Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/282

Rh 262 A B A B I A [ANTIQUITIES. , arcnow the only parts of the awa independence can be said fully to maintam tee If he X with this difference, that in the last-named pro vinces it is merely the independence of barbarism and poverty, while in the former it is that of organisation and not contemptible resources Nor can it be well doubted that the recent encroach- Vntnn ments of the Ottoman government, or rather misgovernment, will rove eauallv ephemeral with those of Sultan Sehm or Mehemet prospects. g JJFJg JgE will iu B S h rt time, probably within a few years regain its previous autonomy. Arab institutions are far irom perfect yet they are better than Ottoman oppression, and the Vahhabee empire might easily, under a judicious head relax from its intolerance and become a centre, not of strength only, but of order, prosperity, and even civilisation, for the whole Arab nation, restoring, not, indeed, for external conquests, the days of which have long gone by, but for internal wellbeiug, the better times of the Ommiade dynasty. quities. Sketch, showing relative size of Arabia. Arabia proper is singularly destitute of antiquities, in the ordinary sense of the word, the northern or &quot; Adscititious &quot; Arabs having been, so long as they remained within their own territory, a remarkably unconstructive race, and the &quot; pure &quot; or southern Arabs not much better in this respect. Niebuhr, in his justly celebrated Travels through Yemen, mentions the ruins of Ghamdan, the ancient palace of the Himyarite kings, near Sanaa, as well as the remains of several other fortresses in adjoining villages ; but these ruins, like those subsequently visited by Palgrave in Jof, bore no distinctive traces of architecture or date, beyond a barbaric coarseness of material and great thickness of wall. More remarkable, because better denned in history, are the remains of the great dyke of Mareb already mentioned : its vestiges, said to be colossal in their dimensions, extend across a ravine of about 2 furlongs in breadth ; they are in part of hewn stone, and testify, if not to the skill, at least to the diligence of the Himyarite Arabs. A few Himyaritic inscriptions have been discovered, some in Yemen, more in the provinces of Hadramaut and Mahrah, but have been too carelessly copied to afford proper materials for philo logical investigation. When decipherable, they indicate a dialect resembling the Abyssinian or Amharic ; but throw no real light on the history of the country or the condition of its inhabitants. Destruc- -^ ^ s ^ rue that in addition to the non-constructive tion of character of the early Arab race, account must be taken of antiquities the destructive policy, aggravated by iconoclastic zeal, 1&amp;gt;jr -, tll&amp;lt; L pursued by the conquering Mahometan tribes of the north, early Ma- L, , i. ,-,, -, ,-, ,, hometans who within their own territory, even more than in the acquired lands of Egypt, North Africa, and elsewhere, carried out the plan of establishing their own religion and system, not merely on the ruins, but, so far as possible, on the effacement of whatever had preceded it. Hence, of the old idol temples which once covered Arabia, nothing now remains except the megalitLic vestiges of an enormous stone circle, resembling those found in some parts of Europe, and consisting of large boulders, each about 14 feet high, placed on end, and originally crowned by a similar horizontal series. This was visited by Palgrave when travelling in ihe province of Kaseem, near Bereydah ; two others are reported to exist in the same district. Nor, the Meccan relics apart, had any of the numerous idols once worshipped hroughout the peninsula been discovered till the Swiss Munzinger, three years since, found among the heaps of a deserted village near Aden a small bronze statue repre senting a naked hermaphrodite figure, over the head of which rises an ornament resembling the Egyptian pshent. The black stone of the Meccan Kaabeh, said to be of The black volcanic formation, and perhaps an aerolite, had, however, stone and been an object of popular adoration long before Mahomet Kaabeh. preserved it from destruction by giving it a place in a new and more enduring superstition ; and the Kaabeh itself, though ruined and rebuilt again and again, the last time in 1627, till not a vestige probably of the original structure now remains, has yet, it appears, certainly preserved the outline, and, in all essential respects, the dimensions of the original pagan shrine. It is an oblong massive structure, almost a trapezium, though the sides and angles are slightly unequal ; its length 18 paces, its breadth 14, and its height from 35 to 40 feet. There are no windows, and the only entrance door is placed 7 feet above the ground ; the entire building is of large, irregular, and unpolished blocks of ordinary stone. Its ornamentation is wholly modern. Lastly, several wells, jotted with seeming capriciousness Wells, over the desert, are said to be, and probably are, of great antiquity ; certainly they are works which much exceed the skill of the Arabs of our own day. One such, &quot; Beer Shekeef&quot; by name, in the north-west of the peninsula, presents a cylinder of about 5 feet in diameter at top, but gradually enlarging till it reaches the water at a depth of nearly 200 feet, and is lined with hewn stone throughout. The Arabs declare it to be a work of pre-Islamitic times. Less remarkable in its proportions, but not less ancient, is the holy well called of Zemzeni, at Mecca. But this and the great mosque of that city, as also the famous mosque of Medinah, which encloses the tomb of the prophet, and other buildings of the same category, will find their proper place in other articles. So will also the celebrated excava tions of Petra, which, besides their being beyond the limits of Arabia proper, are not in themselves Arab but Graeco- Eoman in their character. With regard to the numerous mosques and other buildings, some of great beauty, erected by Arab architects in conquered countries, as in Syria, Egypt, Africa, or Spain, they are in fact nothing more than adap tations of the various local styles, and often of the very materials that the conquerors found ready to their hand. But if poor in architectural, Arabia is superabundantly Literature: rich in literary monuments. Passing over as of more than Pyo-Islam- doubtful authenticity the verses ascribed to kings and heroes l 1C r e ry of Yemen, especially at dates of a thousand years or more before the Christian era, we find undeniable specimens, at least two full centuries before Mahomet, of poems which in vigour and polish yield to few ever composed in the Arab or in any other language. To give at length the names and stories of the authors, many of them men, and even women, no less distinguished in their day by the sword than by the pen, would be, in a brief review like this, merely to note a dry and unmeaning catalogue. Suffice it that, even at this early date, we find the metrical and rhythmical laws, simple yet susceptible of the highest art, which have ever since regulated Arab poetry, already laid down in their completeness, and exemplified, the former by a scansion of almost Iloratian elegance and variety, the latter by a severe nicety that Pope himself might have admired, but could hardly have imitated. Divided into sixteen classes, each class including several variations, the metres are based, like the Greek and Roman, on long and