Dunya

“ Now when it was the Hundred and Twenty-ninth Night, She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the Wazir Dandan continued to Zau al-Makan:—Now when Taj al-Muluk heard the story of the young merchant, he marvelled with great marvel and fire darted into his entrails on hearing the name of the Lady Dunya who, as he knew, had embroidered the gazelles; and his love and longing hourly grew, so he said to the youth, "By Allah, that hath befallen thee whose like never befel any save thyself, but thou hast a life-term appointed, which thou must fulfil ”

“ Show me something passing fine; for the beauteous should bring nothing but what is beautiful." When he heard her words, his heart fluttered and he knew not their inner meaning; but Aziz made a sign to him and he replied, "I have everything thou canst desire and especially I have goods that besit none but Kings and King's daughters; so tell me what stuff thou wantest and for whom, that I may show thee what will be fitting for him." This he said, that he might learn the meaning of her words; and she rejoined, "I want a stuff fit for the Princess Dunya, daughter of King Shahriman." ”

“ And now we are approaching the border line between Asia and Africa. It is an invisible line; no snow-capped mountains divide the mighty continents which were the seats of the most ancient civilization; no sea flows between them: the Red Sea terminates over seventy miles from the Mediterranean; even the Suez Canal does not divide Asia and Africa, for it is wholly in Egypt. Nothing marks where Africa ends and Asia begins, but a line in the desert, covered by drifting sands. ”

“ But the part of Asia which has historically had most to do with Europe is its Mediterranean peninsula, the land known as Asia Minor. In the northern part of each continent we find another system of great gulfs or inland seas; but those in Asia have been hindered by the cold from ever being of any importance, while in Europe the Baltic sea and the gulfs which run out of it may be looked on as forming a kind of secondary Mediterranean. ”

“ Toward the center of the space whose extremes we have marked out must be placed two other centers of civilization, more ancient than either of the two already named, and in the same zone of latitude—Egypt, in the valley of the Nile, and near the Arabian Gulf, and Mesopotamia, near the head of the Persian Gulf. Thus, each continental mass had its particular center of civilization, except Asia, which had two—one in the extreme east, the other near the line which joins it to Europe. ”

“ Asia Minor especially, the peninsula which lies between the Black Sea, the Archipelago, and the Mediterranean, was by nature one of the most beautiful, and had been made by art one of the most fertile of countries. It had for generations contained flourishing marts of commerce, and it had been studded with magnificent cities, the ruins of which now stand as a sepulchre of the past. No country perhaps has seen such a succession of prosperous states, and had such a host of historical reminiscences, under such distinct eras and such various distributions of territory. ”

“ Western Asia, northern Africa, and southeastern Europe were the homes of the earliest culture, and it is to them that all other parts of the world owe the light which they enjoy, though they may have received it at second or third hand. The territory of which I speak extended from the highlands of India to Italy, and from the Nile to the Don, including the valleys of the Euphrates and the Gihon. This broad and fertile reach of territory has been the fruitful mother of the world’s present thought and culture. ”

“ The coming of broad-headed men, probably from Asia Minor, then less divided from Europe, is characteristic of this period of change, and the mountain axis of Europe has ever {13} since been a region of broad-headed men, separating provinces of long-headed men to the north around the Baltic and (for a time) in Russia, and to the south around the western Mediterranean, then becoming increasingly cut off from tropical Africa by the supervention of desert conditions, in place of grassland, in what we now call the Sahara. ”

“ As an instance we may point to the elevated table-lands of Central Asia, which now separate the countries and peninsulas surrounding them, but which, when they shall have become the seats of human industry, will convert Asia into a real geographical unit, which at present it is only in appearance. Massy and ponderous Africa, monotonous Australia, and Southern America with its forests and waterfalls, will be put on something like an equality with Europe, whenever roads of commerce shall cross them in all directions, bridging their rivers, and traversing their deserts and mountain ranges. ”

“ Asia, the Orient, is wholly unlike Africa. On three sides it is entirely sea-girt—the south, the east, and the north; on the west only partly, about 1400 miles. On the west, too, it is connected with Africa, but not in a way to insure any necessary relations between the two continents. But with Europe it stands in the most intimate connection, forming a single body with it, of which Europe is really but a great western peninsula. Europe, [190] the Occident of the Old World, is therefore for less widely severed from its Orient than from its real South or Africa. ”

“ Considering the connection of Asia, Africa, and Europe, the approximation of the northern parts of the two great continents, with the contiguity of the islands of Asia to it, we cannot marvel that the races spreading out to these points, should devise means to cross rivers, scale mountains, penetrate into deserts, and navigate the sea. ”

“ The wide Pacific now stretches beneath us,—away, away, till it touches the Eastern World, covering with its vast sheet of waters nearly one half of the earth's circumference, and separating the Western continent from the Old World by a much wider gulf than on the Atlantic side, as if to represent the greater difference in race and character between its inhabitants and the Asiatic tribes,—and as if, also, to mark the great boundary of the world's territory, and to show that here the circle of the habitable earth is complete. ”

“ Outside Arabia, the Sahara, and the two Heartlands, there remain in the World-Island only two comparatively small regions, but those two regions are the most important on the Globe. Around the Mediterranean, and in the European peninsulas and islands, there dwell four hundred million people, and in the southern and eastern coastlands of Asia, or, to use the historic expression, in the Indies, there dwell eight hundred million people. In these two regions, therefore, are three-quarters of the people of the world. ”

“ In its flora and fauna, as well as its climate and geology, North Africa belongs to the zone of transition between Europe and Asia. The apparent unity imparted to the continent by its compact form is not realised when we examine in detail the phenomena of life. Cyrenaica and the whole Mauritanian seaboard on the slope of the Atlas range belong to the vegetable domain of the Mediterranean, in which are also comprised Spain, Provence, Italy, the Balkan peninsula, the shores of Asia Minor, and Syria. ”

“ Asia, on the other hand, radiating great peninsulas, festooned with islands, supporting the vast corrugations of its highlands and lowlands, its snow-capped mountains and steaming valleys, stretching from the Equator through all the zones to the ice-blocked shores of the Arctic, knowing drought and deluge, tundra waste and teeming jungle, has offered the manifold environment and segregated areas for individualized civilizations, which have produced such far-reaching historical results. ”

“ Regarding [182] for a moment the Eurasiatic continent as a whole, we may say that the old civilisations, both to the east and to the west, arose in the forest regions—in the monsoon forests to the east, in the drought-resisting forest or scrub of the west. The temperate forest of Asia has produced no great civilisation, and the civilisation of the temperate forest zone of Europe has owed much to the earlier civilisation of the Mediterranean, with which it has always had free communication. ”

“ This rôle of intermediary is inevitably thrust upon all peninsulas which, like Spain, Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, Arabia, Farther India, Malacca, Chukchian Siberia, and Alaska, occupy an intercontinental location. Arabia especially in its climate, flora, races and history shows the haul and pull now of Asia, now of Africa. ”

“ The Atlantic face of the Americas formed therefore the drowsy unstirred Orient of the inhabited world, which westward developed growing activity—dreaming a civilization in Mexico and Peru, roused to artistic and maritime achievement in Oceanica and the Malay Archipelago, to permanent state-making and real cultural development in Asia, and attaining the highest civilization at last in western Europe. There was the sunset margin of the inhabited world, the area of achievement, the adult Occident, facing across the dividing ocean that infant Orient beyond. ”

“ There are only Egypt, Barbary, and the western coasts of Africa, as far as Senegal, in this part of the globe, which can be looked upon as modern countries. Asia is an old land, and perhaps the most ancient of all, particularly Arabia, Persia, and Tartary; but the inequalities of this vast part of the globe, as well as those of Europe, we will consider in a separate article. It might be said in general, that Europe is a new country, and such position would be supported both by the universal traditions relative to the emigrations of different people, and the origin of arts and sciences. ”

“ In Asia, the greatest continent of the earth, lies its most extensive plain, the vast plateau of Mongolia, whose true boundaries are the mountains of Siberia and the Himalayan highlands, the Pacific Ocean and the hills of Eastern Europe, and of which the great plain of Russia is but an outlying section. This mighty plateau, largely a desert, is the home of the nomad shepherd and warrior, the nesting-place of the emigrant invader. ”

“ Europe and Africa are separated from Asia by a long canal, which may be either the Nile or the Hellespont. Africa is still considered the land of mystery and fable: its northern part only is considered inhabitable, the south being even unapproachable, on account of the torrents of flame poured on it by the sun. The Frozen Ocean, the Baltic, the White Sea, and the Caspian, are all united. The Northern regions are represented as forming one single island. Scandinavia is made the birthplace and residence of the Amazons, the famous women-warriors to whom antiquity had given a home in the Caucasus. ”

“ Germany beyond the Elbe and Austria beyond the Danube begin to feel the shadow of the continental mass behind them; and from their eastern borders on through Russia the benumbing influence of a central location grows, till beyond the Volga the climatic, economic, social and political conditions of Asia prevail. Africa is all core: contour and relief have combined to reduce its periphery to a narrow coastal hem, offering at best a few vantage points for exploitation to the great maritime merchant peoples of the world. ”

“ DIVISION I. ORIENTAL HISTORY. PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY.—Europe and Asia together form one vast continent, yet have a partial boundary between them in the Ural Mountains and River, and in the deep bed of the Caspian and Black seas. Asia, which extends from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific, and from the Arctic Sea to the Indian Ocean, embraces an immense plateau, stretching from the Black Sea to Corea. This plateau spreads like a fan as it advances eastward. It is traversed by chains of mountains, and bordered also by lofty mountains, of which the Himalayas is the principal range. ”

“ One glance at the map of Europe will show you on the west­ern littoral of the Black Sea the outlets of the Danube, the only river which, springing up in the very heart of Europe, may be said to form a natural highway to Asia. Exactly opposite, on the eastern side, to the south of the river Kuban, begins the mountain-range of the Caucasus, stretch­ing from the Black Sea to the Caspian in a south-easterly direction for some seven hundred miles, and separating Europe from Asia. ”

“ Entering the Strait at the Pillars, Libya, as far as the river Nile, is on the right hand, and to the left, on the other side of the Strait, is Europe, as far as the Don. Asia bounds both these continents. We will commence with Europe, both because its figure is more varied, and also because it is the quarter most favourable to the mental and social ennoblement of man, and produces a greater portion of comforts than the other continents. ”

“ Finally, linking Europe to temperate Asia, we have belts of steppe land, characterised by a luxuriant growth of grass in the early summer, and fitted by nature for pastoral industries, which do not thrive near the Mediterranean. Another way of putting the same facts would be to say that Europe proper is a region of temperate forest, linked to Africa by scrub land passing into desert, and to Asia by steppe land passing into desert.
The flora of North America, owing to the size of the continent, offers more resemblance to that of Asia than to Europe. ”

“ The region, however, of the Atlantidæ is not Africa alone; it is Africa and something else—Africa plus the African side of Asia, i.e. Syria and Arabia; and here, in attending to the African character of the latter of these two areas, we must not lose sight of their physical relations to the sterile table-land of Persia, and the true steppe-country of Turkestan and Mongolia; for such is the line of continuity, in the way of steppes or desert, from Sahara to Siberia. ”