84 INTRODUCTION. 



were wont to assail their antagonists. The tole- 

 rant spirit of our age has effaced the prejudices 

 against a difference of belief which ignorance and 

 fanaticism had created. The sword— the grand ar- 

 gument of the Moslem religion — has yielded to the 

 force of reason; and our mamiers and habits of 

 thinking have triumphed in their turn over the re- 

 lentless soldiers of Mohammed. 



The subject, embracing such a variety of events, 

 is necessarily extensive. We shall endeavour to 

 collect within a moderate compass every thing 

 which, from its novelty or importance, deserves to 

 be recorded ; and if our limits do not permit us to 

 gather all the flowers that lie scattered over the sur- 

 face of this pleasant landscape, we hope at least to 

 be able to produce some of those treasures of solid 

 information which, like gold mixed with sand or 

 buried in mountains, have been alloyed with Eastern 

 fable, or concealed from the general reader by being 

 wrapped up in dead or foreign languages. We have 

 thought it essential to our plan to give some account 

 of the dark and traditionary epoch that preceded the 

 time of Mohammed, in order to preserve a connected 

 chain of narrative with the more brilliant and au- 

 thentic events that followed it. Besides, it is impos- 

 sible, "without such aid, to understand either the 

 literature or the religion of the Arabs. Their tales 

 and their poetry abound with images, the origin of 

 which must be sought beyond the memory of written 

 records. Even the Koran itself has perpetual allu- 

 sions, not only to the facts, but to the fables and tra- 

 ditions which the stream of antiquity had mingled 

 and carried down in its course. What we shall say 

 of the government, customs, and institutions of the 

 ancient Arabs shall be restricted to what is abso- 

 lutely necessary to a right understanding of their 

 civil and political history after they had risen to the 

 dignity of a warlike and powerful empire. 



