At last during the reign of Augustus, Ælius Gallus, the Roman prefect of Egypt, undertook a military expedition against Yemen itself, with the view of annexing that region, which report enriched with immense treasures, to the Roman Empire. With an army composed of ten thousand Roman infantry, five hundred Jews, and one thousand Nabatæans, he crossed the Red Sea in two hundred and ten galleys, and landed at Moilah, or Leuce Come, in 25° N. lat., near the modern Yambo. After some delay, the consequence of disease and disorganisation among his troops, he marched southward until he reached the inland district and city of Nejran, on the nearer frontier of Yemen. The town of Nejran he is said to have taken by assault, as well as a few neighbouring places, probably mere villages, of little note.
Meanwhile a large force of Arabs had assembled to oppose him, but Gallus easily defeated them, and advanced to Mareb itself, then, we may suppose, the capital of Yemen. But the Roman soldiers, unaccustomed to the heat of the tropical climate, and much reduced in numbers, were incapable of laying siege to that town; and their general thus found himself forced to retreat, and recrossed the sea to Egypt without having effected any permanent settlement on the Arab side. Later attempts, made by Roman governors or generals under Trajan and Severus, were restricted to the neighbourhood of the Assyrian frontier; and the ruined cities of Bosrah and Petra yet indicate the landmarks of the extreme southerly limits reached by imperial dominion over Arab territory.
More serious, and more lasting in its consequences, was the great Abyssinian invasion of Yemen in 529, when Aryat, son or lieutenant of the king of Abyssinia, landed in Aden with an army of seventy thousand men, to avenge his co-religionists, the Christians, who had been cruelly persecuted by Dhu-Nowas, king of Yemen, himself a proselyte to and an ardent propagator of the Jewish code. The expedition was successful; Dhu-Nowas perished, Christianity was proclaimed, and for seventy-six years the Ethiopian conquerors retained subject to their rule the southern and richer half of the peninsula. Their king Abraha even advanced, in 570 A.D. (the year of the birth of Mohammed) as far as Mecca; but beneath its walls suffered a repulse, which has been magnified by the Koran and Mohammedan tradition into the proportions of a miracle. Persian assistance, furnished by the great Chosroes, ultimately enabled the Arabs under Seif, son of Yezen, last direct lineal descendant of the old kings of Sana, to liberate their territory from its dusky usurpers (605 A.D.).
The seventh century had now commenced, and before long the wonderful successes of Mohammed (622-632 A.D.), while they closed in one great centralising effort the era of Arab progress and development within the land, opened a marvellous phase of new activity and almost boundless extension without.l
CHAPTER IV. MOHAMMED
Mohammed ben Abdallah ben Abdul-Muttalib
[570-632 A.D.]
While the poets in their stories were moulding the language to a more uniform character, another work was going on in men’s minds which contributed to found Arab nationality in a more decisive manner; there was no more belief in the idols which had, at an early date, taken the place of the one God, Allah; religious sentiment burst out on every side. Already wide schisms were apparent; entire tribes had abandoned the former worship. Besides idolatry, several religions were to be found in Arabia. The Jews, driven from their country by the Assyrians, the Romans, and the Greeks, had been warmly welcomed by the children of Ishmael, who found in the traditions of the exiles a deep respect for the God of Abraham; by means of these souvenirs skilfully evoked, Judaism had made converts. It was principally seen spread throughout Hedjaz, in the neighbourhood of Khaibar and Yathreb, where powerful tribes, those of the Koraizas and the Nadhirites, had long been naturalised. A large portion of the tribes of Yemen had also adopted it; and some of the Tobbas had favoured the introduction of the faith of Moses into their states, principally towards the years 225, 310, and 495 A.D. Sabaism or magianism was also practised by the Himyarites and on the coast of the Persian Gulf; some disciples of Brahmanism were even to be found in the midst of the inhabitants of Oman.
RELIGIOUS UNREST
[520-580 A.D.]
Christianity, successfully preached in several parts of Arabia, was professed by the Ghassanides in the year 330, and by various Arab tribes of Irak, Mesopotamia, Bahrein, the desert of Faran, and Damut-Jandal. The combined efforts of the negus of Abyssinia and of the emperor of Constantinople had contributed to spread the Gospel in Yemen. The Christian colony of Nejran had been honoured by persecution under Dhu-Nowas towards 523; fifty years later, Abraha sought to make of the church of Sana the goal of Arab pilgrimages. Lastly several kings of Hira had been favourable to the religion of Christ.
In the midst of the new ideas which preaching had spread throughout the peninsula, idolatry nevertheless remained the dominant religion. The intermediary divinities which certain tribes adored bore no resemblance to those creations of the Greeks and Romans, who worshipped moral beings clothed in bodily forms; they were, as with the ancient Egyptians, animals and plants, the gazelle, the horse, the camel, palm trees, vegetables, or inorganic bodies, rocks, stones, etc. All the Arabs acknowledged one supreme God, Allah; but some of them worshipped under the figure of their idols, the angels Benat-allah (the daughters of God); others, the planets or stars such as Aldebaran, Sirius, Canope, etc. They believed in genii, Jinn, in ogres, Ghol, in witchcraft, Shir, in divination, Kehana, in sacrifices, in oracles; fate was consulted by means of arrows without points, kidah or azlam, and the most blamable superstitious rites were still almost universally practised. A great number of tribes had their special idols, Hobal, Lat, etc., who were honoured by rich offerings, and in whose honour victims were slain; however, no temple had the fame of the Kaaba, whose pre-eminence was universally admitted.
This temple, which Abraha al-Ashram had wished to destroy, had been throughout the ages the object of the greatest veneration; it was looked on as a present made by Jehovah to the Arab race to bear witness to its condition privileged beyond all others. It was the oratory of Abraham and of Ishmael, the house of Allah; on receiving the 360 idols, subordinate powers accepted by the Arabs, it included all their divinities and became the Pantheon of the nation; the traditions connected with it were dear to all. They made the Kaaba a place of pilgrimage. They laboured to adorn it, to beautify it; they would have liked it to surpass in riches all the monuments of the universe; they hung the Moallakat in it, as if to connect with it every form of illustration. The Sabians, the fire-worshippers, sent their offerings to it; even the Jews showed a deep respect for this revered spot. The guardians of the temple, the Koreish clan, had a sort of religious authority which was willingly recognised by all; for instance, they had the right to name the sacred months during which, after the pilgrimage, a suspension of arms should reign throughout Arabia. So those who could attend the fair of Okad placed their weapons in the hands of the Koreish chiefs before entering the meeting, which, without this wise precaution, would often have degenerated into bloody fights. It was therefore necessary to have influence at Mecca and with the Koreish chiefs if one wished to found a uniform and national religion in Arabia, and Mohammed saw this perfectly.
Abdul-Muttalib, the son of Hashim, born in 497, exercised supreme authority in Mecca, from 520 to 579; he had the glory of delivering his country from the invasion of the Abyssinians, and he saw a Himyarite prince drive the foreigners from Yemen with the help of the king of Persia. Father of eighteen children, he believed himself bound by a rash vow to sacrifice one of his sons, in 569, before the idols of the Kaaba; fate fixed on one he loved the most, Abdallah, about twenty-four years of age. At the moment of the sacrifice, some of the Koreish chiefs rose against so barbarous an action and so fatal an example; by their advice a witch, arrafa, was consulted, who declared that Abdallah’s life might be purchased by means of the dia (price of human blood), and by drawing lots. The dia consisting of ten camels, the number ten was inscribed on a pointless arrow, and on another the name of Abdallah; nine times the name of Abdallah appeared, and it was only the tenth time that the camels were condemned. So a hundred were killed instead of Abdallah, and this number became thenceforth among the Koreish chiefs the price of the dia.