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324 THE DECLINE AND FALL substitutes an innocent to the guilty person, and transfers the penalty to the best and most considerable of the race by whom they have been injured. If he falls by their hands, they are ex- posed in their turn to the danger of reprisals ; the interest and principal of the bloody debt are accumulated ; the individuals of either family lead a life of malice and suspicion, and fifty years may sometimes elapse before the account of vengeance be finally settled.^" This sanguinary spirit, ignorant of pity or forgiveness, has been moderated, however, by the maxims of honour, which require in every private encounter some decent equality of age Annual and Strength, of numbei-s and weapons. An annual festival of """^ two, perhaps of four, months was observed by the Arabs before the time of Mahomet, during which their swords were religiously sheathed, both in foreign and domestic hostility ; and this partial truce is more strongly expressive of the habits of anarchy and warfare.*^ Their social But the Spirit of rapine and revenge was attempered by the and virtues milder influence of trade and literature. The solitary peninsula is encompassed by the most civilised nations of the ancient world ; the merchant is the friend of mankind ; and the annual caravans imported the first seeds of knowledge and politeness into the cities and even the camps of the desert. Whatever may be the pedigree of the Arabs, their language is derived from the same original stock with the Hebrew, the Syriac, and the Chaldaean tongues ; the independence of the tribes was marked by their peculiar dialects ; ■*- but each, after their own, allowed a just preference to the pure and perspicuous idiom of Mecca. In Arabia as well as in Greece, the perfection of lan- guage outstripped the refinement of manners ; and her speech could diversify the fourscore names of honey, the two hundred 40 The modern theory and practice of the Arabs in the revenge of murder are described by Niebuhr (Description, p. 26-31). The harsher features of antiquity may be traced in the Koran, c. 2, p. 20, c. 17, p. 230, with Sale's Observations. 41 Procopius (de Bell. Persic. 1. i. c. 16) places the t7vo holy months about the summer solstice. The Arabians consecrate fou?- months of the year — the first, seventh, eleventh, and twelfth ; and pretend that in a long series of ages the truce was infringed only four or six times. (Sale's Preliminary Discourse, p. 147-150, and Notes on the ninth chapter of the Koran, p. 154, &c. Casiri, Bibliot. Hispano- Arabica, torn. ii. p. 20, 21.) 42 Arrian, in the second century, remarks (in Peripio Maris Erythraei, p. 12) the partial or total difference of the dialects of the Arabs. Their language and letters are copiously treated by Pocock (Specimen, p. 150-154), Casiri (Bibliot. Hispano- Arabica, torn. i. p. i, 83, 292, tom. ii. p. 25, &c.), and Niebuhr (Description de I'Arabie, p. 72-86). I pass slightly ; I am not fond of repeating words like a parrot.