Arab conquests

“ Mohammedan armies swept over Syria into Persia. In 637, only five years after Mohammed's death, Jerusalem surrendered, and shortly afterwards Egypt was conquered. Early in the eighth century the Arabs ruled from the Indus on the east, and the Caucasus on the north, to the shores of the Atlantic on the west. Their empire curved westward along the coast of northern Africa, through Spain, like one of their own scimitars, threatening all Christendom. Indeed, the Arab invasion stands unparalleled in history for its rapidity and extent. ”

“ Arabs, a military body, subsidized and mobilized by Omar.The surplus revenues which in rapidly increasing volume began to flow from the conquered lands into the Moslem treasuries were to the last farthing distributed among the soldiers of Arabian descent. The whole nation was enrolled, and the name of every warrior entered upon the roster of Islam. Forbidden to settle anywhere, and relieved from all other work, the Arab hordes became, in fact, a standing army threatening the world. Great bodies of armed men were kept thus ever mobilized, separate and in readiness for new enterprise. ”

“ But to his enemies he is relentless. He has none of the barbarity of the savage races, like the Zulus or the Masai. He is refined, even in his cruelty. Above all, he is a man of brains.
Because of their craftiness, their cunning and their courage, the Arab races have existed from the very beginnings of time. We read in the most ancient history that exists--in the history of the Pharaohs--of how the Egyptian towns in the valley of the Nile were walled against the incursions of the Arabs. ”

“ The Arabs as a nation share the spoils of war.
The Arabian nation was the champion of Islam; and to fight its battles every Arab was jealously reserved. He must be the soldier, and nothing else. He might not settle down in any conquered province as cultivator of the soil; and for merchandise or other labour, a busy warlike life offered but little leisure. Neither was there any need. The Arabs lived on the fat of the conquered lands, and captive nations served them. Of the booty taken in war, four parts were distributed to the army in the field; the fifth was reserved for the State ”

“ If you ask the reason, they tell you of many battles that have been lost by the troops having been attacked by their enemy when taking off the bridles to give their horses drink. No Arab ever mounts a stallion; on the contrary, in Nubia they never ride mares; the reason is plain: The Arabs are constantly at war with their neighbours, (for so robbery in that country is called) and always endeavour to take their enemies by surprise in the grey of the evening, or the dawn of day. ”

“ In vain the Arab leaders urged them to rise with threats and curses, using the points of their spears. The hapless men staggered on, then dropping their loads attempted to fly. Two were shot dead as a warning to the rest, and their masters distributed their loads among the others who appeared better able to carry them, but, ere long, others sinking down, stretched themselves on the ground and were left to die in the desert. Time would have been lost in attempting to carry them.
“Is this the way you Arabs treat your followers?” ”

“ The Christian is still a dog, and the son of a dog; and even when crouching before his power and intelligence, the Arab nurtures hopes of revenge, long deferred but never abandoned. The French regard their conquest as secure; and doubtless it may be rendered so by the maintenance of a powerful military establishment; but who can foretell the time when they will be enabled to withdraw even a portion of their present African army? Their doing so would be a signal for revolt amongst the chiefs now in their pay, amongst the tribes apparently most effectually humbled and subdued. ”

“ The flower of the Arab army is destroyed; there cannot be more than a handful at their stronghold. Our successes hitherto will have encouraged you, and you will not fail to see that by one final blow you may destroy your enemies for ever. If, however, you let slip this opportunity, the Arabs will in time recover even from this great defeat, as they have recovered from defeats in the past, and by and by the old evil work of raiding for ivory and slaves will begin again. ”

“ If you walk through the Arab quarter, averted faces and muttered curses meet you on every side; while the air is filled with rumours of an impending catastrophe. Twice during the present week the French troops in the city have been roused in the dead of night, and marched hurriedly to a central point, in order to resist a general rising of the Arabs, which everybody expected, and which it was believed had already begun. The imaginations of the non-Mussulman population, stimulated by all that they see around them, are still further excited by the horrible and, alas! ”

“ Does not the word 'Ghazi' signify a hero who slays the infidel? Does not every Mollah, when he recites the Khuttab in the mosque, invoke divine wrath on the non-Moslem? What then? The establishment of an Arab Empire would mean the revolt of the whole Eastern world against the Western world, and a return to all the brutality, all the intolerance of the farrago of moribund nonsense known as the Sacred Law. ”

“ The Arabs, whether they be those in the scarlet [296] burnouses of the caïd-ship or in the rags of the beggar, are all the same: a people who have destroyed without creating, who have been divided when their unity would have made them great, who have lived on theory.
We have before us the relics of the Carthaginians, of the Numidians, of the stupendous work of the Roman Empire, and then centuries of nothing. War, devastation, intrigue, mark the period covered by the Arab domination. ”

“ To the north of the oases lay a belt of sand, and then an immense gravel and lava plain, filling up everything between the eastern edge of Syria and the banks of the Euphrates where Mesopotamia began. The practicability of this northern desert for men and motor-cars enabled the Arab revolt to win its ready success.
The hills of the west and the plains of the east were the parts of Arabia always most populous and active. In particular on the west, the mountains of Syria and Palestine, of Hejaz and Yemen, entered time and again into the current of our European life. ”

“ CALIPH MANSÚR. The Arabs had established a vast empire with great rapidity, but to keep it together was hardly possible so long as its purely Arab character was retained. The reigning house of the Omayyads had to contend with very dangerous political and religious antipathies; and, perhaps a greater danger, the Arabs, who now controlled a world-empire, kept up without abatement the old untractableness and exaggerated zeal for the honour of family and tribe which they had developed in their desert life. ”

“ This barbarous custom applied to every soldier slain in honorable warfare, as fully as to the victim of the assassin’s dagger; and the wholesome dread of the consequences of a hard-fought conflict, where a score of lives might be exacted in return for every fallen enemy, usually rendered the encounters of the Arab comparatively bloodless. ”

“ The prospect of plunder and Paradise played a big part. These uncivilized, simple-living Arabs were fighting against two mighty, rich, and luxurious empires. The very first battle with Persia revealed such spoils as no Arab had ever even dreamt of. And so, from the very first, the invading armies had the intoxicating hope of spoils that were greater and richer by just so much as Rome and Persia were greater and richer than Arabia. Mohammed knew the Arab heart, and instituted the plan of dividing the spoils among the soldiers; and the captured women were given to them for wives and concubines. ”

“ And those measures, hideously efficient in themselves, are, beyond any doubt whatever, only the precursors of more sweeping exterminations of the Arab race, which will be effected after the war, if the Allied Powers do not step in to save it. ”

“ A continued peace lasted during the reign of Khosroës Parviz, who, on the usurpation of Baharam, had been escorted through the desert by the Arab chiefs [5] to the territory of Rome, and had recovered the throne of his ancestors by the assistance of Maurice, [6] although the friendly understanding between the two empires had been nearly broken by the predatory incursions of the Roman Arabs into the territory of Babylon. ”

“ In the second place it seemed to promise a settlement of the long-standing dispute between me and the General. The General has a preposterous theory about the existence and hostility of a vast number of mythical Arabs in our immediate neighbourhood. Now this is obviously absurd. With the exception of three palm-trees, which belong to us, there is nothing but sand for about two hundred miles in all directions, and even an Arab cannot subsist entirely on sand. ”

“ In the first months of his reign he practised the lessons of holy warfare, and displayed his white banner before the gates of Medina: the martial apostle fought in person at nine battles or sieges; 125 and fifty enterprises of war were achieved in ten years by himself or his lieutenants. The Arab continued to unite the professions of a merchant and a robber; and his petty excursions for the defence or the attack of a caravan insensibly prepared his troops for the conquest of Arabia. ”

“ As he looked round, however, at the haggard countenances of the Arab leaders and their armed followers, as well as at those of the pagazis, he might with good reason have dreaded that none of them would ever reach the fertile region said to lie beyond the desert. Already many more had fallen, and their track was strewn with the bodies of dead or dying men.
The survivors staggered on, well knowing that to stop was certain destruction. The Arabs no longer attempted to drive them forward, or to distribute the loads of those who sank down among the rest. ”

“ And in order that the souls of some desperate sons of the Arab nation not breath out the sigh of death, as a result of these holes. If they despair of closing or patching the holes, they will fall in the foreign hunters' nets. ”

“ These engineering precautions were rendered necessary by the ferocity of the Arabs, who fought the Egyptians with great determination for some years before they were finally subdued. Although the weapons of all the Arab tribes are the simple sword and lance, they defended their country against the regular troops of Egypt until they were completely defeated by a scarcity of water, against which there could be no resistance. The Egyptians turned the course of the river Gash, and entirely shut off the supply from one portion of the country, while they inundated another. ”

“ El Mahdi, the mysterious voice in the Soudan wilderness, mutters his prayers in the mosque of Khartoum. England bombarded Alexandria; Arab loss in dead perhaps 5,000. Then England fought and conquered Arabi in the open field, captured him, and sent him into exile; Arab loss in dead perhaps 7,000. Next there is trouble on the Red Sea, and another English army killed perhaps 9,000 Arabs. And last a battle or series of battles in the heart of the Soudan; Arab loss in dead perhaps 12,000. Probably not less than 30,000 have been slaughtered by Englishmen in less than two years. ”

“ So it happened that in proportion as British fighting methods and British resources became known and feared by the Arab in Mesopotamia he grew more and more wary of running into danger, unless the odds were altogether in his favor. What the German and Turkish officers endured from their Arab allies will probably never be known, but on more than one occasion when the British won a victory and the Turks were in retreat, the Arabs were active in despoiling the fugitives and then made off with their loot, and with the new rifles and equipment they had been supplied with by the Turks or Germans. ”

“ And still, the highest tension exists in our part of the world. There the Zionist entity clings tenaciously to occupied Arab territory; zionism persists , in its aggressions against us and our territory. New military preparations are feverishly being made. These anticipate another, fifth war of aggression to be launched against us. ”

“ The Arab army was composed rather of individuals, and its losses were not reckoned merely by arithmetic. And because kinship is so strong a force in the desert, twenty men killed meant a far wider range of mourning than a thousand names in an European casualty list. Moreover, the ships’ guns had smashed up the town badly, which was a great loss to the Arabs, who needed it as a base for their future attacks inland on the railway. ”

“ Arab wars, too, are a succession of skirmishes, in which five hundred men will retreat after losing a dozen of their number. In this partisan-fighting the first charge secures a victory, and the vanquished fly till covered by the shades of night. Then come cries and taunts of women, deep oaths, wild poetry, excitement, and reprisals, which will probably end in the flight of the former victor. ”

“ CHAPTER XX THE ARABIAN CONCUBINATE THE early Arabs, a fierce, militant race, became, through conquests in India, Persia and Spain, a powerful and civilising force from the seventh to the tenth centuries. ”

“ If the siege goes to extremities it will be ten thousand pities that the Arab population was not removed out at the outset. For the laws of humanity would restrain our pushing them out now—the Turks or surrounding hostile Arabs would murder the lot. But we should have had the food they are getting now for rations, and that might have saved the lives of thousands of British downstream. ”