THE RISE OF THE NEW ARAB NATION 



373 



most no trade, and it manufactures noth- 

 ing. But it has the largest tourist traffic 

 of any city on earth, and, like other tour- 

 ist towns, it lives on the traveler. 



The Meccans peddle food and clothing 

 to the pilgrims, rent them houses, act as 

 their guides, make contracts for trans- 

 porting pilgrims by land and sea, and in 

 a hundred other ways they craftily ex- 

 ploit (to their own personal benefit) the 

 vast benefactions that flow to the holy 

 city. Even temporary marriages are ar- 

 ranged for the visiting pilgrims. 



And the country Arabs, or Bedouins, 

 likewise thrive on the bounty of the pil- 

 grim, either by outright robbery and pil- 

 lage of the caravans or by imposing taxes, 

 for "protection," on those who pass 

 through their tribal regions. 



But even among the Bedouins the 

 Meccans have a bad reputation. They 

 say the worst birth certificate an Arab 

 can have is the Tashrift, three parallel 

 gashes, distinguishing the bearer as one 

 born in Mecca. 



Ever since Mohammed purged the 

 Kaaba of early Arab idols and made it 

 the chief sanctuary of Islam, adapting 

 this heathen temple to Moslem worship 

 by the fiction that Gabriel threw the 

 black stone down from heaven to Abra- 

 ham, "the unspeakable vices of Mecca 

 have been a scandal to all Islam and a 

 constant source of wonder to pious pil- 

 grims." 



THE AMERICAN IDEA OF ARABS 



All we know of Mecca, as yet, has 

 come mostly from Moslem writers and 

 photographers, and from the meager re- 

 ports of the few Christians like Burton, 

 Heronje, and others, who braved the dan- 

 gers of discovery and succeeded in visit- 

 ing the hidden city. But, with the rise 

 of the new nation, Mecca and Medina 

 will go on the revised map as places to 

 which Christians may travel, if they wish, 

 either as merchants or tourists. 



It is not likely, judging from its loca- 

 tion, climate, and surroundings, that 

 many non-Moslem globe trotters will get 

 the Mecca habit ; but its days of com- 

 plete isolation probably are gone forever. 



In America our knowledge of Arabs 

 is mostly limited to a glimpse of drowsy, 

 turbaned persons in worn, shabby Bib- 



boons and red sandals, leading a few 

 blase, moth-eaten camels in a circus 

 parade, or to occasional troupes of acro- 

 bats doing dizzy pyramids or wild Arab 

 "bat dances" and whirling dervish tricks 

 on the vaudeville stage. 



THE ARAB A DESERT ADONIS 



The modern Arab has so lost his place 

 in the world that we forget his race once 

 ruled from the Indus to the Atlantic, and 

 that his schools of philosophy, medicine, 

 and other sciences were world famous. 



In appearance the Arab is singularly 

 handsome, tall and lithe, with beautifully 

 molded limbs, dark-eyed and dark-haired. 

 Dwarfs, hunchbacks, and misshapen per- 

 sons are seldom seen in Arabia. Heredi- 

 tary disease, too, is almost unknown, and 

 the race is generally strong and healthy. 

 His personal habits are simple and clean, 

 the careers of those born in Mecca being 

 apparently an exception. 



Few races of humanity excel the 

 Arabs, either physically or morally. 

 And mentally they are perhaps second to 

 none, especially in alertness of percep- 

 tion, deductive powers, and feats of mem- 

 ory. Like some other people of the East, 

 however, they seem to lack the powers 

 of organized effort and combined action, 

 a defect which may have tended to keep 

 them so long a subject race. 



The origin of the race is a matter of 

 conjecture, but the Arabs were a unified 

 political body with a king of their own 

 long, long before the Christian era. Just 

 now there are perhaps 10,000,000 Arabs, 

 and for convenience of classification they 

 are usually separated into two divisions — 

 "Al Bedoo," or "The Dwellers in the 

 Open Land" (commonly called Bed- 

 ouins), and "Al Hadr," or "Dwellers in 

 Fixed Localities." 



The Bedouins, roaming with their herds 

 all over Arabia and even up into Mesopo- 

 tamia and Syria, are better known to 

 American missionaries, officials, and trav- 

 elers than the Hadr class. They are no- 

 mads from necessity and not from choice, 

 and, as the country conies under better 

 rule, roads, trade, and irrigation will un- 

 doubtedly reduce the number of Arabs 

 forced to lead this wandering life. 



Most of present-day Arabia (that parr 

 which is not wholly a desert) is so dry as 



