After the death of Frederic the Second, Germany was left a monster with a hundred heads. A crowd of princes and prelates disputed the ruins of the empire: the lords of innumerable castles were less prone to obey, than to imitate, their superiors; and, according to the measure of their strength, their incessant hostilities received the names of conquest or robbery. Such anarchy was the inevitable consequence of the laws and manners of Europe; and the kingdoms of France and Italy were shivered into fragments by the violence of the same tempest. But the Italian cities and the French vassals were divided and destroyed, while the union of the Germans has produced, under the name of an empire, a great system of a federative republic. In the frequent and at last the perpetual institution of diets, a national spirit was kept alive, and the powers of a common legislature are still exercised by the three branches or colleges of the electors, the princes, and the free and Imperial cities of Germany. I. Seven of the most powerful feudatories were permitted to assume, with a distinguished name and rank, the exclusive privilege of choosing the Roman emperor; and these electors were the king of Bohemia, the duke of Saxony, the margrave of Brandenburgh, the count palatine of the Rhine, and the three archbishops of Mentz, of Treves, and of Cologne. II. The college of princes and prelates purged themselves of a promiscuous multitude: they reduced to four representative votes the long series of independent counts, and excluded the nobles or equestrian order, sixty thousand of whom, as in the Polish diets, had appeared on horseback in the field of election. III. The pride of birth and dominion, of the sword and the mitre, wisely adopted the commons as the third branch of the legislature, and, in the progress of society, they were introduced about the same aera into the national assemblies of France England, and Germany.

The Hanseatic League commanded the trade and navigation of the north: the confederates of the Rhine secured the peace and intercourse of the inland country; the influence of the cities has been adequate to their wealth and policy, and their negative still invalidates the acts of the two superior colleges of electors and princes. [149]

[Footnote 149: In the immense labyrinth of the jus publicum of Germany, I must either quote one writer or a thousand; and I had rather trust to one faithful guide, than transcribe, on credit, a multitude of names and passages. That guide is M. Pfeffel, the author of the best legal and constitutional history that I know of any country, (Nouvel Abrege Chronologique de l'Histoire et du Droit public Allemagne; Paris, 1776, 2 vols. in 4to.) His learning and judgment have discerned the most interesting facts; his simple brevity comprises them in a narrow space. His chronological order distributes them under the proper dates; and an elaborate index collects them under their respective heads. To this work, in a less perfect state, Dr. Robertson was gratefully indebted for that masterly sketch which traces even the modern changes of the Germanic body. The Corpus Historiae Germanicae of Struvius has been likewise consulted, the more usefully, as that huge compilation is fortified in every page with the original texts. * Note: For the rise and progress of the Hanseatic League, consult the authoritative history by Sartorius; Geschichte des Hanseatischen Bandes & Theile, Gottingen, 1802. New and improved edition by Lappenberg Elamburg, 1830. The original Hanseatic League comprehended Cologne and many of the great cities in the Netherlands and on the Rhine.—M.]

It is in the fourteenth century that we may view in the strongest light the state and contrast of the Roman empire of Germany, which no longer held, except on the borders of the Rhine and Danube, a single province of Trajan or Constantine. Their unworthy successors were the counts of Hapsburgh, of Nassau, of Luxemburgh, and Schwartzenburgh: the emperor Henry the Seventh procured for his son the crown of Bohemia, and his grandson Charles the Fourth was born among a people strange and barbarous in the estimation of the Germans themselves. [150] After the excommunication of Lewis of Bavaria, he received the gift or promise of the vacant empire from the Roman pontiffs, who, in the exile and captivity of Avignon, affected the dominion of the earth. The death of his competitors united the electoral college, and Charles was unanimously saluted king of the Romans, and future emperor; a title which, in the same age, was prostituted to the Caesars of Germany and Greece. The German emperor was no more than the elective and impotent magistrate of an aristocracy of princes, who had not left him a village that he might call his own. His best prerogative was the right of presiding and proposing in the national senate, which was convened at his summons; and his native kingdom of Bohemia, less opulent than the adjacent city of Nuremberg, was the firmest seat of his power and the richest source of his revenue. The army with which he passed the Alps consisted of three hundred horse. In the cathedral of St. Ambrose, Charles was crowned with the iron crown, which tradition ascribed to the Lombard monarchy; but he was admitted only with a peaceful train; the gates of the city were shut upon him; and the king of Italy was held a captive by the arms of the Visconti, whom he confirmed in the sovereignty of Milan. In the Vatican he was again crowned with the golden crown of the empire; but, in obedience to a secret treaty, the Roman emperor immediately withdrew, without reposing a single night within the walls of Rome. The eloquent Petrarch, [151] whose fancy revived the visionary glories of the Capitol, deplores and upbraids the ignominious flight of the Bohemian; and even his contemporaries could observe, that the sole exercise of his authority was in the lucrative sale of privileges and titles. The gold of Italy secured the election of his son; but such was the shameful poverty of the Roman emperor, that his person was arrested by a butcher in the streets of Worms, and was detained in the public inn, as a pledge or hostage for the payment of his expenses.

[Footnote 150: Yet, personally, Charles IV. must not be considered as a Barbarian. After his education at Paris, he recovered the use of the Bohemian, his native, idiom; and the emperor conversed and wrote with equal facility in French, Latin, Italian, and German, (Struvius, p. 615, 616.) Petrarch always represents him as a polite and learned prince.]

[Footnote 151: Besides the German and Italian historians, the expedition of Charles IV. is painted in lively and original colors in the curious Memoires sur la Vie de Petrarque, tom. iii. p. 376-430, by the Abbe de Sade, whose prolixity has never been blamed by any reader of taste and curiosity.]

From this humiliating scene, let us turn to the apparent majesty of the same Charles in the diets of the empire. The golden bull, which fixes the Germanic constitution, is promulgated in the style of a sovereign and legislator. A hundred princes bowed before his throne, and exalted their own dignity by the voluntary honors which they yielded to their chief or minister. At the royal banquet, the hereditary great officers, the seven electors, who in rank and title were equal to kings, performed their solemn and domestic service of the palace. The seals of the triple kingdom were borne in state by the archbishops of Mentz, Cologne, and Treves, the perpetual arch-chancellors of Germany, Italy, and Arles. The great marshal, on horseback, exercised his function with a silver measure of oats, which he emptied on the ground, and immediately dismounted to regulate the order of the guests The great steward, the count palatine of the Rhine, place the dishes on the table. The great chamberlain, the margrave of Brandenburgh, presented, after the repast, the golden ewer and basin, to wash. The king of Bohemia, as great cup-bearer, was represented by the emperor's brother, the duke of Luxemburgh and Brabant; and the procession was closed by the great huntsmen, who introduced a boar and a stag, with a loud chorus of horns and hounds. [152] Nor was the supremacy of the emperor confined to Germany alone: the hereditary monarchs of Europe confessed the preeminence of his rank and dignity: he was the first of the Christian princes, the temporal head of the great republic of the West: [153] to his person the title of majesty was long appropriated; and he disputed with the pope the sublime prerogative of creating kings and assembling councils. The oracle of the civil law, the learned Bartolus, was a pensioner of Charles the Fourth; and his school resounded with the doctrine, that the Roman emperor was the rightful sovereign of the earth, from the rising to the setting sun. The contrary opinion was condemned, not as an error, but as a heresy, since even the gospel had pronounced, "And there went forth a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed." [154]

[Footnote 152: See the whole ceremony in Struvius, p. 629]

[Footnote 153: The republic of Europe, with the pope and emperor at its head, was never represented with more dignity than in the council of Constance. See Lenfant's History of that assembly.]

[Footnote 154: Gravina, Origines Juris Civilis, p. 108.]

If we annihilate the interval of time and space between Augustus and Charles, strong and striking will be the contrast between the two Caesars; the Bohemian who concealed his weakness under the mask of ostentation, and the Roman, who disguised his strength under the semblance of modesty. At the head of his victorious legions, in his reign over the sea and land, from the Nile and Euphrates to the Atlantic Ocean, Augustus professed himself the servant of the state and the equal of his fellow-citizens. The conqueror of Rome and her provinces assumed a popular and legal form of a censor, a consul, and a tribune. His will was the law of mankind, but in the declaration of his laws he borrowed the voice of the senate and people; and from their decrees their master accepted and renewed his temporary commission to administer the republic. In his dress, his domestics, [155] his titles, in all the offices of social life, Augustus maintained the character of a private Roman; and his most artful flatterers respected the secret of his absolute and perpetual monarchy.

[Footnote 155: Six thousand urns have been discovered of the slaves and freedmen of Augustus and Livia. So minute was the division of office, that one slave was appointed to weigh the wool which was spun by the empress's maids, another for the care of her lap-dog, &c., (Camera Sepolchrale, by Bianchini. Extract of his work in the Bibliotheque Italique, tom. iv. p. 175. His Eloge, by Fontenelle, tom. vi. p. 356.) But these servants were of the same rank, and possibly not more numerous than those of Pollio or Lentulus. They only prove the general riches of the city.]



Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Part I.

Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Birth, Character, And Doctrine Of Mahomet.—He Preaches At Mecca.— Flies To Medina.—Propagates His Religion By The Sword.— Voluntary Or Reluctant Submission Of The Arabs.—His Death And Successors.—The Claims And Fortunes Of All And His Descendants.

After pursuing above six hundred years the fleeting Caesars of Constantinople and Germany, I now descend, in the reign of Heraclius, on the eastern borders of the Greek monarchy. While the state was exhausted by the Persian war, and the church was distracted by the Nestorian and Monophysite sects, Mahomet, with the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, erected his throne on the ruins of Christianity and of Rome. The genius of the Arabian prophet, the manners of his nation, and the spirit of his religion, involve the causes of the decline and fall of the Eastern empire; and our eyes are curiously intent on one of the most memorable revolutions, which have impressed a new and lasting character on the nations of the globe. [1]

[Footnote 1: As in this and the following chapter I shall display much Arabic learning, I must profess my total ignorance of the Oriental tongues, and my gratitude to the learned interpreters, who have transfused their science into the Latin, French, and English languages. Their collections, versions, and histories, I shall occasionally notice.]

In the vacant space between Persia, Syria, Egypt, and Aethiopia, the Arabian peninsula [2] may be conceived as a triangle of spacious but irregular dimensions. From the northern point of Beles [3] on the Euphrates, a line of fifteen hundred miles is terminated by the Straits of Bebelmandel and the land of frankincense. About half this length may be allowed for the middle breadth, from east to west, from Bassora to Suez, from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. [4] The sides of the triangle are gradually enlarged, and the southern basis presents a front of a thousand miles to the Indian Ocean. The entire surface of the peninsula exceeds in a fourfold proportion that of Germany or France; but the far greater part has been justly stigmatized with the epithets of the stony and the sandy. Even the wilds of Tartary are decked, by the hand of nature, with lofty trees and luxuriant herbage; and the lonesome traveller derives a sort of comfort and society from the presence of vegetable life. But in the dreary waste of Arabia, a boundless level of sand is intersected by sharp and naked mountains; and the face of the desert, without shade or shelter, is scorched by the direct and intense rays of a tropical sun. Instead of refreshing breezes, the winds, particularly from the south-west, diffuse a noxious and even deadly vapor; the hillocks of sand which they alternately raise and scatter, are compared to the billows of the ocean, and whole caravans, whole armies, have been lost and buried in the whirlwind. The common benefits of water are an object of desire and contest; and such is the scarcity of wood, that some art is requisite to preserve and propagate the element of fire. Arabia is destitute of navigable rivers, which fertilize the soil, and convey its produce to the adjacent regions: the torrents that fall from the hills are imbibed by the thirsty earth: the rare and hardy plants, the tamarind or the acacia, that strike their roots into the clefts of the rocks, are nourished by the dews of the night: a scanty supply of rain is collected in cisterns and aqueducts: the wells and springs are the secret treasure of the desert; and the pilgrim of Mecca, [5] after many a dry and sultry march, is disgusted by the taste of the waters which have rolled over a bed of sulphur or salt. Such is the general and genuine picture of the climate of Arabia. The experience of evil enhances the value of any local or partial enjoyments. A shady grove, a green pasture, a stream of fresh water, are sufficient to attract a colony of sedentary Arabs to the fortunate spots which can afford food and refreshment to themselves and their cattle, and which encourage their industry in the cultivation of the palmtree and the vine. The high lands that border on the Indian Ocean are distinguished by their superior plenty of wood and water; the air is more temperate, the fruits are more delicious, the animals and the human race more numerous: the fertility of the soil invites and rewards the toil of the husbandman; and the peculiar gifts of frankincense [6] and coffee have attracted in different ages the merchants of the world. If it be compared with the rest of the peninsula, this sequestered region may truly deserve the appellation of the happy; and the splendid coloring of fancy and fiction has been suggested by contrast, and countenanced by distance. It was for this earthly paradise that Nature had reserved her choicest favors and her most curious workmanship: the incompatible blessings of luxury and innocence were ascribed to the natives: the soil was impregnated with gold [7] and gems, and both the land and sea were taught to exhale the odors of aromatic sweets. This division of the sandy, the stony, and the happy, so familiar to the Greeks and Latins, is unknown to the Arabians themselves; and it is singular enough, that a country, whose language and inhabitants have ever been the same, should scarcely retain a vestige of its ancient geography. The maritime districts of Bahrein and Oman are opposite to the realm of Persia. The kingdom of Yemen displays the limits, or at least the situation, of Arabia Felix: the name of Neged is extended over the inland space; and the birth of Mahomet has illustrated the province of Hejaz along the coast of the Red Sea. [8]

[Footnote 2: The geographers of Arabia may be divided into three classes: 1. The Greeks and Latins, whose progressive knowledge may be traced in Agatharcides, (de Mari Rubro, in Hudson, Geograph. Minor. tom. i.,) Diodorus Siculus, (tom. i. l. ii. p. 159-167, l. iii. p. 211-216, edit. Wesseling,) Strabo, (l. xvi. p. 1112-1114, from Eratosthenes, p. 1122-1132, from Artemidorus,) Dionysius, (Periegesis, 927-969,) Pliny, (Hist. Natur. v. 12, vi. 32,) and Ptolemy, (Descript. et Tabulae Urbium, in Hudson, tom. iii.) 2. The Arabic writers, who have treated the subject with the zeal of patriotism or devotion: the extracts of Pocock (Specimen Hist. Arabum, p. 125-128) from the Geography of the Sherif al Edrissi, render us still more dissatisfied with the version or abridgment (p. 24-27, 44-56, 108, &c., 119, &c.) which the Maronites have published under the absurd title of Geographia Nubiensis, (Paris, 1619;) but the Latin and French translators, Greaves (in Hudson, tom. iii.) and Galland, (Voyage de la Palestine par La Roque, p. 265-346,) have opened to us the Arabia of Abulfeda, the most copious and correct account of the peninsula, which may be enriched, however, from the Bibliotheque Orientale of D'Herbelot, p. 120, et alibi passim. 3. The European travellers; among whom Shaw (p. 438-455) and Niebuhr (Description, 1773; Voyages, tom. i. 1776) deserve an honorable distinction: Busching (Geographie par Berenger, tom. viii. p. 416-510) has compiled with judgment, and D'Anville's Maps (Orbis Veteribus Notus, and 1re Partie de l'Asie) should lie before the reader, with his Geographie Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 208-231. * Note: Of modern travellers may be mentioned the adventurer who called himself Ali Bey; but above all, the intelligent, the enterprising the accurate Burckhardt.—M.]

[Footnote 3: Abulfed. Descript. Arabiae, p. 1. D'Anville, l'Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 19, 20. It was in this place, the paradise or garden of a satrap, that Xenophon and the Greeks first passed the Euphrates, (Anabasis, l. i. c. 10, p. 29, edit. Wells.)]

[Footnote 4: Reland has proved, with much superfluous learning,

1. That our Red Sea (the Arabian Gulf) is no more than a part of the Mare Rubrum, which was extended to the indefinite space of the Indian Ocean.

2. That the synonymous words, allude to the color of the blacks or negroes, (Dissert Miscell. tom. i. p. 59-117.)]

[Footnote 5: In the thirty days, or stations, between Cairo and Mecca, there are fifteen destitute of good water. See the route of the Hadjees, in Shaw's Travels, p. 477.]

[Footnote 6: The aromatics, especially the thus, or frankincense, of Arabia, occupy the xiith book of Pliny. Our great poet (Paradise Lost, l. iv.) introduces, in a simile, the spicy odors that are blown by the north-east wind from the Sabaean coast:——Many a league, Pleased with the grateful scent, old Ocean smiles. (Plin. Hist. Natur. xii. 42.)]

[Footnote 7: Agatharcides affirms, that lumps of pure gold were found, from the size of an olive to that of a nut; that iron was twice, and silver ten times, the value of gold, (de Mari Rubro, p. 60.) These real or imaginary treasures are vanished; and no gold mines are at present known in Arabia, (Niebuhr, Description, p. 124.) * Note: A brilliant passage in the geographical poem of Dionysius Periegetes embodies the notions of the ancients on the wealth and fertility of Yemen. Greek mythology, and the traditions of the "gorgeous east," of India as well as Arabia, are mingled together in indiscriminate splendor. Compare on the southern coast of Arabia, the recent travels of Lieut. Wellsted—M.]

[Footnote 8: Consult, peruse, and study the Specimen Hostoriae Arabum of Pocock, (Oxon. 1650, in 4to.) The thirty pages of text and version are extracted from the Dynasties of Gregory Abulpharagius, which Pocock afterwards translated, (Oxon. 1663, in 4to.;) the three hundred and fifty-eight notes form a classic and original work on the Arabian antiquities.]

The measure of population is regulated by the means of subsistence; and the inhabitants of this vast peninsula might be outnumbered by the subjects of a fertile and industrious province. Along the shores of the Persian Gulf, of the ocean, and even of the Red Sea, the Icthyophagi, [9] or fish eaters, continued to wander in quest of their precarious food. In this primitive and abject state, which ill deserves the name of society, the human brute, without arts or laws, almost without sense or language, is poorly distinguished from the rest of the animal creation. Generations and ages might roll away in silent oblivion, and the helpless savage was restrained from multiplying his race by the wants and pursuits which confined his existence to the narrow margin of the seacoast. But in an early period of antiquity the great body of the Arabs had emerged from this scene of misery; and as the naked wilderness could not maintain a people of hunters, they rose at once to the more secure and plentiful condition of the pastoral life. The same life is uniformly pursued by the roving tribes of the desert; and in the portrait of the modern Bedoweens, we may trace the features of their ancestors, [10] who, in the age of Moses or Mahomet, dwelt under similar tents, and conducted their horses, and camels, and sheep, to the same springs and the same pastures. Our toil is lessened, and our wealth is increased, by our dominion over the useful animals; and the Arabian shepherd had acquired the absolute possession of a faithful friend and a laborious slave. [11] 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 merit of the Barb, the Spanish, and the English breed, is derived from a mixture of Arabian blood: [12] the Bedoweens preserve, with superstitious care, the honors and the memory of the purest race: the males are sold at a high price, but the females are seldom alienated; and the birth of a noble foal was esteemed among the tribes, as a subject of joy and mutual congratulation. These horses are educated in the tents, among the children of the Arabs, with a tender familiarity, which trains them in the habits of gentleness and attachment. They are accustomed only to walk and to gallop: their sensations are not blunted by the incessant abuse of the spur and the whip: their powers are reserved for the moments of flight and pursuit: but no sooner do they feel the touch of the hand or the stirrup, than they dart away with the swiftness of the wind; and if their friend be dismounted in the rapid career, they instantly stop till he has recovered his seat. In the sands of Africa and Arabia, the camel is a sacred and precious gift. That strong and patient beast of burden can perform, without eating or drinking, a journey of several days; and a reservoir of fresh water is preserved in a large bag, a fifth stomach of the animal, whose body is imprinted with the marks of servitude: the larger breed is capable of transporting a weight of a thousand pounds; and the dromedary, of a lighter and more active frame, outstrips the fleetest courser in the race. Alive or dead, almost every part of the camel is serviceable to man: her milk is plentiful and nutritious: the young and tender flesh has the taste of veal: [13] a valuable salt is extracted from the urine: the dung supplies the deficiency of fuel; and the long hair, which falls each year and is renewed, is coarsely manufactured into the garments, the furniture, and the tents of the Bedoweens. In the rainy seasons, they consume the rare and insufficient herbage of the desert: during the heats of summer and the scarcity of winter, they remove their encampments to the sea-coast, the hills of Yemen, or the neighborhood of the Euphrates, and have often extorted the dangerous license of visiting the banks of the Nile, and the villages of Syria and Palestine. The life of a wandering Arab is a life of danger and distress; and though sometimes, by rapine or exchange, he may appropriate the fruits of industry, a private citizen in Europe is in the possession of more solid and pleasing luxury than the proudest emir, who marches in the field at the head of ten thousand horse.

[Footnote 9: Arrian remarks the Icthyophagi of the coast of Hejez, (Periplus Maris Erythraei, p. 12,) and beyond Aden, (p. 15.) It seems probable that the shores of the Red Sea (in the largest sense) were occupied by these savages in the time, perhaps, of Cyrus; but I can hardly believe that any cannibals were left among the savages in the reign of Justinian. (Procop. de Bell. Persic. l. i. c. 19.)]

[Footnote 10: See the Specimen Historiae Arabum of Pocock, p. 2, 5, 86, &c. The journey of M. d'Arvieux, in 1664, to the camp of the emir of Mount Carmel, (Voyage de la Palestine, Amsterdam, 1718,) exhibits a pleasing and original picture of the life of the Bedoweens, which may be illustrated from Niebuhr (Description de l'Arabie, p. 327-344) and Volney, (tom. i. p. 343-385,) the last and most judicious of our Syrian travellers.]

[Footnote 11: Read (it is no unpleasing task) the incomparable articles of the Horse and the Camel, in the Natural History of M. de Buffon.]

[Footnote 12: For the Arabian horses, see D'Arvieux (p. 159-173) and Niebuhr, (p. 142-144.) At the end of the xiiith century, the horses of Neged were esteemed sure-footed, those of Yemen strong and serviceable, those of Hejaz most noble. The horses of Europe, the tenth and last class, were generally despised as having too much body and too little spirit, (D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 339: ) their strength was requisite to bear the weight of the knight and his armor]

[Footnote 13: Qui carnibus camelorum vesci solent odii tenaces sunt, was the opinion of an Arabian physician, (Pocock, Specimen, p. 88.) Mahomet himself, who was fond of milk, prefers the cow, and does not even mention the camel; but the diet of Mecca and Medina was already more luxurious, (Gagnier Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 404.)]

Yet an essential difference may be found between the hordes of Scythia and the Arabian tribes; since many of the latter were collected into towns, and employed in the labors of trade and agriculture. A part of their time and industry was still devoted to the management of their cattle: they mingled, in peace and war, with their brethren of the desert; and the Bedoweens derived from their useful intercourse some supply of their wants, and some rudiments of art and knowledge. Among the forty-two cities of Arabia, [14] enumerated by Abulfeda, the most ancient and populous were situate in the happy Yemen: the towers of Saana, [15] and the marvellous reservoir of Merab, [16] were constructed by the kings of the Homerites; but their profane lustre was eclipsed by the prophetic glories of Medina [17] and Mecca, [18] near the Red Sea, and at the distance from each other of two hundred and seventy miles. The last of these holy places was known to the Greeks under the name of Macoraba; and the termination of the word is expressive of its greatness, which has not, indeed, in the most flourishing period, exceeded the size and populousness of Marseilles. Some latent motive, perhaps of superstition, must have impelled the founders, in the choice of a most unpromising situation. They erected their habitations of mud or stone, in a plain about two miles long and one mile broad, at the foot of three barren mountains: the soil is a rock; the water even of the holy well of Zemzem is bitter or brackish; the pastures are remote from the city; and grapes are transported above seventy miles from the gardens of Tayef. The fame and spirit of the Koreishites, who reigned in Mecca, were conspicuous among the Arabian tribes; but their ungrateful soil refused the labors of agriculture, and their position was favorable to the enterprises of trade. By the seaport of Gedda, at the distance only of forty miles, they maintained an easy correspondence with Abyssinia; and that Christian kingdom afforded the first refuge to the disciples of Mahomet. The treasures of Africa were conveyed over the Peninsula to Gerrha or Katif, in the province of Bahrein, a city built, as it is said, of rock-salt, by the Chaldaean exiles; [19] and from thence with the native pearls of the Persian Gulf, they were floated on rafts to the mouth of the Euphrates. Mecca is placed almost at an equal distance, a month's journey, between Yemen on the right, and Syria on the left hand. The former was the winter, the latter the summer, station of her caravans; and their seasonable arrival relieved the ships of India from the tedious and troublesome navigation of the Red Sea. In the markets of Saana and Merab, in the harbors of Oman and Aden, the camels of the Koreishites were laden with a precious cargo of aromatics; a supply of corn and manufactures was purchased in the fairs of Bostra and Damascus; the lucrative exchange diffused plenty and riches in the streets of Mecca; and the noblest of her sons united the love of arms with the profession of merchandise. [20]

[Footnote 14: Yet Marcian of Heraclea (in Periplo, p. 16, in tom. i. Hudson, Minor. Geograph.) reckons one hundred and sixty-four towns in Arabia Felix. The size of the towns might be small—the faith of the writer might be large.]

[Footnote 15: It is compared by Abulfeda (in Hudson, tom. ii. p. 54) to Damascus, and is still the residence of the Iman of Yemen, (Voyages de Niebuhr, tom. i. p. 331-342.) Saana is twenty-four parasangs from Dafar, (Abulfeda, p. 51,) and sixty-eight from Aden, (p. 53.)]

[Footnote 16: Pocock, Specimen, p. 57. Geograph. Nubiensis, p. 52. Meriaba, or Merab, six miles in circumference, was destroyed by the legions of Augustus, (Plin. Hist. Nat. vi. 32,) and had not revived in the xivth century, (Abulfed. Descript. Arab. p. 58.) * Note: See note 2 to chap. i. The destruction of Meriaba by the Romans is doubtful. The town never recovered the inundation which took place from the bursting of a large reservoir of water—an event of great importance in the Arabian annals, and discussed at considerable length by modern Orientalists.—M.]

[Footnote 17: The name of city, Medina, was appropriated, to Yatreb. (the Iatrippa of the Greeks,) the seat of the prophet. The distances from Medina are reckoned by Abulfeda in stations, or days' journey of a caravan, (p. 15: ) to Bahrein, xv.; to Bassora, xviii.; to Cufah, xx.; to Damascus or Palestine, xx.; to Cairo, xxv.; to Mecca. x.; from Mecca to Saana, (p. 52,) or Aden, xxx.; to Cairo, xxxi. days, or 412 hours, (Shaw's Travels, p. 477;) which, according to the estimate of D'Anville, (Mesures Itineraires, p. 99,) allows about twenty-five English miles for a day's journey. From the land of frankincense (Hadramaut, in Yemen, between Aden and Cape Fartasch) to Gaza in Syria, Pliny (Hist. Nat. xii. 32) computes lxv. mansions of camels. These measures may assist fancy and elucidate facts.]

[Footnote 18: Our notions of Mecca must be drawn from the Arabians, (D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 368-371. Pocock, Specimen, p. 125-128. Abulfeda, p. 11-40.) As no unbeliever is permitted to enter the city, our travellers are silent; and the short hints of Thevenot (Voyages du Levant, part i. p. 490) are taken from the suspicious mouth of an African renegado. Some Persians counted 6000 houses, (Chardin. tom. iv. p. 167.) * Note: Even in the time of Gibbon, Mecca had not been so inaccessible to Europeans. It had been visited by Ludovico Barthema, and by one Joseph Pitts, of Exeter, who was taken prisoner by the Moors, and forcibly converted to Mahometanism. His volume is a curious, though plain, account of his sufferings and travels. Since that time Mecca has been entered, and the ceremonies witnessed, by Dr. Seetzen, whose papers were unfortunately lost; by the Spaniard, who called himself Ali Bey; and, lastly, by Burckhardt, whose description leaves nothing wanting to satisfy the curiosity.—M.]

[Footnote 19: Strabo, l. xvi. p. 1110. See one of these salt houses near Bassora, in D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 6.]

[Footnote 20: Mirum dictu ex innumeris populis pars aequa in commerciis aut in latrociniis degit, (Plin. Hist. Nat. vi. 32.) See Sale's Koran, Sura. cvi. p. 503. Pocock, Specimen, p. 2. D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 361. Prideaux's Life of Mahomet, p. 5. Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 72, 120, 126, &c.]

The perpetual independence of the Arabs has been the theme of praise among strangers and natives; and the arts of controversy transform this singular event into a prophecy and a miracle, in favor of the posterity of Ismael. [21] Some exceptions, that can neither be dismissed nor eluded, render this mode of reasoning as indiscreet as it is superfluous; the kingdom of Yemen has been successively subdued by the Abyssinians, the Persians, the sultans of Egypt, [22] and the Turks; [23] the holy cities of Mecca and Medina have repeatedly bowed under a Scythian tyrant; and the Roman province of Arabia [24] embraced the peculiar wilderness in which Ismael and his sons must have pitched their tents in the face of their brethren. Yet these exceptions are temporary or local; the body of the nation has escaped the yoke of the most powerful monarchies: the arms of Sesostris and Cyrus, of Pompey and Trajan, could never achieve the conquest of Arabia; the present sovereign of the Turks [25] may exercise a shadow of jurisdiction, but his pride is reduced to solicit the friendship of a people, whom it is dangerous to provoke, and fruitless to attack. The obvious causes of their freedom are inscribed on the character and country of the Arabs. Many ages before Mahomet, [26] their intrepid valor had been severely felt by their neighbors in offensive and defensive war. The patient and active virtues of a soldier are insensibly nursed in the habits and discipline of a pastoral life. The care of the sheep and camels is abandoned to the women of the tribe; but the martial youth, under the banner of the emir, is ever on horseback, and in the field, to practise the exercise of the bow, the javelin, and the cimeter. The long memory of their independence is the firmest pledge of its perpetuity and succeeding generations are animated to prove their descent, and to maintain their inheritance. Their domestic feuds are suspended on the approach of a common enemy; and in their last hostilities against the Turks, the caravan of Mecca was attacked and pillaged by fourscore thousand of the confederates. When they advance to battle, the hope of victory is in the front; in the rear, the assurance of a retreat. Their horses and camels, who, in eight or ten days, can perform a march of four or five hundred miles, disappear before the conqueror; the secret waters of the desert elude his search, and his victorious troops are consumed with thirst, hunger, and fatigue, in the pursuit of an invisible foe, who scorns his efforts, and safely reposes in the heart of the burning solitude. The arms and deserts of the Bedoweens are not only the safeguards of their own freedom, but the barriers also of the happy Arabia, whose inhabitants, remote from war, are enervated by the luxury of the soil and climate. The legions of Augustus melted away in disease and lassitude; [27] and it is only by a naval power that the reduction of Yemen has been successfully attempted. When Mahomet erected his holy standard, [28] that kingdom was a province of the Persian empire; yet seven princes of the Homerites still reigned in the mountains; and the vicegerent of Chosroes was tempted to forget his distant country and his unfortunate master. The historians of the age of Justinian represent the state of the independent Arabs, who were divided by interest or affection in the long quarrel of the East: the tribe of Gassan was allowed to encamp on the Syrian territory: the princes of Hira were permitted to form a city about forty miles to the southward of the ruins of Babylon. Their service in the field was speedy and vigorous; but their friendship was venal, their faith inconstant, their enmity capricious: it was an easier task to excite than to disarm these roving barbarians; and, in the familiar intercourse of war, they learned to see, and to despise, the splendid weakness both of Rome and of Persia. From Mecca to the Euphrates, the Arabian tribes [29] were confounded by the Greeks and Latins, under the general appellation of Saracens, [30] a name which every Christian mouth has been taught to pronounce with terror and abhorrence.

[Footnote 21: A nameless doctor (Universal Hist. vol. xx. octavo edition) has formally demonstrated the truth of Christianity by the independence of the Arabs. A critic, besides the exceptions of fact, might dispute the meaning of the text (Gen. xvi. 12,) the extent of the application, and the foundation of the pedigree. * Note: See note 3 to chap. xlvi. The atter point is probably the least contestable of the three.—M.]

[Footnote 22: It was subdued, A.D. 1173, by a brother of the great Saladin, who founded a dynasty of Curds or Ayoubites, (Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 425. D'Herbelot, p. 477.)]

[Footnote 23: By the lieutenant of Soliman I. (A.D. 1538) and Selim II., (1568.) See Cantemir's Hist. of the Othman Empire, p. 201, 221. The pacha, who resided at Saana, commanded twenty-one beys; but no revenue was ever remitted to the Porte, (Marsigli, Stato Militare dell' Imperio Ottomanno, p. 124,) and the Turks were expelled about the year 1630, (Niebuhr, p. 167, 168.)]

[Footnote 24: Of the Roman province, under the name of Arabia and the third Palestine, the principal cities were Bostra and Petra, which dated their aera from the year 105, when they were subdued by Palma, a lieutenant of Trajan, (Dion. Cassius, l. lxviii.) Petra was the capital of the Nabathaeans; whose name is derived from the eldest of the sons of Ismael, (Gen. xxv. 12, &c., with the Commentaries of Jerom, Le Clerc, and Calmet.) Justinian relinquished a palm country of ten days' journey to the south of Aelah, (Procop. de Bell. Persic. l. i. c. 19,) and the Romans maintained a centurion and a custom-house, (Arrian in Periplo Maris Erythraei, p. 11, in Hudson, tom. i.,) at a place (Pagus Albus, Hawara) in the territory of Medina, (D'Anville, Memoire sur l'Egypte, p. 243.) These real possessions, and some naval inroads of Trajan, (Peripl. p. 14, 15,) are magnified by history and medals into the Roman conquest of Arabia. * Note: On the ruins of Petra, see the travels of Messrs. Irby and Mangles, and of Leon de Laborde.—M.]

[Footnote 25: Niebuhr (Description de l'Arabie, p. 302, 303, 329-331) affords the most recent and authentic intelligence of the Turkish empire in Arabia. * Note: Niebuhr's, notwithstanding the multitude of later travellers, maintains its ground, as the classical work on Arabia.—M.]

[Footnote 26: Diodorus Siculus (tom. ii. l. xix. p. 390-393, edit. Wesseling) has clearly exposed the freedom of the Nabathaean Arabs, who resisted the arms of Antigonus and his son.]

[Footnote 27: Strabo, l. xvi. p. 1127-1129. Plin. Hist. Natur. vi. 32. Aelius Gallus landed near Medina, and marched near a thousand miles into the part of Yemen between Mareb and the Ocean. The non ante devictis Sabeae regibus, (Od. i. 29,) and the intacti Arabum thesanri (Od. iii. 24) of Horace, attest the virgin purity of Arabia.]

[Footnote 28: See the imperfect history of Yemen in Pocock, Specimen, p. 55-66, of Hira, p. 66-74, of Gassan, p. 75-78, as far as it could be known or preserved in the time of ignorance. * Note: Compare the Hist. Yemanae, published by Johannsen at Bonn 1880 particularly the translator's preface.—M.]

[Footnote 29: They are described by Menander, (Excerpt. Legation p. 149,) Procopius, (de Bell. Persic. l. i. c. 17, 19, l. ii. c. 10,) and, in the most lively colors, by Ammianus Marcellinus, (l. xiv. c. 4,) who had spoken of them as early as the reign of Marcus.]

[Footnote 30: The name which, used by Ptolemy and Pliny in a more confined, by Ammianus and Procopius in a larger, sense, has been derived, ridiculously, from Sarah, the wife of Abraham, obscurely from the village of Saraka, (Stephan. de Urbibus,) more plausibly from the Arabic words, which signify a thievish character, or Oriental situation, (Hottinger, Hist. Oriental. l. i. c. i. p. 7, 8. Pocock, Specimen, p. 33, 35. Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 567.) Yet the last and most popular of these etymologies is refuted by Ptolemy, (Arabia, p. 2, 18, in Hudson, tom. iv.,) who expressly remarks the western and southern position of the Saracens, then an obscure tribe on the borders of Egypt. The appellation cannot therefore allude to any national character; and, since it was imposed by strangers, it must be found, not in the Arabic, but in a foreign language. * Note: Dr. Clarke, (Travels, vol. ii. p. 491,) after expressing contemptuous pity for Gibbon's ignorance, derives the word from Zara, Zaara, Sara, the Desert, whence Saraceni, the children of the Desert. De Marles adopts the derivation from Sarrik, a robber, (Hist. des Arabes, vol. i. p. 36, S.L. Martin from Scharkioun, or Sharkun, Eastern, vol. xi. p. 55.)—M.]



Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Part II.

The slaves of domestic tyranny may vainly exult in their national independence: but the Arab is personally free; and he enjoys, in some degree, the benefits of society, without forfeiting the prerogatives of nature. In every tribe, superstition, or gratitude, or fortune, has exalted a particular family above the heads of their equals. The dignities of sheick and emir invariably descend in this chosen race; but the order of succession is loose and precarious; and the most worthy or aged of the noble kinsmen are preferred to the simple, though important, office of composing disputes by their advice, and guiding valor by their example. Even a female of sense and spirit has been permitted to command the countrymen of Zenobia. [31] The momentary junction of several tribes produces an army: their more lasting union constitutes a nation; and the supreme chief, the emir of emirs, whose banner is displayed at their head, may deserve, in the eyes of strangers, the honors of the kingly name.

If the Arabian princes abuse their power, they are quickly punished by the desertion of their subjects, who had been accustomed to a mild and parental jurisdiction. Their spirit is free, their steps are unconfined, the desert is open, and the tribes and families are held together by a mutual and voluntary compact. The softer natives of Yemen supported the pomp and majesty of a monarch; but if he could not leave his palace without endangering his life, [32] the active powers of government must have been devolved on his nobles and magistrates. The cities of Mecca and Medina present, in the heart of Asia, the form, or rather the substance, of a commonwealth. The grandfather of Mahomet, and his lineal ancestors, appear in foreign and domestic transactions as the princes of their country; but they reigned, like Pericles at Athens, or the Medici at Florence, by the opinion of their wisdom and integrity; their influence was divided with their patrimony; and the sceptre was transferred from the uncles of the prophet to a younger branch of the tribe of Koreish. On solemn occasions they convened the assembly of the people; and, since mankind must be either compelled or persuaded to obey, the use and reputation of oratory among the ancient Arabs is the clearest evidence of public freedom. [33] But their simple freedom was of a very different cast from the nice and artificial machinery of the Greek and Roman republics, in which each member possessed an undivided share of the civil and political rights of the community. In the more simple state of the Arabs, the nation is free, because each of her sons disdains a base submission to the will of a master. His breast is fortified by the austere virtues of courage, patience, and sobriety; the love of independence prompts him to exercise the habits of self-command; and the fear of dishonor guards him from the meaner apprehension of pain, of danger, and of death. The gravity and firmness of the mind is conspicuous in his outward demeanor; his speech is low, weighty, and concise; he is seldom provoked to laughter; his only gesture is that of stroking his beard, the venerable symbol of manhood; and the sense of his own importance teaches him to accost his equals without levity, and his superiors without awe. [34] The liberty of the Saracens survived their conquests: the first caliphs indulged the bold and familiar language of their subjects; they ascended the pulpit to persuade and edify the congregation; nor was it before the seat of empire was removed to the Tigris, that the Abbasides adopted the proud and pompous ceremonial of the Persian and Byzantine courts.

[Footnote 31: Saraceni... mulieres aiunt in eos regnare, (Expositio totius Mundi, p. 3, in Hudson, tom. iii.) The reign of Mavia is famous in ecclesiastical story Pocock, Specimen, p. 69, 83.]

[Footnote 32: The report of Agatharcides, (de Mari Rubro, p. 63, 64, in Hudson, tom. i.) Diodorus Siculus, (tom. i. l. iii. c. 47, p. 215,) and Strabo, (l. xvi. p. 1124.) But I much suspect that this is one of the popular tales, or extraordinary accidents, which the credulity of travellers so often transforms into a fact, a custom, and a law.]

[Footnote 33: Non gloriabantur antiquitus Arabes, nisi gladio, hospite, et eloquentia (Sephadius apud Pocock, Specimen, p. 161, 162.) This gift of speech they shared only with the Persians; and the sententious Arabs would probably have disdained the simple and sublime logic of Demosthenes.]

[Footnote 34: I must remind the reader that D'Arvieux, D'Herbelot, and Niebuhr, represent, in the most lively colors, the manners and government of the Arabs, which are illustrated by many incidental passages in the Life of Mahomet. * Note: See, likewise the curious romance of Antar, the most vivid and authentic picture of Arabian manners.—M.]

In the study of nations and men, we may observe the causes that render them hostile or friendly to each other, that tend to narrow or enlarge, to mollify or exasperate, the social character. The separation of the Arabs from the rest of mankind has accustomed them to confound the ideas of stranger and enemy; and the poverty of the land has introduced a maxim of jurisprudence, which they believe and practise to the present hour. They pretend, that, in the division of the earth, the rich and fertile climates were assigned to the other branches of the human family; and that the posterity of the outlaw Ismael might recover, by fraud or force, the portion of inheritance of which he had been unjustly deprived. According to the remark of Pliny, the Arabian tribes are equally addicted to theft and merchandise; the caravans that traverse the desert are ransomed or pillaged; and their neighbors, since the remote times of Job and Sesostris, [35] have been the victims of their rapacious spirit. If a Bedoween discovers from afar a solitary traveller, he rides furiously against him, crying, with a loud voice, "Undress thyself, thy aunt (my wife) is without a garment." A ready submission entitles him to mercy; resistance will provoke the aggressor, and his own blood must expiate the blood which he presumes to shed in legitimate defence. A single robber, or a few associates, are branded with their genuine name; but the exploits of a numerous band assume the character of lawful and honorable war. The temper of a people thus armed against mankind was doubly inflamed by the domestic license of rapine, murder, and revenge. In the constitution of Europe, the right of peace and war is now confined to a small, and the actual exercise to a much smaller, list of respectable potentates; but each Arab, with impunity and renown, might point his javelin against the life of his countrymen. The union of the nation consisted only in a vague resemblance of language and manners; and in each community, the jurisdiction of the magistrate was mute and impotent. Of the time of ignorance which preceded Mahomet, seventeen hundred battles [36] are recorded by tradition: hostility was imbittered with the rancor of civil faction; and the recital, in prose or verse, of an obsolete feud, was sufficient to rekindle the same passions among the descendants of the hostile tribes. In private life every man, at least every family, was the judge and avenger of his own cause. The nice sensibility of honor, which weighs the insult rather than the injury, sheds its deadly venom on the quarrels of the Arabs: the honor of their women, and of their beards, is most easily wounded; an indecent action, a contemptuous word, can be expiated only by the blood of the offender; and such is their patient inveteracy, that they expect whole months and years the opportunity of revenge. A fine or compensation for murder is familiar to the Barbarians of every age: but in Arabia the kinsmen of the dead are at liberty to accept the atonement, or to exercise with their own hands the law of retaliation. The refined malice of the Arabs refuses even the head of the murderer, substitutes an innocent for the guilty person, and transfers the penalty to the best and most considerable of the race by whom they have been injured. If he falls by their hands, they are exposed, in their turn, to the danger of reprisals, the interest and principal of the bloody debt are accumulated: the individuals of either family lead a life of malice and suspicion, and fifty years may sometimes elapse before the account of vengeance be finally settled. [37] This sanguinary spirit, ignorant of pity or forgiveness, has been moderated, however, by the maxims of honor, which require in every private encounter some decent equality of age and strength, of numbers and weapons. An annual festival of two, perhaps of four, months, was observed by the Arabs before the time of Mahomet, during which their swords were religiously sheathed both in foreign and domestic hostility; and this partial truce is more strongly expressive of the habits of anarchy and warfare. [38]

[Footnote 35: Observe the first chapter of Job, and the long wall of 1500 stadia which Sesostris built from Pelusium to Heliopolis, (Diodor. Sicul. tom. i. l. i. p. 67.) Under the name of Hycsos, the shepherd kings, they had formerly subdued Egypt, (Marsham, Canon. Chron. p. 98-163) &c.) * Note: This origin of the Hycsos, though probable, is by no means so certain here is some reason for supposing them Scythians.—M]

[Footnote 36: Or, according to another account, 1200, (D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 75: ) the two historians who wrote of the Ayam al Arab, the battles of the Arabs, lived in the 9th and 10th century. The famous war of Dahes and Gabrah was occasioned by two horses, lasted forty years, and ended in a proverb, (Pocock, Specimen, p. 48.)]

[Footnote 37: The modern theory and practice of the Arabs in the revenge of murder are described by Niebuhr, (Description, p. 26-31.) The harsher features of antiquity may be traced in the Koran, c. 2, p. 20, c. 17, p. 230, with Sale's Observations.]

[Footnote 38: Procopius (de Bell. Persic. l. i. c. 16) places the two holy months about the summer solstice. The Arabians consecrate four months of the year—the first, seventh, eleventh, and twelfth; and pretend, that in a long series of ages the truce was infringed only four or six times, (Sale's Preliminary Discourse, p. 147-150, and Notes on the ixth chapter of the Koran, p. 154, &c. Casiri, Bibliot. Hispano-Arabica, tom. ii. p. 20, 21.)]

But the spirit of rapine and revenge was attempered by the milder influence of trade and literature. The solitary peninsula is encompassed by the most civilized nations of the ancient world; the merchant is the friend of mankind; and the annual caravans imported the first seeds of knowledge and politeness into the cities, and even the camps of the desert. Whatever may be the pedigree of the Arabs, their language is derived from the same original stock with the Hebrew, the Syriac, and the Chaldaean tongues; the independence of the tribes was marked by their peculiar dialects; [39] but each, after their own, allowed a just preference to the pure and perspicuous idiom of Mecca. In Arabia, as well as in Greece, the perfection of language outstripped the refinement of manners; and her speech could diversify the fourscore names of honey, the two hundred of a serpent, the five hundred of a lion, the thousand of a sword, at a time when this copious dictionary was intrusted to the memory of an illiterate people. The monuments of the Homerites were inscribed with an obsolete and mysterious character; but the Cufic letters, the groundwork of the present alphabet, were invented on the banks of the Euphrates; and the recent invention was taught at Mecca by a stranger who settled in that city after the birth of Mahomet. The arts of grammar, of metre, and of rhetoric, were unknown to the freeborn eloquence of the Arabians; but their penetration was sharp, their fancy luxuriant, their wit strong and sententious, [40] and their more elaborate compositions were addressed with energy and effect to the minds of their hearers. The genius and merit of a rising poet was celebrated by the applause of his own and the kindred tribes. A solemn banquet was prepared, and a chorus of women, striking their tymbals, and displaying the pomp of their nuptials, sung in the presence of their sons and husbands the felicity of their native tribe; that a champion had now appeared to vindicate their rights; that a herald had raised his voice to immortalize their renown. The distant or hostile tribes resorted to an annual fair, which was abolished by the fanaticism of the first Moslems; a national assembly that must have contributed to refine and harmonize the Barbarians. Thirty days were employed in the exchange, not only of corn and wine, but of eloquence and poetry. The prize was disputed by the generous emulation of the bards; the victorious performance was deposited in the archives of princes and emirs; and we may read in our own language, the seven original poems which were inscribed in letters of gold, and suspended in the temple of Mecca. [41] The Arabian poets were the historians and moralists of the age; and if they sympathized with the prejudices, they inspired and crowned the virtues, of their countrymen. The indissoluble union of generosity and valor was the darling theme of their song; and when they pointed their keenest satire against a despicable race, they affirmed, in the bitterness of reproach, that the men knew not how to give, nor the women to deny. [42] The same hospitality, which was practised by Abraham, and celebrated by Homer, is still renewed in the camps of the Arabs. The ferocious Bedoweens, the terror of the desert, embrace, without inquiry or hesitation, the stranger who dares to confide in their honor and to enter their tent. His treatment is kind and respectful: he shares the wealth, or the poverty, of his host; and, after a needful repose, he is dismissed on his way, with thanks, with blessings, and perhaps with gifts. The heart and hand are more largely expanded by the wants of a brother or a friend; but the heroic acts that could deserve the public applause, must have surpassed the narrow measure of discretion and experience. A dispute had arisen, who, among the citizens of Mecca, was entitled to the prize of generosity; and a successive application was made to the three who were deemed most worthy of the trial. Abdallah, the son of Abbas, had undertaken a distant journey, and his foot was in the stirrup when he heard the voice of a suppliant, "O son of the uncle of the apostle of God, I am a traveller, and in distress!" He instantly dismounted to present the pilgrim with his camel, her rich caparison, and a purse of four thousand pieces of gold, excepting only the sword, either for its intrinsic value, or as the gift of an honored kinsman. The servant of Kais informed the second suppliant that his master was asleep: but he immediately added, "Here is a purse of seven thousand pieces of gold, (it is all we have in the house,) and here is an order, that will entitle you to a camel and a slave;" the master, as soon as he awoke, praised and enfranchised his faithful steward, with a gentle reproof, that by respecting his slumbers he had stinted his bounty. The third of these heroes, the blind Arabah, at the hour of prayer, was supporting his steps on the shoulders of two slaves. "Alas!" he replied, "my coffers are empty! but these you may sell; if you refuse, I renounce them." At these words, pushing away the youths, he groped along the wall with his staff.

The character of Hatem is the perfect model of Arabian virtue: [43] he was brave and liberal, an eloquent poet, and a successful robber; forty camels were roasted at his hospitable feast; and at the prayer of a suppliant enemy he restored both the captives and the spoil. The freedom of his countrymen disdained the laws of justice; they proudly indulged the spontaneous impulse of pity and benevolence.

[Footnote 39: Arrian, in the second century, remarks (in Periplo Maris Erythraei, p. 12) the partial or total difference of the dialects of the Arabs. Their language and letters are copiously treated by Pocock, (Specimen, p. 150-154,) Casiri, (Bibliot. Hispano-Arabica, tom. i. p. 1, 83, 292, tom. ii. p. 25, &c.,) and Niebuhr, (Description de l'Arabie, p. 72-36) I pass slightly; I am not fond of repeating words like a parrot.]

[Footnote 40: A familiar tale in Voltaire's Zadig (le Chien et le Cheval) is related, to prove the natural sagacity of the Arabs, (D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 120, 121. Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 37-46: ) but D'Arvieux, or rather La Roque, (Voyage de Palestine, p. 92,) denies the boasted superiority of the Bedoweens. The one hundred and sixty-nine sentences of Ali (translated by Ockley, London, 1718) afford a just and favorable specimen of Arabian wit. * Note: Compare the Arabic proverbs translated by Burckhardt. London. 1830—M.]

[Footnote 41: Pocock (Specimen, p. 158-161) and Casiri (Bibliot. Hispano-Arabica, tom. i. p. 48, 84, &c., 119, tom. ii. p. 17, &c.) speak of the Arabian poets before Mahomet; the seven poems of the Caaba have been published in English by Sir William Jones; but his honorable mission to India has deprived us of his own notes, far more interesting than the obscure and obsolete text.]

[Footnote 42: Sale's Preliminary Discourse, p. 29, 30]

[Footnote 43: D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 458. Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 118. Caab and Hesnus (Pocock, Specimen, p. 43, 46, 48) were likewise conspicuous for their liberality; and the latter is elegantly praised by an Arabian poet: "Videbis eum cum accesseris exultantem, ac si dares illi quod ab illo petis." * Note: See the translation of the amusing Persian romance of Hatim Tai, by Duncan Forbes, Esq., among the works published by the Oriental Translation Fund.—M.]

The religion of the Arabs, [44] as well as of the Indians, consisted in the worship of the sun, the moon, and the fixed stars; a primitive and specious mode of superstition. The bright luminaries of the sky display the visible image of a Deity: their number and distance convey to a philosophic, or even a vulgar, eye, the idea of boundless space: the character of eternity is marked on these solid globes, that seem incapable of corruption or decay: the regularity of their motions may be ascribed to a principle of reason or instinct; and their real, or imaginary, influence encourages the vain belief that the earth and its inhabitants are the object of their peculiar care. The science of astronomy was cultivated at Babylon; but the school of the Arabs was a clear firmament and a naked plain. In their nocturnal marches, they steered by the guidance of the stars: their names, and order, and daily station, were familiar to the curiosity and devotion of the Bedoween; and he was taught by experience to divide, in twenty-eight parts, the zodiac of the moon, and to bless the constellations who refreshed, with salutary rains, the thirst of the desert. The reign of the heavenly orbs could not be extended beyond the visible sphere; and some metaphysical powers were necessary to sustain the transmigration of souls and the resurrection of bodies: a camel was left to perish on the grave, that he might serve his master in another life; and the invocation of departed spirits implies that they were still endowed with consciousness and power. I am ignorant, and I am careless, of the blind mythology of the Barbarians; of the local deities, of the stars, the air, and the earth, of their sex or titles, their attributes or subordination. Each tribe, each family, each independent warrior, created and changed the rites and the object of his fantastic worship; but the nation, in every age, has bowed to the religion, as well as to the language, of Mecca. The genuine antiquity of the Caaba ascends beyond the Christian aera; in describing the coast of the Red Sea, the Greek historian Diodorus [45] has remarked, between the Thamudites and the Sabaeans, a famous temple, whose superior sanctity was revered by all the Arabians; the linen or silken veil, which is annually renewed by the Turkish emperor, was first offered by a pious king of the Homerites, who reigned seven hundred years before the time of Mahomet. [46] A tent, or a cavern, might suffice for the worship of the savages, but an edifice of stone and clay has been erected in its place; and the art and power of the monarchs of the East have been confined to the simplicity of the original model. [47] A spacious portico encloses the quadrangle of the Caaba; a square chapel, twenty-four cubits long, twenty-three broad, and twenty-seven high: a door and a window admit the light; the double roof is supported by three pillars of wood; a spout (now of gold) discharges the rain-water, and the well Zemzen is protected by a dome from accidental pollution. The tribe of Koreish, by fraud and force, had acquired the custody of the Caaba: the sacerdotal office devolved through four lineal descents to the grandfather of Mahomet; and the family of the Hashemites, from whence he sprung, was the most respectable and sacred in the eyes of their country. [48] The precincts of Mecca enjoyed the rights of sanctuary; and, in the last month of each year, the city and the temple were crowded with a long train of pilgrims, who presented their vows and offerings in the house of God. The same rites which are now accomplished by the faithful Mussulman, were invented and practised by the superstition of the idolaters. At an awful distance they cast away their garments: seven times, with hasty steps, they encircled the Caaba, and kissed the black stone: seven times they visited and adored the adjacent mountains; seven times they threw stones into the valley of Mina; and the pilgrimage was achieved, as at the present hour, by a sacrifice of sheep and camels, and the burial of their hair and nails in the consecrated ground. Each tribe either found or introduced in the Caaba their domestic worship: the temple was adorned, or defiled, with three hundred and sixty idols of men, eagles, lions, and antelopes; and most conspicuous was the statue of Hebal, of red agate, holding in his hand seven arrows, without heads or feathers, the instruments and symbols of profane divination. But this statue was a monument of Syrian arts: the devotion of the ruder ages was content with a pillar or a tablet; and the rocks of the desert were hewn into gods or altars, in imitation of the black stone [49] of Mecca, which is deeply tainted with the reproach of an idolatrous origin. From Japan to Peru, the use of sacrifice has universally prevailed; and the votary has expressed his gratitude, or fear, by destroying or consuming, in honor of the gods, the dearest and most precious of their gifts. The life of a man [50] is the most precious oblation to deprecate a public calamity: the altars of Phoenicia and Egypt, of Rome and Carthage, have been polluted with human gore: the cruel practice was long preserved among the Arabs; in the third century, a boy was annually sacrificed by the tribe of the Dumatians; [51] and a royal captive was piously slaughtered by the prince of the Saracens, the ally and soldier of the emperor Justinian. [52] A parent who drags his son to the altar, exhibits the most painful and sublime effort of fanaticism: the deed, or the intention, was sanctified by the example of saints and heroes; and the father of Mahomet himself was devoted by a rash vow, and hardly ransomed for the equivalent of a hundred camels. In the time of ignorance, the Arabs, like the Jews and Egyptians, abstained from the taste of swine's flesh; [53] they circumcised [54] their children at the age of puberty: the same customs, without the censure or the precept of the Koran, have been silently transmitted to their posterity and proselytes. It has been sagaciously conjectured, that the artful legislator indulged the stubborn prejudices of his countrymen. It is more simple to believe that he adhered to the habits and opinions of his youth, without foreseeing that a practice congenial to the climate of Mecca might become useless or inconvenient on the banks of the Danube or the Volga.

[Footnote 44: Whatever can now be known of the idolatry of the ancient Arabians may be found in Pocock, (Specimen, p. 89-136, 163, 164.) His profound erudition is more clearly and concisely interpreted by Sale, (Preliminary Discourse, p. 14-24;) and Assemanni (Bibliot. Orient tom. iv. p. 580-590) has added some valuable remarks.]

[Footnote 45: (Diodor. Sicul. tom. i. l. iii. p. 211.) The character and position are so correctly apposite, that I am surprised how this curious passage should have been read without notice or application. Yet this famous temple had been overlooked by Agatharcides, (de Mari Rubro, p. 58, in Hudson, tom. i.,) whom Diodorus copies in the rest of the description. Was the Sicilian more knowing than the Egyptian? Or was the Caaba built between the years of Rome 650 and 746, the dates of their respective histories? (Dodwell, in Dissert. ad tom. i. Hudson, p. 72. Fabricius, Bibliot. Graec. tom. ii. p. 770.) * Note: Mr. Forster (Geography of Arabia, vol. ii. p. 118, et seq.) has raised an objection, as I think, fatal to this hypothesis of Gibbon. The temple, situated in the country of the Banizomeneis, was not between the Thamudites and the Sabaeans, but higher up than the coast inhabited by the former. Mr. Forster would place it as far north as Moiiah. I am not quite satisfied that this will agree with the whole description of Diodorus—M. 1845.]

[Footnote 46: Pocock, Specimen, p. 60, 61. From the death of Mahomet we ascend to 68, from his birth to 129, years before the Christian aera. The veil or curtain, which is now of silk and gold, was no more than a piece of Egyptian linen, (Abulfeda, in Vit. Mohammed. c. 6, p. 14.)]

[Footnote 47: The original plan of the Caaba (which is servilely copied in Sale, the Universal History, &c.) was a Turkish draught, which Reland (de Religione Mohammedica, p. 113-123) has corrected and explained from the best authorities. For the description and legend of the Caaba, consult Pocock, (Specimen, p. 115-122,) the Bibliotheque Orientale of D'Herbelot, (Caaba, Hagir, Zemzem, &c.,) and Sale (Preliminary Discourse, p. 114-122.)]

[Footnote 48: Cosa, the fifth ancestor of Mahomet, must have usurped the Caaba A.D. 440; but the story is differently told by Jannabi, (Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 65-69,) and by Abulfeda, (in Vit. Moham. c. 6, p. 13.)]

[Footnote 49: In the second century, Maximus of Tyre attributes to the Arabs the worship of a stone, (Dissert. viii. tom. i. p. 142, edit. Reiske;) and the reproach is furiously reechoed by the Christians, (Clemens Alex. in Protreptico, p. 40. Arnobius contra Gentes, l. vi. p. 246.) Yet these stones were no other than of Syria and Greece, so renowned in sacred and profane antiquity, (Euseb. Praep. Evangel. l. i. p. 37. Marsham, Canon. Chron. p. 54-56.)]

[Footnote 50: The two horrid subjects are accurately discussed by the learned Sir John Marsham, (Canon. Chron. p. 76-78, 301-304.) Sanchoniatho derives the Phoenician sacrifices from the example of Chronus; but we are ignorant whether Chronus lived before, or after, Abraham, or indeed whether he lived at all.]

[Footnote 51: The reproach of Porphyry; but he likewise imputes to the Roman the same barbarous custom, which, A. U. C. 657, had been finally abolished. Dumaetha, Daumat al Gendai, is noticed by Ptolemy (Tabul. p. 37, Arabia, p. 9-29) and Abulfeda, (p. 57,) and may be found in D'Anville's maps, in the mid-desert between Chaibar and Tadmor.]

[Footnote 52: Prcoopius, (de Bell. Persico, l. i. c. 28,) Evagrius, (l. vi. c. 21,) and Pocock, (Specimen, p. 72, 86,) attest the human sacrifices of the Arabs in the vith century. The danger and escape of Abdallah is a tradition rather than a fact, (Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 82-84.)]

[Footnote 53: Suillis carnibus abstinent, says Solinus, (Polyhistor. c. 33,) who copies Pliny (l. viii. c. 68) in the strange supposition, that hogs can not live in Arabia. The Egyptians were actuated by a natural and superstitious horror for that unclean beast, (Marsham, Canon. p. 205.) The old Arabians likewise practised, post coitum, the rite of ablution, (Herodot. l. i. c. 80,) which is sanctified by the Mahometan law, (Reland, p. 75, &c., Chardin, or rather the Mollah of Shah Abbas, tom. iv. p. 71, &c.)]

[Footnote 54: The Mahometan doctors are not fond of the subject; yet they hold circumcision necessary to salvation, and even pretend that Mahomet was miraculously born without a foreskin, (Pocock, Specimen, p. 319, 320. Sale's Preliminary Discourse, p. 106, 107.)]



Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Part III.

Arabia was free: the adjacent kingdoms were shaken by the storms of conquest and tyranny, and the persecuted sects fled to the happy land where they might profess what they thought, and practise what they professed. The religions of the Sabians and Magians, of the Jews and Christians, were disseminated from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. In a remote period of antiquity, Sabianism was diffused over Asia by the science of the Chaldaeans [55] and the arms of the Assyrians. From the observations of two thousand years, the priests and astronomers of Babylon [56] deduced the eternal laws of nature and providence. They adored the seven gods or angels, who directed the course of the seven planets, and shed their irresistible influence on the earth. The attributes of the seven planets, with the twelve signs of the zodiac, and the twenty-four constellations of the northern and southern hemisphere, were represented by images and talismans; the seven days of the week were dedicated to their respective deities; the Sabians prayed thrice each day; and the temple of the moon at Haran was the term of their pilgrimage. [57] But the flexible genius of their faith was always ready either to teach or to learn: in the tradition of the creation, the deluge, and the patriarchs, they held a singular agreement with their Jewish captives; they appealed to the secret books of Adam, Seth, and Enoch; and a slight infusion of the gospel has transformed the last remnant of the Polytheists into the Christians of St. John, in the territory of Bassora. [58] The altars of Babylon were overturned by the Magians; but the injuries of the Sabians were revenged by the sword of Alexander; Persia groaned above five hundred years under a foreign yoke; and the purest disciples of Zoroaster escaped from the contagion of idolatry, and breathed with their adversaries the freedom of the desert. [59] Seven hundred years before the death of Mahomet, the Jews were settled in Arabia; and a far greater multitude was expelled from the Holy Land in the wars of Titus and Hadrian. The industrious exiles aspired to liberty and power: they erected synagogues in the cities, and castles in the wilderness, and their Gentile converts were confounded with the children of Israel, whom they resembled in the outward mark of circumcision. The Christian missionaries were still more active and successful: the Catholics asserted their universal reign; the sects whom they oppressed, successively retired beyond the limits of the Roman empire; the Marcionites and Manichaeans dispersed their fantastic opinions and apocryphal gospels; the churches of Yemen, and the princes of Hira and Gassan, were instructed in a purer creed by the Jacobite and Nestorian bishops. [60] The liberty of choice was presented to the tribes: each Arab was free to elect or to compose his private religion: and the rude superstition of his house was mingled with the sublime theology of saints and philosophers. A fundamental article of faith was inculcated by the consent of the learned strangers; the existence of one supreme God who is exalted above the powers of heaven and earth, but who has often revealed himself to mankind by the ministry of his angels and prophets, and whose grace or justice has interrupted, by seasonable miracles, the order of nature. The most rational of the Arabs acknowledged his power, though they neglected his worship; [61] and it was habit rather than conviction that still attached them to the relics of idolatry. The Jews and Christians were the people of the Book; the Bible was already translated into the Arabic language, [62] and the volume of the Old Testament was accepted by the concord of these implacable enemies. In the story of the Hebrew patriarchs, the Arabs were pleased to discover the fathers of their nation. They applauded the birth and promises of Ismael; revered the faith and virtue of Abraham; traced his pedigree and their own to the creation of the first man, and imbibed, with equal credulity, the prodigies of the holy text, and the dreams and traditions of the Jewish rabbis.

[Footnote 55: Diodorus Siculus (tom. i. l. ii. p. 142-145) has cast on their religion the curious but superficial glance of a Greek. Their astronomy would be far more valuable: they had looked through the telescope of reason, since they could doubt whether the sun were in the number of the planets or of the fixed stars.]

[Footnote 56: Simplicius, (who quotes Porphyry,) de Coelo, l. ii. com. xlvi p. 123, lin. 18, apud Marsham, Canon. Chron. p. 474, who doubts the fact, because it is adverse to his systems. The earliest date of the Chaldaean observations is the year 2234 before Christ. After the conquest of Babylon by Alexander, they were communicated at the request of Aristotle, to the astronomer Hipparchus. What a moment in the annals of science!]

[Footnote 57: Pocock, (Specimen, p. 138-146,) Hottinger, (Hist. Orient. p. 162-203,) Hyde, (de Religione Vet. Persarum, p. 124, 128, &c.,) D'Herbelot, (Sabi, p. 725, 726,) and Sale, (Preliminary Discourse, p. 14, 15,) rather excite than gratify our curiosity; and the last of these writers confounds Sabianism with the primitive religion of the Arabs.]

[Footnote 58: D'Anville (l'Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 130-137) will fix the position of these ambiguous Christians; Assemannus (Bibliot. Oriental. tom. iv. p. 607-614) may explain their tenets. But it is a slippery task to ascertain the creed of an ignorant people afraid and ashamed to disclose their secret traditions. * Note: The Codex Nasiraeus, their sacred book, has been published by Norberg whose researches contain almost all that is known of this singular people. But their origin is almost as obscure as ever: if ancient, their creed has been so corrupted with mysticism and Mahometanism, that its native lineaments are very indistinct.—M.]

[Footnote 59: The Magi were fixed in the province of Bhrein, (Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 114,) and mingled with the old Arabians, (Pocock, Specimen, p. 146-150.)]

[Footnote 60: The state of the Jews and Christians in Arabia is described by Pocock from Sharestani, &c., (Specimen, p. 60, 134, &c.,) Hottinger, (Hist. Orient. p. 212-238,) D'Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orient. p. 474-476,) Basnage, (Hist. des Juifs, tom. vii. p. 185, tom. viii. p. 280,) and Sale, (Preliminary Discourse, p. 22, &c., 33, &c.)]

[Footnote 61: In their offerings, it was a maxim to defraud God for the profit of the idol, not a more potent, but a more irritable, patron, (Pocock, Specimen, p. 108, 109.)]

[Footnote 62: Our versions now extant, whether Jewish or Christian, appear more recent than the Koran; but the existence of a prior translation may be fairly inferred,—1. From the perpetual practice of the synagogue of expounding the Hebrew lesson by a paraphrase in the vulgar tongue of the country; 2. From the analogy of the Armenian, Persian, Aethiopic versions, expressly quoted by the fathers of the fifth century, who assert that the Scriptures were translated into all the Barbaric languages, (Walton, Prolegomena ad Biblia Polyglot, p. 34, 93-97. Simon, Hist. Critique du V. et du N. Testament, tom. i. p. 180, 181, 282-286, 293, 305, 306, tom. iv. p. 206.)]

The base and plebeian origin of Mahomet is an unskilful calumny of the Christians, [63] who exalt instead of degrading the merit of their adversary. His descent from Ismael was a national privilege or fable; but if the first steps of the pedigree [64] are dark and doubtful, he could produce many generations of pure and genuine nobility: he sprung from the tribe of Koreish and the family of Hashem, the most illustrious of the Arabs, the princes of Mecca, and the hereditary guardians of the Caaba. The grandfather of Mahomet was Abdol Motalleb, the son of Hashem, a wealthy and generous citizen, who relieved the distress of famine with the supplies of commerce. Mecca, which had been fed by the liberality of the father, was saved by the courage of the son. The kingdom of Yemen was subject to the Christian princes of Abyssinia; their vassal Abrahah was provoked by an insult to avenge the honor of the cross; and the holy city was invested by a train of elephants and an army of Africans. A treaty was proposed; and, in the first audience, the grandfather of Mahomet demanded the restitution of his cattle. "And why," said Abrahah, "do you not rather implore my clemency in favor of your temple, which I have threatened to destroy?" "Because," replied the intrepid chief, "the cattle is my own; the Caaba belongs to the gods, and they will defend their house from injury and sacrilege." The want of provisions, or the valor of the Koreish, compelled the Abyssinians to a disgraceful retreat: their discomfiture has been adorned with a miraculous flight of birds, who showered down stones on the heads of the infidels; and the deliverance was long commemorated by the aera of the elephant. [65] The glory of Abdol Motalleb was crowned with domestic happiness; his life was prolonged to the age of one hundred and ten years; and he became the father of six daughters and thirteen sons. His best beloved Abdallah was the most beautiful and modest of the Arabian youth; and in the first night, when he consummated his marriage with Amina, [651] of the noble race of the Zahrites, two hundred virgins are said to have expired of jealousy and despair. Mahomet, or more properly Mohammed, the only son of Abdallah and Amina, was born at Mecca, four years after the death of Justinian, and two months after the defeat of the Abyssinians, [66] whose victory would have introduced into the Caaba the religion of the Christians. In his early infancy, he was deprived of his father, his mother, and his grandfather; his uncles were strong and numerous; and, in the division of the inheritance, the orphan's share was reduced to five camels and an Aethiopian maid-servant. At home and abroad, in peace and war, Abu Taleb, the most respectable of his uncles, was the guide and guardian of his youth; in his twenty-fifth year, he entered into the service of Cadijah, a rich and noble widow of Mecca, who soon rewarded his fidelity with the gift of her hand and fortune. The marriage contract, in the simple style of antiquity, recites the mutual love of Mahomet and Cadijah; describes him as the most accomplished of the tribe of Koreish; and stipulates a dowry of twelve ounces of gold and twenty camels, which was supplied by the liberality of his uncle. [67] By this alliance, the son of Abdallah was restored to the station of his ancestors; and the judicious matron was content with his domestic virtues, till, in the fortieth year of his age, [68] he assumed the title of a prophet, and proclaimed the religion of the Koran.

[Footnote 63: In eo conveniunt omnes, ut plebeio vilique genere ortum, &c, (Hottinger, Hist. Orient. p. 136.) Yet Theophanes, the most ancient of the Greeks, and the father of many a lie, confesses that Mahomet was of the race of Ismael, (Chronograph. p. 277.)]

[Footnote 64: Abulfeda (in Vit. Mohammed. c. 1, 2) and Gagnier (Vie de Mahomet, p. 25-97) describe the popular and approved genealogy of the prophet. At Mecca, I would not dispute its authenticity: at Lausanne, I will venture to observe, 1. That from Ismael to Mahomet, a period of 2500 years, they reckon thirty, instead of seventy five, generations: 2. That the modern Bedoweens are ignorant of their history, and careless of their pedigree, (Voyage de D'Arvieux p. 100, 103.) * Note: The most orthodox Mahometans only reckon back the ancestry of the prophet for twenty generations, to Adnan. Weil, Mohammed der Prophet, p. 1.—M. 1845.]

[Footnote 65: The seed of this history, or fable, is contained in the cvth chapter of the Koran; and Gagnier (in Praefat. ad Vit. Moham. p. 18, &c.) has translated the historical narrative of Abulfeda, which may be illustrated from D'Herbelot (Bibliot. Orientale, p. 12) and Pocock, (Specimen, p. 64.) Prideaux (Life of Mahomet, p. 48) calls it a lie of the coinage of Mahomet; but Sale, (Koran, p. 501-503,) who is half a Mussulman, attacks the inconsistent faith of the Doctor for believing the miracles of the Delphic Apollo. Maracci (Alcoran, tom. i. part ii. p. 14, tom. ii. p. 823) ascribes the miracle to the devil, and extorts from the Mahometans the confession, that God would not have defended against the Christians the idols of the Caaba. * Note: Dr. Weil says that the small-pox broke out in the army of Abrahah, but he does not give his authority, p. 10.—M. 1845.]

[Footnote 651: Amina, or Emina, was of Jewish birth. V. Hammer, Geschichte der Assass. p. 10.—M.]

[Footnote 66: The safest aeras of Abulfeda, (in Vit. c. i. p. 2,) of Alexander, or the Greeks, 882, of Bocht Naser, or Nabonassar, 1316, equally lead us to the year 569. The old Arabian calendar is too dark and uncertain to support the Benedictines, (Art. de Verifer les Dates, p. 15,) who, from the day of the month and week, deduce a new mode of calculation, and remove the birth of Mahomet to the year of Christ 570, the 10th of November. Yet this date would agree with the year 882 of the Greeks, which is assigned by Elmacin (Hist. Saracen. p. 5) and Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 101, and Errata, Pocock's version.) While we refine our chronology, it is possible that the illiterate prophet was ignorant of his own age. * Note: The date of the birth of Mahomet is not yet fixed with precision. It is only known from Oriental authors that he was born on a Monday, the 10th Reby 1st, the third month of the Mahometan year; the year 40 or 42 of Chosroes Nushirvan, king of Persia; the year 881 of the Seleucidan aera; the year 1316 of the aera of Nabonassar. This leaves the point undecided between the years 569, 570, 571, of J. C. See the Memoir of M. Silv. de Sacy, on divers events in the history of the Arabs before Mahomet, Mem. Acad. des Loscript. vol. xlvii. p. 527, 531. St. Martin, vol. xi. p. 59.—M. ——Dr. Weil decides on A.D. 571. Mahomet died in 632, aged 63; but the Arabs reckoned his life by lunar years, which reduces his life nearly to 61 (p. 21.)—M. 1845]