to the early times, when the eastern traffic passed from the south to the north-west of Arabia through the Hejaz, and to have been rediscovered shortly before the time of Mahomet. ”

“ The appearance of the Prophet with the great changes that ensued, the conquests that made the Arabs lords of half the civilized world, supplied a vast store of new matter for relations which men were never weary of hearing and recounting. ”

“ The harra east of Khaibar is also of considerable extent, and the same formation is found all along the Hejaz border from Medina to the Jebel el Kura, east of Mecca. The surface of the harra is extremely broken, forming a labyrinth of lava crags and blocks of every size; the whole region is sterile and almost waterless, and compared with the Nafud it produces little vegetation; but it is resorted to by the Bedouin in the spring and summer months when the air is always fresh and cool. ”

“ But men could not be prevented from pouring out from their homes in search of new conquests and more booty. Many of those who went forth did not return. They acquired property and rank in the new lands. Kūfa attracted chiefly men of south Arabia, Basra those of the north. Both became great cities, each with a population of 150,000 to 200,000 Arabians. Yet so long as the caliphs lived in Medina, the capital of Arabia was the capital of the expanding Arabian empire. ”

“ Another foreign element of considerable strength in the coast towns of Muscat, Aden and Jidda, is the British Indian trading class; many families of Indian origin also have settled at Mecca, having originally come as pilgrims.
Estimates of the population of Arabia vary enormously, and the figures given in the following table can only be regarded as a very rough approximation:—
Communications.—The principal land routes in Arabia are those leading to the holy cities. In the present day the Syrian pilgrim route, or Darb el Haj, from Damascus to Medina and Mecca is the most used. ”

“ The only ports of importance are Yambu and Jidda, which serve respectively Medina and Mecca; they depend entirely on the pilgrim traffic to the holy cities, without which they could not exist.
The great central province of Nejd occupies all inner Arabia between the Nafud and the southern desert. Its northern part forms the basin of the Wadi Rumma, which, rising in the Khaibar harra, runs north-eastward across the whole width of Nejd, till it is lost in the sands of the eastern Nafud, north Nejd.of Aneza. ”

“ This line is of great strategical importance, as strengthening the Turkish hold on the Red Sea provinces. But the principal means of commercial communication for a country like Arabia must always be by sea. Bahrein, Kuwet and Muscat are in steam communication with India, and the Persian Gulf ports; all the great lines of steamships call at Aden on their way between Suez and the East, and regular services are maintained between Suez, Jidda, Hodeda and Aden, as well as to the ports on the African coast, while native coasting craft trade to the smaller ports on the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. ”

“ East of Nejd a strip of sandy desert 50 m. in width extends almost continuously from the great Nafud to the Dahna. East of this again a succession of stony ridges running parallel to the coast has to be crossed before El Hasa is reached. This province, which skirts the Persian Gulf from the mouth of the El Hasa.Euphrates to the frontiers of Oman, is low and hot; its shores are flat, and with the exception of Kuwet at the north-west corner of the gulf, it possesses no deep water port. North of Katif it is desert and only inhabited by nomads ”