ASIA 



418 



ASIA 



zation. Arabia, Asia Minor, Persia, Armenia, 

 t and Mesopotamia every part h;is its 

 .1 associations for any student of history. 

 On the fertile flood-plains of the Tigris and 

 vers grew up one of the oldest 

 civilizations in the world, and it is somewhere 

 in Southwestern Asia that tradition places the 

 Garden of Eden. Chaldea, Babylonia, Assyria, 

 Persia, each in succession became a great em- 

 pire, and with the last-named the first great 

 European people, the Greeks, came into close 

 contact. 



The People. But in these regions of early 

 culture, in which grew up many of the useful 

 arts, as that of writing, and many of the 

 sciences, as chemistry, astronomy and algebra, 

 there exists to-day a far lower state of civiliza- 

 tion than in regions of a newer growth. Vis- 

 itors in and near Palestine declare that much 

 of the Bible gathers new force and meaning 

 to those who have visited the scenes in which 

 its narratives are laid, for manners, customs 

 and even dress have changed but little in all 

 the centuries since the marvelous Biblical his- 

 tory was written. 



The people of Southwestern Asia are neither 

 so varied in race as those of Southern Asia nor 

 so entirely of one stock as are those of Eastern 

 Asia. Some are Aryans, closely related to the 

 peoples of Europe ; some are of Mongol descent 

 and are closely allied to the Turks; and the 

 Arabs, the people who during the Middle Ages 

 were building up the sciences which later meant 

 so much in the development of Europe, are of 

 a race known as Semites, to which the Hebrews 

 also belong. But to whatever race these South- 

 u< -stern Asiatics belong, there is one tie which 

 unites them their religion. Almost without 

 exception they are Mohammedans, and of the 

 strictest type. The crusading zeal which in- 

 spired the early followers of Mohammed lives 

 on in them, and difficult indeed is it for any 

 heretics to make a home among them. See 



MOHAM MKDANISM. 



To say that the people are Mohammedans 

 is equivalent to saying that they are free from 

 one vice drunkenness; but from the vice of 

 theft they are by no means free. This, how- 

 ever, is a result of the sort of life many of them 

 lead, and not of their religion. While the 

 majority of the population is gathered in vil- 

 lages and towns, in any section where there is 

 water enough to support community life, the 

 greater part of the land is given over to tribes 

 which wander about with their goats or camels 

 and eke out a scanty existence (see ARABS, sub- 



head Nomads). These nomads seem to have 

 almost no sense of property rights they will 

 help themselves to whatever they require, no 

 matter to whom it may belong, fighting to 

 secure it, if necessary. 



The Land. Some fertile, well-watered regions 

 there are in Southwestern Asia, but much of 

 the land is too dry to produce more than the 

 scantiest vegetation. The section has not an 

 abundance of rivers like Eastern or Southern 

 Asia; only the two mentioned above, the 

 Tigris and the Euphrates, attain any impor- 

 tance. The surface of the land is diversified. 

 There are great plains, as in Mesopotamia; 

 lofty plateaus; one of the highest mountain 

 ranges of the world, the Hindu Kush; and the 

 lowest spot in all the earth's surface, the Dead 

 Sea. But highland and lowland are alike in one 

 quality; except near the coast they are too 

 dry to produce crops without irrigation. Where 

 water can be obtained, excellent fruits of the 

 temperate and subtropical varieties can be 

 raised, but over vast stretches of desert and 

 semi-desert land only the date palm flourishes. 

 This, therefore, is one of the chief supports of 

 the people. Probably no book ever written 

 gives a better idea of the life and conditions 

 in this southwestern section of Asia than the 

 Arabian Nights. 



The Historical Story. In the articles in 

 these volumes on the various countries of Asia, 

 the long chain of events in their history is 

 described, but there have been certain move- 

 ments which have affected large sections of 

 the continent, regardless of political boundaries. 

 Asia is generally regarded as the cradle of the 

 human race. It possesses in Assyria some of 

 the oldest historical monuments in the world; 

 and the old Testament contains the earliest 

 records of any nation in the form of a con- 

 secutive narrative. These Old Testament 

 countries were Asiatic. 



It is not impossible to believe that the Aryan 

 race, the dominant race of Europe and conse- 

 quently of America, had its origin in the Tigris- 

 Euphrates Valley, and spread thence to the 

 southeast and southwest. It was in the days 

 of the Persian Empire that Europe first came 

 into close contact with any section of Asia 

 farther inland than Asia Minor and Phoenicia, 

 and through the conquests of Alexander the 

 Great more and more v of the great continent 

 came within the knowledge of Europeans. The 

 Roman Empire had some of its most prosper- 

 ous colonies in Western Asia. 



But the intercourse was not to remain always 



