ARAB HISTORY BEFORE MOHAMMED
[380 B.C.-634 A.D.]
The history of Arabia and its inhabitants naturally divides itself into two distinct and even dissimilar periods, that, namely, which preceded the era of Mohammed, and that which followed it. Each of these two periods, though comprising in its extent several minor phases and fluctuations, now of advance, now of retrogression, bears, however, a well-marked general character of its own. The first of the two periods is distinguished as one of local monarchies and federal governments; the latter commences with theocratic centralisation dissolving into general anarchy.
The first dawning gleams of anything that deserves to be called history disclose Arabia wholly, or nearly so, under the rule of a race of southern origin; the genuine, or, as they are sometimes termed from a mythical ancestor Kahtan, the Kahtanee Arabs. These, again, we find subdivided into several aristocratic monarchical governments, arranged so as to form a broad framework or rim around the central wilds of the peninsula.
Oldest and chiefest among the Arab monarchies was that of Yemen; its regal residence is said to have been in the now abandoned town of Mareb, in the extreme south. After a devastating inundation, referred with some probability to the first century of the Christian era, the seat of government was removed from the ruins of Mareb to Sana, a city which has continued the metropolis of Yemen to the present day. The Yemenite kings, descendants of Kahtan and Himyar (the dusky), a name denoting African origin, and each adorned with the reiterated surname of “Tobba,” a word of African etymology, and signifying “powerful,” are said to have reigned, with a few dynastic interruptions and palace revolutions, for about twenty-five hundred years, during which long period they commanded the direct obedience of the entire southern half of the peninsula; while, by their tribute-collectors, and by chiefs of kindred or delegated authority, they indirectly governed the northern. One of these monarchs is asserted, though historical criticism will hardly admit the assertion for fact, to have subdued the whole of central Asia, and even to have reached the boundaries of China; while another anticipated, so runs the story, the later and more authentic conquests of his race on the north African continent. In both these cases Arab chroniclers seem to have appropriated for their own rulers, not without some additional exaggerations, the glories and exploits of the Egyptian kings. But that theirs was a vigorous and in some respects a civilised government is attested alike by the literary and the architectural relics of their time. Their sovereignty was at last overthrown, 529 (A.D.) by an Abyssinian invasion, and was re-established in 603 A.D. as a dependency of the Persian Empire, till in the year 634 it was finally absorbed by Mohammedan conquest.
[100-500 A.D.]
Next in importance to the kingdom of Yemen came the subsidiary monarchy of Hira, or more correctly Heerah, situated in the northeasterly province of Arabian Irak. Its kings, a collateral branch of the royal race of Sana, governed the western shore of the lower Euphrates, from the neighbourhood of Babylon down to the confines of Nejd, and along the coast of the Persian Gulf. The duration of their empire, founded in the second century after Christ, was 424 years. This kingdom paid an uncertain allegiance to their more powerful neighbours, the Persian despots; and from time to time exercised considerable influence over the turbulent tribes of central Arabia, till, like Yemen, it sank before the rising fortunes of Mohammed and his followers.
A third monarchy, that of Ghassan, lorded it on the northwest over lower Syria and the Hedjaz; its independence was somewhat tempered with unequal alliances with the Roman, and subsequently the Byzantine Empire. It was founded in the first century of the Christian era, shortly after the flood of Mareb; and its duration, till subdued by the all-conquering prophet, exceeded six hundred years.
A fourth government, that of Kindeh, detached itself from Irak early in the fifth century, and united under its sceptre the tribes of northerly Nejd and even those of Oman, for about 160 years. Its kings were, like those before mentioned, of Yemenite origin; but their rule was weak and disturbed by frequent wars.
Much has been written by Arab authors regarding the great inundation, as they term it, of Arem or Mareb, possibly a tropical cyclone of more than ordinary destructiveness, like that of 1867 in the West Indies; and this event they love to assign as the proximate cause which dispersed the families of Yemen over northern Arabia, and led to the foundation of the kingdoms of Irak and Ghassan. But the reality of the events, physical or political, symbolised by the “flood of Arem” (a counterpart, after its fashion, of the biblical flood) cannot now be well deciphered.
This is however certain—in that the Yemenite Arabs, and especially those who tenanted the south of the peninsula, had, during the period now cursorily sketched, attained a very fair degree of civilisation—that arts and commerce flourished, that wealth was accumulated, literature cultivated, and talent held in esteem. On all these points we have not only the uncertain and distorted testimony of foreign authors, such as Strabo, Pliny, Diodorus, Ptolemy, and the like, but the more positive though fragmentary evidence afforded by the national writings, chiefly verse, that have survived to our day. In its general character and institutions the kingdom of Yemen seems to have borne a considerable resemblance to the neighbouring one of the Nile valley, on the other side of the Red Sea, and, like it, to have reached at a very early epoch a relatively high degree of prosperity and social culture, from which, however, it had long declined before its final extinction in the seventh century. But the daughter-kingdom of Hira had, as was natural, something of a Persian tinge; while that of Ghassan took a more Byzantine colouring. Lastly, the nomadic element predominated in the ill-cemented monarchy of Kindeh.
But while the sceptre of Yemen was yet, in one form or other, outstretched over the length and breadth of the land, and its children, the genuine or African Arabs, formed a complete and dense circle of population all around, the centre of Arabia remained the stronghold of a different though kindred race, in their mode of living wild and ferocious; less susceptible of culture, but gifted with greater energy and concentration of purpose than their southern cousins. The latest recorded emigration of this branch of the Arab stock had been not from the south but the north; and instead of the mythical Kahtan, they claimed a no less mythical Adnan, or his supposed grandson Nezar, for their ancestor; their language, though radically identical with that spoken by the genuine Arabs, was yet dialectically different in several respects, and nearer to the Syriac or Hebrew. Lastly, unlike the Arabs from the south, they had little disposition for agriculture, and even less for architecture and the fine arts; their instincts leading them to a pastoral and consequently a nomadic life. The almost infinite ramifications of these “Mustareb” or “adscititious Arab” tribes lead ultimately up to five principal stocks. These were Rabiah, which, however, laid some claim to a Yemenite kinsmanship in the east centre of the peninsula; Koreish, on the west; Kais, or Kais-Ailan, and Hawazin, on the north; and Tamin in the middle.