§ 1. Arabia before Muhammad. § 2. Life of Muhammad to the Hegira. § 3. Muhammad becomes a Fighting Prophet. § 4. The Teachings of Islam. § 5. The Caliphs Abu Bekr and Omar. § 6. The Great Days of the Omayyads. § 7. The Decay of Islam under the Abbasids. § 8. The Intellectual Life of Arab Islam.
§ 1
WE have already described how in A.D. 628 the courts of Heraclius, of Kavadh, and of Tai-tsung were visited by Arab envoys sent from a certain Muhammad, "The Prophet of God," at the small trading town of Medina in Arabia. We must tell now who this prophet was who had arisen among the nomads and traders of the Arabian desert.
From time immemorial Arabia, except for the fertile strip of the Yemen to the south, had been a land of nomads, the headquarters and land of origin of the Semitic peoples. From Arabia at various times waves of these nomads had drifted north, east, and west into the early civilizations of Egypt, the Mediterranean coast, and Mesopotamia. We have noted in this history how the Sumerians were swamped and overcome by such Semitic waves, how the Semitic Phœnicians and Canaanites established themselves along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, how the Babylonians and Assyrians were settled Semitic peoples, how the Hyksos conquered Egypt, how the Arameans established themselves in Syria with Damascus as their capital, and how the Hebrews partially conquered their "Promised Land." At some unknown date the Chaldeans drifted in from Eastern Arabia and settled in the old
- ↑ See Margoliouth's Mahommedanism and his Life of Mahomet.—E. B.
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