i88 7 ] KENAN S &quot; HISTOIRE D lSRAfiL &quot; 617 



a sort of Abd-el-Kader is without all foundation in the 

 texts and is absolutely inconsistent with Semitic analogy. 

 It is brought in (along with an absurd idea that the 

 warlike successes of Israel may have been due to an 

 Egyptian contingent) to account for the military superi 

 ority of the Hebrews in their conflict with the Canaanites. 

 But the weakness of the nomadic Semites in military 

 enterprises has never been due to want of generalship 

 (witness the abundance of able soldiers that the first 

 generation of Islam produced), but wholly to the want of 

 cohesion between the tribes. And this again is due to 

 tribal pride or vanity, which refuses to acknowledge any 

 human authority except in a tribesman. It has been 

 well shown by Wellhausen that according to the most 

 ancient texts the main function of Moses was to judge 

 between the contending interests of tribes and families 

 by an authority not human but divine, and the same 

 scholar has pointed out that Mohammed was largely 

 indebted for his success to the very cause that gave 

 authority to Moses ; his judgments did not offend family 

 or tribal susceptibility because ihey were spoken in the 

 name of Allah and therefore involved no humiliation of one 

 kindred before another. This is the true historical use of 

 analogy, for it compares the operation of similar causes 

 in similar circumstances, whereas the analogy of Abd-el- 

 Kader is not only absolutely vague, but ignores that 

 fundamental difference between the Maghrib and the true 

 Semitic lands which forces itself upon the notice of every 

 student of the history of Islam. 



In M. Kenan s account of the conquest of Canaan and 

 the settlement of the tribes there is little which calls for 

 notice except a certain confusedness of treatment due to a 

 combination of general distrust in the historical tradition 

 with a half-hearted adherence to the document A. One 

 detail, however, may be signalised as showing a somewhat 

 singular misapprehension of the use of historical analogy 

 on which our author piques himself. To illustrate the 



