[500-570 A.D.]
History has left unrecorded the exact date of their arrival in Arabia; nor has she defined the period during which they remained tributaries, though often refractory, of the kings of Yemen. But in the fifth century of the Christian era there appeared among the Mustareb tribes a leader of extraordinary talent and energy named Kolaib, sprung from the tribe of Rabiah, who having, in the fashion of William Tell, slain with his own hand the insolent and licentious tax-gatherer sent them from Sana, raised the banner of general revolt in Nejd; and, in the battle of Hazat (500 A.D.), broke forever the bonds of Yemen from off the neck of the northern Arabs. This done, Kolaib aspired to unite his countrymen into one vast confederacy, over which he himself exercised for a time an almost kingly power; but the scheme was prematurely broken off by his own assassination. Left now without a master, but also without a ruler, the Mustareb tribes found themselves involved in a series of wars that lasted during the whole of the sixth century, their heroic period. Yet in spite of severe losses sustained in battle by this or that particular clan, their power as a whole went on increasing, till at the dawn of the seventh century they had wholly absorbed the feeble kingdom of Kindeh, and encroached yearly more and more on the narrowing bounds of Yemen, Irak, and Ghassan.
An Arab Chief
Nor, probably, would they have stayed till they had become absolute lords over the whole, or nearly the whole, of the peninsula, had there not developed itself from among themselves a still more energetic element which, before many years had passed, reduced both northern and southern Arabs alike to common obedience, then raised them to an unexpected height of common glory, and at last plunged them, along with itself, into one comprehensive decline and ruin. This new and potent element was the well-known clan of Fihr or Koreish. Its families, of Mustareb descent, had at an early period, which subsequent and Mohammedan chroniclers have tried to identify with the fortunes of the mythical Ismail, established themselves in the southerly Hedjaz, near the town of Mecca, a locality even then the principal religious and commercial centre of Arabia. Already, at the beginning of the fifth century, the chiefs of Koreish had, by a mixture of violence and craft very characteristic of their race, rendered themselves the masters and the acknowledged guardians of the sacred “Kaaba.” This square stone temple, or rather shrine, itself of unknown antiquity, was situated within the precincts of the town of Mecca; and to it the Arabs were in the habit of bringing yearly offerings, and of making devout pilgrimages, for centuries before Mohammed had adopted it into the new ritual of Islam as the house of the true God. The keys of the consecrated building had originally been in possession of delegates appointed by the monarch of Yemen; but the Koreish Arabs, having once obtained them, held them fast forever after, and successfully repelled every effort, both of their own pagan competitors and of the invading Christian Abyssinians (570 A.D.), to recapture or to seize them. Their possession of the temple keys not only gave the tribe of Koreish a semi-religious pre-eminence over all the other clans of Arabia, but also placed at their disposal the treasures of gold, silver, jewels, and other offerings accumulated by the pagan piety of ages in the temple of Mecca.
[500-600 A.D.]
A more important, as also a more creditable, source of wealth to the Koreish clan was their Red Sea coast traffic, particularly with the ports of Yemen and Abyssinia. Jiddah has been always the chief westerly seaport, and Mecca, which is only a few leagues distant, the principal inland emporium, of Arab trade; and under the dominating influence of the clever and active merchants of Koreish, both places acquired special prosperity and importance.
Lastly, only a day’s journey distant from Mecca, was held, in the pre-Islamitic times, the great yearly fair and gathering of Okad, so called from the name of the plain where it used to assemble—a national meeting, frequented by men of all conditions, from all quarters of the Arab peninsula, and lasting through the entire month of Dhul-kaadeh, which in pagan, as subsequently in Mohammedan reckoning, immediately preceded the ceremonies of the annual pilgrimage. Here horse races, athletic games, poetical recitals, and every kind of public amusement, diversified the more serious commercial transactions of an open fair, that, in its comprehensiveness, almost assumed the proportions of a national exhibition. Here, too, matters of the highest import, questions of peace and war, of treaty and alliance, of justice and revenge, were habitually treated by the chiefs of the northern Arabs; the “children of Mezar,” to give them their favourite Mustareb patronymic, assembled in a sort of amphictyonic council, not less ancient, but while it lasted much more influential throughout Arabia, than that of Thebes ever had been in classic Greece. In this assembly the immediate local proximity of the Koreish chiefs, joined to their personal wealth, courage, and address, assigned them a predominant position.
Of their pedigree, which, as is well known, includes that of Mohammed himself, we have a carefully (too carefully, indeed, for authenticity) constructed chronicle, bringing the family tree up in due form to Ishmael, the son of Abraham, of whom the Koreish figure as the direct descendants. In the same artificial annals the Yemenite, or genuine Arabs, appear under the cousinly character of the children of Joktan, the son of Eber. On these points all Mohammedan annalists are equally positive and distinct; all other Arab testimony is equally adverse or silent. That a fable so utterly defiant of reasonable chronology, and even of the common sense of history itself, should have been adopted as matter of fact by Arab vanity and ignorance, is less surprising than that it should have found favour in the eyes of not a few, indeed of most, of our own European writers. Enough here to say that Mohammedan chroniclers, by adopting as irrefragable historical authority the Jewish records, and then retouching them here and there in accordance with their own special predictions and tenets, have succeeded in concealing the truth of their own national identity and story from themselves and even from others, under an almost hopeless incrustation of childish fiction.
To sum up, at the opening of the seventh century of our era, and coincidently with the first appearance of the prophetic autocrat and destined remodeller of Arabia, the overteeming life and energy of the great peninsula was, broadly taken, thus divided: Foremost stood the tribe of Koreish, with their allies, a powerful confederacy composed of tribes belonging to the Mustareb or northern stock, and occupying the upper half of the westerly coast and region. Next in importance came the countless independent, and, thus far, uncentralised clans of the centre of the peninsula; they, too, are mostly of Mustareb origin; though a few claimed the more ancient and aristocratic kinsmanship of Yemen, but without, however, paying any allegiance to its rulers. Lastly, to the south, east, and north, still existed the noble but enfeebled relics of the old Yemenite kingdoms of Sana, Hira, and Ghassan, half-sunk into Persian or Byzantine vassalage, and exerting little authority, even within their own ancestral limits.
[25 B.C.-632 A.D.]
But, however important to the country itself and in their ultimate results to the world at large might be the events that took place within Arabia during the pre-Islamitic epoch, they had small bearing on the nations outside the peninsula. The Yemenite queen of Sheba’s ambassage to Solomon, even if an historical event, led at least to no historical results; and with other coeval rulers and nationalities, Greek, Persian, and Macedonian, the Arabs rarely came into any other contact than that of distant and desultory traffic. Nor do the frontier skirmishes by which an Antigonus or a Ptolemy attempted, without success, to gain a footing in Arabia, deserve more than a passing notice; and Pompey himself, victorious elsewhere, was foiled on its frontiers.