Page:The Arabs short history-PKHitti.djvu/9

 ARABS AND MOSLEMS One hundred years after the death of Muhammad his followers were the masters of an empire greater than that of Rome at its zenith, an empire extending from the Bay of Biscay to the Indus and the confines of China and from the Aral Sea to the lower cataracts of the Nile. The name of the prophet-son of Arabia, joined with the name of almighty Allah, was being called five times a day from thousands of minarets scattered over south-western Europe, northern Africa and western and central Asia. In this period of unprecedented expansion, the Moslem Arabs ’assimilated to their creed, speech, and even physical type, more aliens than any stock before or since, not excepting the Hellenic, the Roman, the Anglo-Saxon or the Russian’.

The Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Aramaeans, the Phoenicians—all of whose ancestors were nurtured in the Arabian peninsula—were, but are no more. The Arabs were and remain. They stand today as they stood in the past in a strategic geographical position astride one of the greatest arteries of world trade. Since the first World War these people have become increasingly conscious of their heritage and potentialities. Egypt now forms with Syria the United Arab Republic. Iraq in 1958 replaced its young monarchy with a republic. Ibn-Saud, the strong man of modern Arabia, carved out for himself and consolidated a large kingdom in Arabia. Lebanon was the first Arabic-speaking state to declare itself a republic. Libya was the first in North Africa to free itself from Latin rule. The phoenix, a bird of Araby, is rising again. Its wings arc strong.

Islam, the religion founded by Muhammad, today claims the adherence of no less than four hundred and twenty 1