Arabia

“ Arabia does not flash forth a new presentment of beauty, following the vivid apprehension of some lovely form, but broods over it in a kind of slumbering enthusiasm that mounts at last into a glory of metaphor, drowning the subject in intensest light. ”

“ That's green, away from all mankind;
A lonely pool, and let a tree
Sigh with her bosom over me.
Contents
Walter de la Mare
Arabia
Far are the shades of Arabia,
Where the Princes ride at noon,
'Mid the verdurous vales and thickets,
Under the ghost of the moon;
And so dark is that vaulted purple
Flowers in the forest rise
And toss into blossom 'gainst the phantom stars
Pale in the noonday skies.
Sweet is the music of Arabia
In my heart, when out of dreams
I still in the thin clear mirk of dawn
Descry her gliding streams ”

“ It is a busy scene and, what with braying of donkeys and shouting of the wood-merchants, there is enough noise too.
FIRE WOOD MARKET, BUSRAH.
There is one more blessing that comes from the palm tree and which we have forgotten. That is shade. Arabia is a hot and dry country. The summer sun is much more piercing than in America and the summer is much longer. When you travel a long camel journey across the desert, oh how good it is to come to a grove of palm trees and rest! Such a place is called an oasis and underneath the palms there are always springs of water. ”

“ Witnessing the struggle and fall of one and another of the great tyrannies of antiquity, yet never entering the arena of the fight;—swept on its northern frontier by the conflicting armies of Khusru and Cæsar, but lifting never a hand in either cause;—Arabia was at length to issue forth from its silent mystery, and after baffling for a thousand years the curious gaze of strangers, was at last to draw to itself the fearful eyes of all men. ”

“ Arabia is almost wholly a desert country, with a hot atmosphere, and is unfit for the residence of man, except along the coasts of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, where the soil is fertile, and yields wheat, corn, barley, tobacco, dates, and oranges. This country is famous for producing the best horses in the world.
That portion of Turkey which is in Asia, is beautifully diversified with fertile plains, mountains, and valleys. The climate is excellent. Grapes, mulberries, wheat, barley, and tobacco, flourish here. The population is composed of descendants of various nations ”

“ Arabia, in the opinion of the naturalist, is the genuine and original country of the horse; the climate most propitious, not indeed to the size, but to the spirit and swiftness, of that generous animal. ”

“ The entire coast region of Arabia, on the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Gulfs of Oman and Persia, is, for the most part, a belt of fertile country, inhabited by a settled, semi-civilized population. Back of this belt, which varies in width from a few miles to upwards of a hundred, commences a desert table-land, occasionally intersected by mountain chains, and containing, in the interior, many fertile valleys of considerable extent, which are inhabited. ”

“ The people of Arabia, a race of strong passions and sanguinary temper, inured to habits of pillage and murder, found in the law of their native prophet not a license, but a command, to desolate the world, and the promise of all that their glowing imaginations could anticipate of Paradise annexed to all in which they most delighted upon earth. ”

“ The whole fringe of Arabia, from Antioch to Aden and from Mocha to Mascat, has been the scene of incoming and outgoing activities, has developed live bases of trade, maritime growth, and culture, while the inert, somnolent interior has drowsed away its long eventless existence. ”

“ The language of these little angels and the grown-up ones in Arabia is very poetical. The Arabs, because they live in the desert and look up into the big, blue sky and far out to the horizon where the mirage paints desert pictures every day, are full of imagination and live in an atmosphere of poetry. They love jingling words and proverbs and pretty sayings and figures of speech.
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A mosquito has only a sting in New Jersey. In Arabia they call him aboo fas, which means “father-of-an-ax”! In America a tramp is a tramp, but the Arabs call him a son-of-the-road. ”

“ Arabia was thus the centre of political schemes and plots just at the time when Mohammed came to manhood, the whole peninsula was awake to the touch of the Romans, Abyssinians and Persians, and ready to rally around any banner that led to a national deliverance. ”

“ We now come to Arabia itself, "the Peninsula of the Arabs," where orthodox Islam has its strongholds and missionary enterprise is not encouraged.
Geographers differ somewhat as to what constitutes Arabia proper, but for the purposes of modern practical politics it may be considered as all the peninsula south of a line from the head of the Gulf of Akaba to the head of the Persian Gulf, and consisting of Nejd, the Hejaz, [C] Asir, Yamen, Aden protectorate, Hadhramaut and Oman. ”

“ In its general features Arabia resembles the Sahara, of which it may be considered a continuation. Like the Sahara, it has its wastes of loose sand, its stretches of bare rocks and stones, its mountains devoid of vegetation, its oases with their wells and streams, their palm-groves and cultivated fields—islands of green amidst the surrounding desolation. Rivers proper there are none. ”

“ Arabia has nothing that can properly be called history; but it has been concerned in the wars of Turkey and Egypt. What there is relates to the birth and life of Mohammed, and his wars to promote the increase of his followers; and I shall tell you the story of the Prophet at another time."
The professor retired after the usual applause. Some walked the deck, watching whatever was to be seen, especially the Arabian dhows, and occasionally a large steamer passed; and some went to sleep in their staterooms. ”

“ The Arabs love to sit and swing back and forth as they chant its chapters. And lastly is something that looks very much like an amulet, but which is a traveller’s bag for bread and dates, often fastened to the camel saddle by leather thongs. Bread or dates kept in such a receptacle will keep moist for many, many hours in the hot, dry climate of Arabia.
The Arabs are not skilled as the Japanese and Chinese are with tools, nor are they much given to art of any kind, but you must admit that such every-day things are many of them artistic and some of them really beautiful. ”

“ The division of Arabia into provinces has always been rather according to physical geography than political boundaries. The earliest division of the peninsula, and in some respects the most correct, was that of the Greek and Roman writers into Arabia Deserta and Arabia Felix. The latter epithet was perhaps only a mistaken translation of El-Yemen—the land on “the right hand,” that is south of Mecca, for the Orientals face east. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For while no part of Central Arabia has an older or a better established title to civilization or wealth, no part also has been the starting-point and theatre of so many wars, or witnessed the gathering of such numerous armies.
“We halted for a moment on the verge of the uplands to enjoy the magnificent prospect before us. Below lay the wide plain; at a few miles’ distance we saw the thick palm-groves of ’Eyoon, and what little of its towers and citadel the dense foliage permitted to the eye. ”

“ INHABITANTS OF ARABIA The original home of the Semites is believed to have been Arabia. Some Semitic peoples appear to have migrated northward to Babylonia and Syria, while others crossed the Red Sea to Abyssinia. Physically, the Arabs are an attractive people, with well-shaped, muscular figures, handsome, bronzed faces, brilliant, black eyes, and all the organs of sense exquisitely acute. Simple and abstemious in their habits, they lead healthy lives and often reach an extreme yet vigorous old age. ”

“ Our first thought of Arabia is of a barren, desert country inhabited by a few wandering tribes, of little importance. But it is an immense country, almost as large as India, with a population of millions. ”

“ According to the context the kings of Arabia are the kings of the Arabian oases of Dajdân, Tejma, and Bûz, while the kings of the Arabs denote all the nomads with shaven heads. Even to the present day nearly all the nomads have their heads shaved and leave only a tuft, varying in size, at the crown. ”

“ From time immemorial Arabia, except for the fertile strip of the Yemen to the south, had been a land of nomads, the headquarters and land of origin of the Semitic peoples. From Arabia at various times waves of these nomads had drifted north, east, and west into the early civilizations of Egypt, the Mediterranean coast, and Mesopotamia. ”

“ There is no land in the world and no people (with the exception of Palestine and the Jews) which bear such close relation to the Theocratic covenants and Old Testament promises as Arabia and the Arabs. The promises for the final victory of the Kingdom of God in Arabia are many, definite and glorious. These promises group themselves around seven names which have from time immemorial been identified with the peninsula of Arabia: Ishmael, Kedar, Nebaioth, Sheba, Seba, Midian and Ephah. ”

“ So deeply-rooted and tenacious is this feeling that the Arab regards a journey successfully performed as just cause for congratulation, and indeed not inferior to a triumph, as is indicated by his familiar proverb, “Travel is a victory.”
The modern geographical division of Arabia into The Stony, The Desert, The Happy is arbitrary, and unknown to the people the boundaries of whose country it purports to establish. The distinctions between the various tribes of the Peninsula have always been determined by mode of life, habits, and tradition rather than by the accident of locality ”

“ For in the background of all is the vast peninsula of Arabia, which at long intervals fills with its wild, untamable humanity to a point beyond which it cannot support them. This has been the origin of the long succession of Semitic waves—Babylonian, Assyrian, Canaanite, Hebrew, Nabataean, Moslem—that have flowed over Mesopotamia and Palestine; there is every reason to suppose that they will be followed by others, and that the Arab will remain master at the end, as he was in the beginning. ”

“ DESCRIPTION OF ARABIA—ARABIAN CUSTOMS—BIRTH OF MAHOMET—EARLY LIFE—JOURNEY TO SYRIA—CHRISTIAN SECTS—DOCTRINES TAUGHT BY MAHOMET—HIS MARRIAGE—PROCLAIMS HIMSELF A PROPHET—PERSECUTION—FLEES TO MEDINA—BECOMES POWERFUL—SICKNESS AND DEATH—PERSONAL APPEARANCE.
Far away in the south-western part of Asia, lies a strange and peculiar country called Arabia. It is bounded on the north by Syria, on the east by the Persian Gulf, on the south by the Indian Ocean, and on the west by the Red Sea, and comprises more than a million of square miles, or about twelve times the area of Utah. ”

“ The Arabs, conquerors and missionaries placed between the two civilizations, had spread themselves by turns toward the East and the West. That people, so active by starts, has been to the East the messenger of the West, and to the West, the courier and factor of the East. Unhappily since the Western civilization has shone with the greatest brilliancy in Europe, Arabia has flung out but feeble gleams of light; since Providence has filled us with a devouring activity, the Arabians are fallen into a deep lethargy ”

“ The Arab countries, as the French, the only real masters the Arab has ever had, know them, are a broad belt bordering upon the eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean, from the Dardanelles to the Straits of Gibraltar; and comprise Arabia proper, the Holy Land, Egypt, Tripoli, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. ”

“ There are indications that Arabia will not always remain in its long patriarchal sleep and that there is a future in store for the Arab. Politics, civilization and missions have all begun to touch the hem of the peninsula and it seems that soon there will be one more land—or at least portions of it—to add to “the white man’s burden.” ”

“ It is an evergreen and is always flourishing winter and summer. It is a lovely sight to see the huge clusters of ripening fruit, golden-yellow or reddish-brown, amid the bright green branches. Along the rivers in the north of Arabia, at Hassa and in Oman, date orchards stretch for miles and miles as far as you can see. Some of the Arabs have such large date gardens that they do not know the number of their trees. How do you suppose they climb the tree? The Arabs have no ladders and indeed it would be hard to make a ladder long enough to reach to the top of a tall palm tree. ”

“ This day’s march was peculiarly Arabia. It was a desert peopled only with echoes—a place of death for what little there is to die in it—a wilderness where, to use my companion’s phrase, there is nothing but He (Allah) . Nature, scalped, flayed, discovered her anatomy to the gazer’s eye. The horizon was a sea of mirage; gigantic p. 73sand-columns whirled over the plain; and on both sides of our road were huge piles of bare rock standing detached upon the surface of sand and clay. Here they appeared in oval lumps, heaped up with a semblance of symmetry ”

“ Arabia stood in a position of great advantage as regards this international commerce, being a half-way house between East and West, protected from enemies by impassable deserts, and with inland and sheltered seas in every direction. ”