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OCTOBER, 1903.)
MUHAMMAD. HIS LIFE, &c.
388
Religious Condition. But the cultured peoples of Arabia were not only deprived of their political authority, but had lost their ancient religion as well. Here, as everywhere else in antiquity, government and cultus, dependence on the fatherland and the deities native to the soil, had one and the same root. With the enfeeblement of the Sabean monarchy the great South Arabian gods Athar and Almagah began to decline, and the Jewish encountered the Christian propaganda before the gigantic temples of the Sabeans. Judaism was benefited by the stroggle - how, it has not been explained; bat, according to the tradition, in consequence of the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews pressed into the south of the Peninsula, and, countenanced by the local ralers, leavened vast masses of people with notions of monotheism. Christianity was grafted in Arabia from East Rome, and was further professed by the Abyssinians. (Philostorgeus, 111, 4.) But the national bias against the Gospel was a heavy obstacle to its propagation, whereas Judaism passed for a state-supported movement. It was therefore an advantage to the sporadio Christian colonies of Najran, Aden, &c., that the Khosroes were the lords of the land, because the latter conferred their favour and patronage on their Christian subjects and chiefly on the Nestorians, Christianity developed fresh vitality in the North Arabian lands, acknowledging the overlordship of East Rome, such as the principality of Hausn. Whilst, on the other hand, the Hebrew faith conuted its professors among the heathers of Hijaz and in numerous ancient settlements like Medina, Wadi'l Kora, Khaiber, and Taima.
The religion of the Arabs, who owed allegiance to do sovereign authority, was in * primitive stage of evolution. It is difficult to credit them with the conception of great ultraterrestrial gods. On the contrary, they had no small number of tribal and household deities who haunted certain places and objects, e. g. statnes, trees, and stones. The more trivial the conception of the gods became the more terrible grew the potency of many-named Fate as pictured to itself by the Arab imagination, yet generally the gods formed no important factor in the Arab's public life. Hencarcely ever kindled into ecstasy over ther. Of the thousand upon thuusand verses beqneathed to us, not one contains any encominm of them. The people swore by them and transmitted their memories from generation to generation in mutilated proper names. Time-honoured oblations of the field-produce and of the surplus of cattle were offered as tribute to them. At appointed seasons the more famous fanes were visited by the devotees, who burlesqued ceremonies which had long since ceased to be intelligible. But the season festivals continued to be held through the necessity of meeting together for the exchange of conimodities And these were facilitated by the sacred plot of ground round each sanctuary, within the confines of which everbody was perfectly secure from barm. The shrives expanded into immense markets, where the spirtual as well as temporal wares of the Arabs were burtered. In course of time the palm of commercial superiority was assigned to Mecca. Its importance to all Hejaz it owed to the magnet of its holy place which was presumably the oldest portion of the town. The sanctuary famed as the bait (house), or the kaoba (cube), occupied a position precisely in the middle of a valley running from north to south, and approached only by three pisses. An uncouth stone structure of a cubical shape, probably
(Khushan I., surnamed Adosbarvan (the immortal), not only "did not oppress bis Christian subjects so long as they remained law-abiding, but be directly supported their cult and extended this treatmer:t, not be the Nestoriads alono, but to the Monophysites, who were more clorely allied with the (rival) Rutcan Empire than the Néstorians. Apostasy from the State religion (Zeroastrianism) was unsbed with the extreme peralty of the law according to time-honored usage, and promilytizing of the faithful was naturally strictly prohibi'ed: but when the monopbyeite Abbot Abuderumeh, who was munificently helped in the construction of a cloister by the king, baptised his own , who then flew to the Romane, all the penalty awarded to the offending priest was twou onths' mild inanceration, which admitted of his free intercourse with his disciples ...... Aud Khoshran was no weakling; he was energetio even to bellicone ruthlessnese." - Noldeke, Anaitre pur Persischen Geschichte. -T..) ? The ancient names of Meccs are Bekks And Nassa. -Tabari, I. 1132.
Al-Bekri, Geogr. Lexicon. p. 56. El-Kalli says men came here on pilgrimages, but soon after diepered themselves, so that Mooca, or, properly speaking, the neighbourhood of the fane, romained upoccupied by men.
