Reviews of A Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia, 1862-63 by William Gifford Palgrave, Published 1865 [‎3r] (5/42)

Palgrave'^ Arabia*
183
they must, after a time, have lapsed into the idolatry of the elder
branch of the Arab family, inhabiting the southern part of the
peninsula, who, according to their own account, are not Ismaelites,
but descendants of Kahtan—the Joktan of the Hebrews—for at
the commencement of the Christian era all the Arabs seem to
have worshipped idols. Yet this was" probably about the period
of their greatest commercial prosperity and highest literary
development. At some time or times, not well ascertained,
during the first centuries of our era, certain tribes embraced the
Christian faith, and retained it until the swords of Mahomed's
disciples forced them to change the Bible for the Koran; but
ultimately all became Mahomedans.
When the Arabs, not without resistance, had been constrained
or induced to accept as a new revelation the religion of the
pseudo Prophet of Mekka, they became united by that bond
under his authority ; but the whole population of Arabia could
hardly have amounted to ten millions, scattered over an area of
nearly a million square miles, and divided into numerous tribes,
which for ages had been at almost perpetual feud one with
another. Mahomed, however, lived long enough to consolidate
his power in Arabia, though not long enough to effect any con
quests beyond it. That task he bequeathed to his successors.
He died a.d . 632, and before the close of 638 the Arabs, after
gaining sanguinary victories over the Roman and Persian armies,
had subdued the whole of Syria, Egypt, and Persia. The inha
bitants of those subjugated countries were almost everywhere
compelled to renounce their ancient faith, and to accept that of
their conquerors. This was not merely the nominal acceptance
of a new creed; the change involved a complete social revolu
tion ; for not only the pre-existing civil and criminal laws, but
what concerned the domestic relations of these unwilling con
verts, was subverted and replaced by the laws and injunctions
contained in the Koran. Yet it is strange that wherever Islam
was then and thus planted, it has taken root and flourished.
As the power of' the Kalifs, Mahomed's successors, became
consolidated, and the tribute of the subject nations poured into
their treasury, their courts became centres of civilisation, and
their munificence attracted the learned of other countries. The
Philosophy of ancient Greece was taught on the banks of the
Tigris, at a time when it was still unknown in Western Europe ;
and under the liberal patronage of the Kalifs the works of Plato,
Aristotle, Hippocrates, Galen, and other Greek authors, were
translated into Arabic, with ample commentaries.* The lieu-
* They were translated) not direct from the Greek, but from Syriac versions
already existing.
tenants