Page:The Arabs short history-PKHitti.djvu/27

ةحhttps://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Page:The_Arabs_short_history-PKHitti.djvu/27&action=edit&redlink=1On the Eve of the Rise of Islam golden chains when led before the victor's chariot in his triumphal entry into Rome. A less spectacular episode in the early history of the peninsula, but one far more deeply significant, was the forty- year sojourn of the Hebrew tribes in Sinai and the Nufud, on their way to Palestine from Egypt about 1225 B.C. In Midian, the southern part of Sinai and the land cast of it, the divine covenant was made. Moses, the leader of the tribes, there married an Arabian woman, the daughter of a Midianite priest (Exodus 3:1; 18 : 10-12), and this union led to one of the most significant of all events in history. The wife of Moses was a worshipper of a God named Yahu, who became Yahwch, or Jehovah. He was a desert God, simple and austere. His abode was a tent and his ritual not elaborate, consisting chiefly in desert feasts and sacrifices and burnt offerings from the herds. The daughter of the Midianite priest instructed Moses in this cult. What vast events were to follow ! Echoes of the desert origin of the Hebrews abound in the Old Testament. The " kings " of the prophet Jeremiah were in all probability sheikhs of northern Arabia and the Syrian desert. The Shunamite damsel whose beauty is im- mortalized in the Song ascribed to Solomon was probably an Arabian of the Kedar tribe. Job, the author of the finest piece of poetry that the ancient Semitic world produced, was an Arab, not a Jew. The " wise men from the East " who followed the star to Jerusalem were possibly Bedouins from the North Arabian desert rather than Magi from Persia. The Jews were geographically the next-door neigbours of the Arabians and racially their next of kin. The list of biblical associations could be infinitely extended. But it is the rise of Islam, the religion of submission to the will of Allah, which concerns us most here. It is sufficient to note that by the beginning of the seventh century of the Christian era, the national life developed in early South Arabia had become utterly disrupted ; anarchy prevailed. 19