CHAPTER II
The Arabic peoples
first difficulty of the Arab movement was to say
who the Arabs were. Being a manufactured people,
their name had been changing in sense slowly
year by year. Once it meant an Arabian. There
was a country called Arabia; but this was nothing
to the point. There was a language called Arabic;
and in it lay the test. It was the current tongue of Syria and
Palestine, of Mesopotamia, and of the great peninsula called
Arabia on the map. Before the Moslem conquest, these areas were
inhabited by diverse peoples, speaking languages of the Arabic
family. We called them Semitic, but (as with most scientific terms)
incorrectly. However, Arabic, Assyrian, Babylonian, Phoenician,
Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac were related tongues; and indications
of common influences in the past, or even of a common origin,
were strengthened by our knowledge that the appearances and
customs of the present Arabic-speaking peoples of Asia, while as
varied as a field-full of poppies, had an equal and essential likeness.
We might with perfect propriety call them cousins—and cousins
certainly, if sadly, aware of their own relationship.
The Arabic-speaking areas of Asia in this sense were a rough parallelogram. The northern side ran from Alexandretta, on the Mediterranean, across Mesopotamia eastward to the Tigris. The south side was the edge of the Indian Ocean, from Aden to Muscat. On the west it was bounded by the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, and the Red Sea to Aden. On the east by the Tigris, and the Persian Gulf to Muscat. This square of land, as large as India, formed the homeland of our Semites, in which no foreign race had kept a permanent footing, though Egyptians, Hittites, Philistines, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Turks and Franks had variously tried. All had in the end been broken, and their scattered elements drowned in the strong characteristics of the Semitic race. Semites had sometimes
