Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/653

Rh years to the last member of the tribe, and often mounting to extreme cruelty. Mentally the peculiarities of the people were receptiveness, quickness of discernment. They had high esteem for lyric and narrative poetry, and possessed language of perfect form suited to express the various ideas which Nature might suggest to a pastoral people, and to portray the fiercer passions of the mind." Before the time of the Prophet, Arabia had clusters of inhabitants thus endowed. There were tribes, but there was no nation. There were peoples allied to each other by a common nature, yet driven apart by an independence born of wandering life and desert solitude. Mohammed made a nation, such a nation as was possible. Unity, in the full sense of that word, never obtained among this people. Yet they were so aggregated by the Prophet as to conquer the old world, to invade Europe, to threaten Christian civilization, to hold Spain for eight hundred years, and to pass through a most brilliant career in every department of human activity. Was there nothing ready to the Prophet's hand? Was there no preparation for the message "There is one God"? It is here at such points as this that we may find chief interest in historical movements. To trace living connections between the old and the new is alike the highest intellectual gratification and truest historical exposition.

Though the Arabian people were separated into tribes, and though these tribal distinctions were deep and permanent, there were not lacking certain points of connection. Had such comings-together been entirely wanting, nothing of all that happened could have happened. Between these Arabians, whether roaming over the desert or living in cities, two forces ever tended to bring them together: the one was religious, the other artistic. Mecca had been a sacred place to every dweller in the land from earliest times. Here, in soil utterly desolate, burst forth the magic well Zem-Zem. It offered its waters to Hagar and Ishmael. It had medicinal properties and miraculous virtues; the people came together, and Mecca was built. More than this, here was a sacred black stone, mysterious in origin and power. It was said to have come from heaven with Adam. Here Adam worshiped after his expulsion from paradise, in a tent sent from heaven. Seth substituted a structure of clay and stone. This was destroyed by the deluge, and rebuilt by Abraham. As it now stands in the mosque at Mecca, it was shaped in the year 1627. It is from thirty-five to forty feet in height, eighteen paces long, and fourteen broad; its door is covered with silver, and is opened but three times each year. This is the Kaaba. In its northeast corner, incased in silver, lies the black stone, toward which all the faithful turn in prayer. So much had religion done to bind these Arabs together. There was an artistic influence. "Poetry seemed the necessary expression of the passionate nature of this people. Poetry preserved the genealogies and rights of the tribes, as also the memory of great actions. A poet honored his tribe; in turn his