THE ARABS. 20? 



imd its vicinity to Egypt, and to a European sea-basin, gives 

 it signal advantages in a political no less than a commercial 

 point of view. In the central parts of the Arabian Peninsula 

 lived the tribe of the Hedschaz, a noble and valiant race, un- 

 learned, but not wholly rude, imaginative, and, at the same 

 time, devoted to the careful observation of all the processes of 

 free nature manifested in the ever-serene vault of heaven and 

 on the surface of tlie earth. This people, after having con- 

 tinued for thousands of years almost without contact with the 

 rest of the world, and advancing chiefly in nomadic hordes, 

 suddenly burst forth from their former mode of life, and, ac 

 quiring cultivation from the mental contact of the inhabitants 

 of more ancient seats of civilization, converted and subjected 

 to their dominion the nations dwelling between the Pillars of 

 Hercules and the Indus, to the point where the Bolor chain 

 intersects the Hindoo-Coosh. They maintained relations of 

 commerce as early as the middle of the ninth century simul- 

 taneously with the northern countries of Europe, with Mada- 

 gascar, Eastern Africa, India, and China ; difiused languages 

 .noney, and Indian nujnerals, and founded a powerful and 

 ^ong-enduring communion of lands united together by one 

 common religion. In these migratory advances great prov- 

 inces were often only temporarily occupied. The swarming 

 hordes, threatened by the natives, only rested for a while, ac- 

 cording to the poetical diction of their own historians, " like 

 ofroups of clouds which the winds ere long will scatter abroad." 

 No other migratory movement has presented a more striking 

 and instructive character ; and it would appear as if the de- 

 pressive influence manifested in circumscribing mental vigor, 

 and which was apparently inherent in Islamism, acted less 

 powerfully on the nations under the dominion of the Arabs 

 than on Turkish races. Persecution for the sake of religion 

 was here, as every where, even arcong Christians, more the 

 result of an unbounded, dogmatizing despotism than the con- 

 sequence of any original form of belief or any religious con- 

 templation existing among the people. The anathemas of 

 the Koran are especially directed against superstition and the 

 worship of idols among races of Aramseic descent. =^ 



* Hence the contrast between the tyrannical measures of Motewek 

 kil, the tenth calif of the house of the Abbassides, against Jews and 

 Christians (Joseph von Hammer, Ueber die Ldnderverwaltung iinter dem 

 Chalifate, 183.5, s. 27, 85. uud 117), and the mild tolerance of wiser 

 rulers in Spain I'Conde, Hist, de la Dominacion de los Arabes en Espafia, 

 L i.. 1820, p. 67). It should also be remembered that Omar, after th« 

 taking of .Jernsa'^in, tolerated every rite of Christian worship, and coi> 



