48 the important points. For thousands of years this country has been inhabited by wandering tribes of Bedouins and Arab villagers. Although there is a population of over twenty million people in Arabia, the inhabitants have only been loosely held together by travel alliances, something like those that existed among the American Indians a century ago. For centuries no one has been able to bring these peoples together in one unified movement. Scores of generals, statesmen, and Sultans had struggled with the almost inipossible mission. How this young Pritish lieutenant, who had had very few days of military drill in his life, succeeded in creating a loose army of some two hundred thousand mounted Bedouins, how he swept the Turks from the Arabian Peninsula, and built this mosaic of peoples into a homo- geneous nation, is a story that I should have hesitated to believe had I not actually been with him in the desert. THE STRAND MAGAZINE. . The inhabitants of Arabia belong to the Semitic race, and are of the same general family as the Jews. Some authorities say that Kahtan, the son of Abeis, the son of Shalah, the son of Arfakhshad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, was the first person to speak the Arabic language. I know of no way of refuting that grave charge against Kahtan, but I do know that after my experience in Arabia I wish he might have used better judgment and selected Eskimo or some other simple language instead. Mohammed, the canel boy of Mecca, was the first person to bind together in any sort of unity the peoples of Arabia. He was able to accomplish this through his religious teachings and evangelization. That was more than a thousand years ago. After the death of Mohammed, Abu Bekr and Ali carried Mohammedanism throughout nearly the whole world as it was known at that time. Their armies swept across the Near East, South- Eastern Europe, Africa, and Spain. The Arabian Empire attained its zenith in the seventh century of this era, and its decline began after the defeat of the Moslem armies at the Battle of Tours in A.D. 732, by Charles Martel. As the power and influence of the Arabs slipped away from them it was usurped by the Ottomans, who swept down out of Central Asia. For five hundred years the Turks governed the Arabs as though they were an inferior race. At almost any time in those five centuries the desert people could have freed themselves had they been able to unite. But from the reign of Harun- al-Rashid down to the present time no one appeared in the Near East strong enough to bring the Arabs together. It remained for young T. E. Lawrence, the British archæolo- gist, to go into Holy Arabia and lead the Arabs through the spectacular and trium- Digitized by Google phant campaign which broke the backbone of the Turkish Empire and the Pan-German dream of world dominion. During all those centuries of oppression, whenever enlightened Arabs objected strongly to the tyrannical rule of the Turks, the Sultan would invite them to take up their residence in Constantinople, where they would either be held as prisoners or would be quietly put out of the way. Abdul Hamid, the last great Sultan of Turkey, was an expert in following the private policy of his predecessors. Among the prominent Arabs whom he found it advisable to have near him at the Sublime Porte was Sherif Hussein of Mecca, the oldest living descendant of Mohammed, the man really entitled to the caliphate, since the title of caliph was originally given to th: successors of Mohammed both as spiritual and temporal rulers, and later was usurped by the Turkish masters of Arabia. Sherif Hussein is the sixty-eighth ruler of the Hejaz in the Ottoman period. No people in the world take more pride in their ancestry than the Arabs. The births in all the leading princely families are recorded in Mecca at the Holy Kaaba, a mosque built round a black meteoric stone, the most sacred spot in the world to millions of Moslems. Here on the roll of parchment, on which each ruling Emir of Mecca has written his title, is in- scribed the name of Hussein Ibn Ali, record- ing the pure and direct descent of the Sherif from the prophet of Islam. For eighteen years, Sherif Hussein, the rightful Keeper of the Holy Places, was forced to live with his people on the Bosporus, virtually prisoners under the wary eye of the Red Sultan. In the Young Turk movement the Arabs thought they saw the dawn of a new era of freedom and liberty. In fact, they played an important part in the revolution which resulted in the overthrow of Abdul Hamid. At that time all Arabian, Armenian, Kurd, Greek, Syrian, and Jewish political prisoners who had been held in Constantinople were released. But the Arabs soon discovered that the Young Turk leaders were more tyrannical oppressors than bloody old Abdul himself, who now seemed quite respectable in comparison with Enver, Talaat, and Djemal. Sherif Hussein and other patriotic Arabs despaired of seeing a happier day for their country, when suddenly the world war pulled Turkey into the maelstrom with Great Britain, France, Russia, and Italy pitted against her. It was the hour of opportunity for Arabia. The Arabian nationalist leaders immediately took advantage of it. With all the pent-up fury and hatred of five hundred years of slavery and dishonour, they leapt at the throats of their villainous masters. From all parts of the desert came the swarthy, Original from CORNELL UNIVERSITY
