The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 5

E >> Edward Gibbon >> The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 5

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[Footnote 37: The modern theory and practice of the Arabs in the
revenge of murder are described by Niebuhr, (Description, p. 26 -
31.) The harsher features of antiquity may be traced in the
Koran, c. 2, p. 20, c. 17, p. 230, with Sale's Observations.]

[Footnote 38: Procopius (de Bell. Persic. l. i. c. 16) places the
two holy months about the summer solstice. The Arabians
consecrate four months of the year - the first, seventh,
eleventh, and twelfth; and pretend, that in a long series of ages
the truce was infringed only four or six times, (Sale's
Preliminary Discourse, p. 147 - 150, and Notes on the ixth
chapter of the Koran, p. 154, &c. Casiri, Bibliot.
Hispano-Arabica, tom. ii. p. 20, 21.)]

But the spirit of rapine and revenge was attempered by the
milder influence of trade and literature. The solitary peninsula
is encompassed by the most civilized nations of the ancient
world; the merchant is the friend of mankind; and the annual
caravans imported the first seeds of knowledge and politeness
into the cities, and even the camps of the desert. Whatever may
be the pedigree of the Arabs, their language is derived from the
same original stock with the Hebrew, the Syriac, and the
Chaldaean tongues; the independence of the tribes was marked by
their peculiar dialects; ^39 but each, after their own, allowed a
just preference to the pure and perspicuous idiom of Mecca. In
Arabia, as well as in Greece, the perfection of language
outstripped the refinement of manners; and her speech could
diversify the fourscore names of honey, the two hundred of a
serpent, the five hundred of a lion, the thousand of a sword, at
a time when this copious dictionary was intrusted to the memory
of an illiterate people. The monuments of the Homerites were
inscribed with an obsolete and mysterious character; but the
Cufic letters, the groundwork of the present alphabet, were
invented on the banks of the Euphrates; and the recent invention
was taught at Mecca by a stranger who settled in that city after
the birth of Mahomet. The arts of grammar, of metre, and of
rhetoric, were unknown to the freeborn eloquence of the Arabians;
but their penetration was sharp, their fancy luxuriant, their wit
strong and sententious, ^40 and their more elaborate compositions
were addressed with energy and effect to the minds of their
hearers. The genius and merit of a rising poet was celebrated by
the applause of his own and the kindred tribes. A solemn banquet
was prepared, and a chorus of women, striking their tymbals, and
displaying the pomp of their nuptials, sung in the presence of
their sons and husbands the felicity of their native tribe; that
a champion had now appeared to vindicate their rights; that a
herald had raised his voice to immortalize their renown. The
distant or hostile tribes resorted to an annual fair, which was
abolished by the fanaticism of the first Moslems; a national
assembly that must have contributed to refine and harmonize the
Barbarians. Thirty days were employed in the exchange, not only
of corn and wine, but of eloquence and poetry. The prize was
disputed by the generous emulation of the bards; the victorious
performance was deposited in the archives of princes and emirs;
and we may read in our own language, the seven original poems
which were inscribed in letters of gold, and suspended in the
temple of Mecca. ^41 The Arabian poets were the historians and
moralists of the age; and if they sympathized with the
prejudices, they inspired and crowned the virtues, of their
countrymen. The indissoluble union of generosity and valor was
the darling theme of their song; and when they pointed their
keenest satire against a despicable race, they affirmed, in the
bitterness of reproach, that the men knew not how to give, nor
the women to deny. ^42 The same hospitality, which was practised
by Abraham, and celebrated by Homer, is still renewed in the
camps of the Arabs. The ferocious Bedoweens, the terror of the
desert, embrace, without inquiry or hesitation, the stranger who
dares to confide in their honor and to enter their tent. His
treatment is kind and respectful: he shares the wealth, or the
poverty, of his host; and, after a needful repose, he is
dismissed on his way, with thanks, with blessings, and perhaps
with gifts. The heart and hand are more largely expanded by the
wants of a brother or a friend; but the heroic acts that could
deserve the public applause, must have surpassed the narrow
measure of discretion and experience. A dispute had arisen, who,
among the citizens of Mecca, was entitled to the prize of
generosity; and a successive application was made to the three
who were deemed most worthy of the trial. Abdallah, the son of
Abbas, had undertaken a distant journey, and his foot was in the
stirrup when he heard the voice of a suppliant, "O son of the
uncle of the apostle of God, I am a traveller, and in distress!"
He instantly dismounted to present the pilgrim with his camel,
her rich caparison, and a purse of four thousand pieces of gold,
excepting only the sword, either for its intrinsic value, or as
the gift of an honored kinsman. The servant of Kais informed the
second suppliant that his master was asleep: but he immediately
added, "Here is a purse of seven thousand pieces of gold, (it is
all we have in the house,) and here is an order, that will
entitle you to a camel and a slave;" the master, as soon as he
awoke, praised and enfranchised his faithful steward, with a
gentle reproof, that by respecting his slumbers he had stinted
his bounty. The third of these heroes, the blind Arabah, at the
hour of prayer, was supporting his steps on the shoulders of two
slaves. "Alas!" he replied, "my coffers are empty! but these
you may sell; if you refuse, I renounce them." At these words,
pushing away the youths, he groped along the wall with his staff.

The character of Hatem is the perfect model of Arabian virtue:
^43 he was brave and liberal, an eloquent poet, and a successful
robber; forty camels were roasted at his hospitable feast; and at
the prayer of a suppliant enemy he restored both the captives and
the spoil. The freedom of his countrymen disdained the laws of
justice; they proudly indulged the spontaneous impulse of pity
and benevolence.

[Footnote 39: Arrian, in the second century, remarks (in Periplo
Maris Erythraei, p. 12) the partial or total difference of the
dialects of the Arabs. Their language and letters are copiously
treated by Pocock, (Specimen, p. 150 - 154,) Casiri, (Bibliot.
Hispano-Arabica, tom. i. p. 1, 83, 292, tom. ii. p. 25, &c.,) and
Niebuhr, (Description de l'Arabie, p. 72 - 36) I pass slightly; I
am not fond of repeating words like a parrot.]

[Footnote 40: A familiar tale in Voltaire's Zadig (le Chien et le
Cheval) is related, to prove the natural sagacity of the Arabs,
(D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 120, 121. Gagnier, Vie de
Mahomet, tom. i. p. 37 - 46: ) but D'Arvieux, or rather La Roque,
(Voyage de Palestine, p. 92,) denies the boasted superiority of
the Bedoweens. The one hundred and sixty-nine sentences of Ali
(translated by Ockley, London, 1718) afford a just and favorable
specimen of Arabian wit.

Note: Compare the Arabic proverbs translated by Burckhardt.
London. 1830 - M.]

[Footnote 41: Pocock (Specimen, p. 158 - 161) and Casiri
(Bibliot. Hispano- Arabica, tom. i. p. 48, 84, &c., 119, tom. ii.
p. 17, &c.) speak of the Arabian poets before Mahomet; the seven
poems of the Caaba have been published in English by Sir William
Jones; but his honorable mission to India has deprived us of his
own notes, far more interesting than the obscure and obsolete
text.]

[Footnote 42: Sale's Preliminary Discourse, p. 29, 30]

[Footnote 43: D'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 458. Gagnier, Vie
de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 118. Caab and Hesnus (Pocock, Specimen,
p. 43, 46, 48) were likewise conspicuous for their liberality;
and the latter is elegantly praised by an Arabian poet: "Videbis
eum cum accesseris exultantem, ac si dares illi quod ab illo
petis."

Note: See the translation of the amusing Persian romance of
Hatim Tai, by Duncan Forbes, Esq., among the works published by
the Oriental Translation Fund. - M.]

The religion of the Arabs, ^44 as well as of the Indians,
consisted in the worship of the sun, the moon, and the fixed
stars; a primitive and specious mode of superstition. The bright
luminaries of the sky display the visible image of a Deity: their
number and distance convey to a philosophic, or even a vulgar,
eye, the idea of boundless space: the character of eternity is
marked on these solid globes, that seem incapable of corruption
or decay: the regularity of their motions may be ascribed to a
principle of reason or instinct; and their real, or imaginary,
influence encourages the vain belief that the earth and its
inhabitants are the object of their peculiar care. The science
of astronomy was cultivated at Babylon; but the school of the
Arabs was a clear firmament and a naked plain. In their
nocturnal marches, they steered by the guidance of the stars:
their names, and order, and daily station, were familiar to the
curiosity and devotion of the Bedoween; and he was taught by
experience to divide, in twenty-eight parts, the zodiac of the
moon, and to bless the constellations who refreshed, with
salutary rains, the thirst of the desert. The reign of the
heavenly orbs could not be extended beyond the visible sphere;
and some metaphysical powers were necessary to sustain the
transmigration of souls and the resurrection of bodies: a camel
was left to perish on the grave, that he might serve his master
in another life; and the invocation of departed spirits implies
that they were still endowed with consciousness and power. I am
ignorant, and I am careless, of the blind mythology of the
Barbarians; of the local deities, of the stars, the air, and the
earth, of their sex or titles, their attributes or subordination.
Each tribe, each family, each independent warrior, created and
changed the rites and the object of his fantastic worship; but
the nation, in every age, has bowed to the religion, as well as
to the language, of Mecca. The genuine antiquity of the Caaba
ascends beyond the Christian aera; in describing the coast of the
Red Sea, the Greek historian Diodorus ^45 has remarked, between
the Thamudites and the Sabaeans, a famous temple, whose superior
sanctity was revered by all the Arabians; the linen or silken
veil, which is annually renewed by the Turkish emperor, was first
offered by a pious king of the Homerites, who reigned seven
hundred years before the time of Mahomet. ^46 A tent, or a
cavern, might suffice for the worship of the savages, but an
edifice of stone and clay has been erected in its place; and the
art and power of the monarchs of the East have been confined to
the simplicity of the original model. ^47 A spacious portico
encloses the quadrangle of the Caaba; a square chapel,
twenty-four cubits long, twenty-three broad, and twenty-seven
high: a door and a window admit the light; the double roof is
supported by three pillars of wood; a spout (now of gold)
discharges the rain-water, and the well Zemzen is protected by a
dome from accidental pollution. The tribe of Koreish, by fraud
and force, had acquired the custody of the Caaba: the sacerdotal
office devolved through four lineal descents to the grandfather
of Mahomet; and the family of the Hashemites, from whence he
sprung, was the most respectable and sacred in the eyes of their
country. ^48 The precincts of Mecca enjoyed the rights of
sanctuary; and, in the last month of each year, the city and the
temple were crowded with a long train of pilgrims, who presented
their vows and offerings in the house of God. The same rites
which are now accomplished by the faithful Mussulman, were
invented and practised by the superstition of the idolaters. At
an awful distance they cast away their garments: seven times,
with hasty steps, they encircled the Caaba, and kissed the black
stone: seven times they visited and adored the adjacent
mountains; seven times they threw stones into the valley of Mina;
and the pilgrimage was achieved, as at the present hour, by a
sacrifice of sheep and camels, and the burial of their hair and
nails in the consecrated ground. Each tribe either found or
introduced in the Caaba their domestic worship: the temple was
adorned, or defiled, with three hundred and sixty idols of men,
eagles, lions, and antelopes; and most conspicuous was the statue
of Hebal, of red agate, holding in his hand seven arrows, without
heads or feathers, the instruments and symbols of profane
divination. But this statue was a monument of Syrian arts: the
devotion of the ruder ages was content with a pillar or a tablet;
and the rocks of the desert were hewn into gods or altars, in
imitation of the black stone ^49 of Mecca, which is deeply
tainted with the reproach of an idolatrous origin. From Japan to
Peru, the use of sacrifice has universally prevailed; and the
votary has expressed his gratitude, or fear, by destroying or
consuming, in honor of the gods, the dearest and most precious of
their gifts. The life of a man ^50 is the most precious oblation
to deprecate a public calamity: the altars of Phoenicia and
Egypt, of Rome and Carthage, have been polluted with human gore:
the cruel practice was long preserved among the Arabs; in the
third century, a boy was annually sacrificed by the tribe of the
Dumatians; ^51 and a royal captive was piously slaughtered by the
prince of the Saracens, the ally and soldier of the emperor
Justinian. ^52 A parent who drags his son to the altar, exhibits
the most painful and sublime effort of fanaticism: the deed, or
the intention, was sanctified by the example of saints and
heroes; and the father of Mahomet himself was devoted by a rash
vow, and hardly ransomed for the equivalent of a hundred camels.
In the time of ignorance, the Arabs, like the Jews and Egyptians,
abstained from the taste of swine's flesh; ^53 they circumcised
^54 their children at the age of puberty: the same customs,
without the censure or the precept of the Koran, have been
silently transmitted to their posterity and proselytes. It has
been sagaciously conjectured, that the artful legislator indulged
the stubborn prejudices of his countrymen. It is more simple to
believe that he adhered to the habits and opinions of his youth,
without foreseeing that a practice congenial to the climate of
Mecca might become useless or inconvenient on the banks of the
Danube or the Volga.

[Footnote 44: Whatever can now be known of the idolatry of the
ancient Arabians may be found in Pocock, (Specimen, p. 89 - 136,
163, 164.) His profound erudition is more clearly and concisely
interpreted by Sale, (Preliminary Discourse, p. 14 - 24;) and
Assemanni (Bibliot. Orient tom. iv. p. 580 - 590) has added some
valuable remarks.]

[Footnote 45: (Diodor. Sicul. tom. i. l. iii. p. 211.) The
character and position are so correctly apposite, that I am
surprised how this curious passage should have been read without
notice or application. Yet this famous temple had been overlooked
by Agatharcides, (de Mari Rubro, p. 58, in Hudson, tom. i.,) whom
Diodorus copies in the rest of the description. Was the Sicilian
more knowing than the Egyptian? Or was the Caaba built between
the years of Rome 650 and 746, the dates of their respective
histories? (Dodwell, in Dissert. ad tom. i. Hudson, p. 72.
Fabricius, Bibliot. Graec. tom. ii. p. 770.)

Note: Mr. Forster (Geography of Arabia, vol. ii. p. 118, et
seq.) has raised an objection, as I think, fatal to this
hypothesis of Gibbon. The temple, situated in the country of the
Banizomeneis, was not between the Thamudites and the Sabaeans,
but higher up than the coast inhabited by the former. Mr.
Forster would place it as far north as Moiiah. I am not quite
satisfied that this will agree with the whole description of
Diodorus - M. 1845.]

[Footnote 46: Pocock, Specimen, p. 60, 61. From the death of
Mahomet we ascend to 68, from his birth to 129, years before the
Christian aera. The veil or curtain, which is now of silk and
gold, was no more than a piece of Egyptian linen, (Abulfeda, in
Vit. Mohammed. c. 6, p. 14.)]

[Footnote 47: The original plan of the Caaba (which is servilely
copied in Sale, the Universal History, &c.) was a Turkish
draught, which Reland (de Religione Mohammedica, p. 113 - 123)
has corrected and explained from the best authorities. For the
description and legend of the Caaba, consult Pocock, (Specimen,
p. 115 - 122,) the Bibliotheque Orientale of D'Herbelot, (Caaba,
Hagir, Zemzem, &c.,) and Sale (Preliminary Discourse, p. 114 -
122.)]

[Footnote 48: Cosa, the fifth ancestor of Mahomet, must have
usurped the Caaba A.D. 440; but the story is differently told by
Jannabi, (Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 65 - 69,) and by
Abulfeda, (in Vit. Moham. c. 6, p. 13.)]

[Footnote 49: In the second century, Maximus of Tyre attributes
to the Arabs the worship of a stone, (Dissert. viii. tom. i. p.
142, edit. Reiske;) and the reproach is furiously reechoed by the
Christians, (Clemens Alex. in Protreptico, p. 40. Arnobius
contra Gentes, l. vi. p. 246.) Yet these stones were no other
than of Syria and Greece, so renowned in sacred and profane
antiquity, (Euseb. Praep. Evangel. l. i. p. 37. Marsham, Canon.
Chron. p. 54 - 56.)]

[Footnote 50: The two horrid subjects are accurately discussed by
the learned Sir John Marsham, (Canon. Chron. p. 76 - 78, 301 -
304.) Sanchoniatho derives the Phoenician sacrifices from the
example of Chronus; but we are ignorant whether Chronus lived
before, or after, Abraham, or indeed whether he lived at all.]

[Footnote 51: The reproach of Porphyry; but he likewise imputes
to the Roman the same barbarous custom, which, A. U. C. 657, had
been finally abolished. Dumaetha, Daumat al Gendai, is noticed by
Ptolemy (Tabul. p. 37, Arabia, p. 9 - 29) and Abulfeda, (p. 57,)
and may be found in D'Anville's maps, in the mid-desert between
Chaibar and Tadmor.]

[Footnote 52: Prcoopius, (de Bell. Persico, l. i. c. 28,)
Evagrius, (l. vi. c. 21,) and Pocock, (Specimen, p. 72, 86,)
attest the human sacrifices of the Arabs in the vith century.
The danger and escape of Abdallah is a tradition rather than a
fact, (Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 82 - 84.)]

[Footnote 53: Suillis carnibus abstinent, says Solinus,
(Polyhistor. c. 33,) who copies Pliny (l. viii. c. 68) in the
strange supposition, that hogs can not live in Arabia. The
Egyptians were actuated by a natural and superstitious horror for
that unclean beast, (Marsham, Canon. p. 205.) The old Arabians
likewise practised, post coitum, the rite of ablution, (Herodot.
l. i. c. 80,) which is sanctified by the Mahometan law, (Reland,
p. 75, &c., Chardin, or rather the Mollah of Shah Abbas, tom. iv.
p. 71, &c.)]

[Footnote 54: The Mahometan doctors are not fond of the subject;
yet they hold circumcision necessary to salvation, and even
pretend that Mahomet was miraculously born without a foreskin,
(Pocock, Specimen, p. 319, 320. Sale's Preliminary Discourse, p.
106, 107.)]

Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.

Part III.

Arabia was free: the adjacent kingdoms were shaken by the
storms of conquest and tyranny, and the persecuted sects fled to
the happy land where they might profess what they thought, and
practise what they professed. The religions of the Sabians and
Magians, of the Jews and Christians, were disseminated from the
Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. In a remote period of antiquity,
Sabianism was diffused over Asia by the science of the Chaldaeans
^55 and the arms of the Assyrians. From the observations of two
thousand years, the priests and astronomers of Babylon ^56
deduced the eternal laws of nature and providence. They adored
the seven gods or angels, who directed the course of the seven
planets, and shed their irresistible influence on the earth. The
attributes of the seven planets, with the twelve signs of the
zodiac, and the twenty-four constellations of the northern and
southern hemisphere, were represented by images and talismans;
the seven days of the week were dedicated to their respective
deities; the Sabians prayed thrice each day; and the temple of
the moon at Haran was the term of their pilgrimage. ^57 But the
flexible genius of their faith was always ready either to teach
or to learn: in the tradition of the creation, the deluge, and
the patriarchs, they held a singular agreement with their Jewish
captives; they appealed to the secret books of Adam, Seth, and
Enoch; and a slight infusion of the gospel has transformed the
last remnant of the Polytheists into the Christians of St. John,
in the territory of Bassora. ^58 The altars of Babylon were
overturned by the Magians; but the injuries of the Sabians were
revenged by the sword of Alexander; Persia groaned above five
hundred years under a foreign yoke; and the purest disciples of
Zoroaster escaped from the contagion of idolatry, and breathed
with their adversaries the freedom of the desert. ^59 Seven
hundred years before the death of Mahomet, the Jews were settled
in Arabia; and a far greater multitude was expelled from the Holy
Land in the wars of Titus and Hadrian. The industrious exiles
aspired to liberty and power: they erected synagogues in the
cities, and castles in the wilderness, and their Gentile converts
were confounded with the children of Israel, whom they resembled
in the outward mark of circumcision. The Christian missionaries
were still more active and successful: the Catholics asserted
their universal reign; the sects whom they oppressed,
successively retired beyond the limits of the Roman empire; the
Marcionites and Manichaeans dispersed their fantastic opinions
and apocryphal gospels; the churches of Yemen, and the princes of
Hira and Gassan, were instructed in a purer creed by the Jacobite
and Nestorian bishops. ^60 The liberty of choice was presented to
the tribes: each Arab was free to elect or to compose his private
religion: and the rude superstition of his house was mingled with
the sublime theology of saints and philosophers. A fundamental
article of faith was inculcated by the consent of the learned
strangers; the existence of one supreme God who is exalted above
the powers of heaven and earth, but who has often revealed
himself to mankind by the ministry of his angels and prophets,
and whose grace or justice has interrupted, by seasonable
miracles, the order of nature. The most rational of the Arabs
acknowledged his power, though they neglected his worship; ^61
and it was habit rather than conviction that still attached them
to the relics of idolatry. The Jews and Christians were the
people of the Book; the Bible was already translated into the
Arabic language, ^62 and the volume of the Old Testament was
accepted by the concord of these implacable enemies. In the
story of the Hebrew patriarchs, the Arabs were pleased to
discover the fathers of their nation. They applauded the birth
and promises of Ismael; revered the faith and virtue of Abraham;
traced his pedigree and their own to the creation of the first
man, and imbibed, with equal credulity, the prodigies of the holy
text, and the dreams and traditions of the Jewish rabbis.

[Footnote 55: Diodorus Siculus (tom. i. l. ii. p. 142 - 145) has
cast on their religion the curious but superficial glance of a
Greek. Their astronomy would be far more valuable: they had
looked through the telescope of reason, since they could doubt
whether the sun were in the number of the planets or of the fixed
stars.]

[Footnote 56: Simplicius, (who quotes Porphyry,) de Coelo, l. ii.
com. xlvi p. 123, lin. 18, apud Marsham, Canon. Chron. p. 474,
who doubts the fact, because it is adverse to his systems. The
earliest date of the Chaldaean observations is the year 2234
before Christ. After the conquest of Babylon by Alexander, they
were communicated at the request of Aristotle, to the astronomer
Hipparchus. What a moment in the annals of science!]

[Footnote 57: Pocock, (Specimen, p. 138 - 146,) Hottinger, (Hist.
Orient. p. 162 - 203,) Hyde, (de Religione Vet. Persarum, p. 124,
128, &c.,) D'Herbelot, (Sabi, p. 725, 726,) and Sale,
(Preliminary Discourse, p. 14, 15,) rather excite than gratify
our curiosity; and the last of these writers confounds Sabianism
with the primitive religion of the Arabs.]

[Footnote 58: D'Anville (l'Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 130 - 137)
will fix the position of these ambiguous Christians; Assemannus
(Bibliot. Oriental. tom. iv. p. 607 - 614) may explain their
tenets. But it is a slippery task to ascertain the creed of an
ignorant people afraid and ashamed to disclose their secret
traditions.

Note: The Codex Nasiraeus, their sacred book, has been
published by Norberg whose researches contain almost all that is
known of this singular people. But their origin is almost as
obscure as ever: if ancient, their creed has been so corrupted
with mysticism and Mahometanism, that its native lineaments are
very indistinct. - M.]