OUTLINES FROM THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION, 635 



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 narra- 

 tive 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 na- 

 tion, such a nation as was possible. Unity, in the full sense of that 

 word, never obtained among this people. Yet they were so aggre- 

 gated 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 his- 

 torical movements. To trace living connections between the old and 

 the new is alike the highest intellectual gratification and truest his- 

 torical exposition. 



Though the Arabian people were separated into tribes, and though 

 these tribal distinctions were deep and permanent, there were not lack- 

 ing 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 sil- 

 ver, 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 peo- 

 ple. Poetry preserved the genealogies and rights of the tribes, as also 

 the memory of great actions. A poet honored his tribe ; in turn his 



