RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Aquinas
Arabia
trade. Before 1000 B.C., the Arabs were the common carriers of Eastern trade.
III. History : The function of Arabia in worldhistory has been to serve as the cradle, if not the birth-place, of the Semitic race. For this it was well fitted, isolated as it is by three seas and a trackless desert. At almost regular intervals it has sent forth hordes of Semites in waves of migration to become makers of history. The first of these made the initial conquest of the pre-Semitic civilization of the lower Tigris and Euphrates, and is represented by the great names of Sargon I. and his son Naram-Sin, about 3800 b.c. It was possibly the second wave which gave to Babylonia the Arabic dynasty which began to rule about 2400 b.c, represented best by the renowed Hammurabi (q.v .; possibly the Amraphel of Gen. xiv.), the codifier of Babylonian law. The third wave was the Aramean migration, assigned to about the seventeenth pre-Christian century, of which the Hebrews were an offshoot. The Nabatseans (fifth to third centuries b.c.) were the fourth, and the Mohammedan exodus made the last of this remarkable series of migrations. It looks as though Arabia's function had been to nourish her sons for a millennium and then to send them forth to conquer an empire. The general conception that Arabia was wholly a country of nomads is not true. Recent exploration, partial though it is, has proved that not only are there regions of thickly settled populations and numerous well-built cities in the present, but that there were several kingdoms of considerable importance at least as early as 1000 B.C. Three of the most noted are the Minaean, Sabean, and Hadramautic, situated in the south, but on the plateau; and those of Meluhha, Cush, and Mizri in the north, southeast from the Edomitic territory. The last two are referred to in the Old Testament, but are there confused with Ethiopia and Egypt, since the Hebrew name of the former is Cush and of the latter Mizraim. The investigations of Doughty, Halevy, and Glaser, to mention only these among a host of authorities, and the inscriptions now in the hands of scholars, render incontrovertible the existence of a Minaean realm as early as Solomon's time, and make it probable that this kingdom was subdued by a sovereign of the Sabean power (the Sheba of Scripture), which latter continued down to 500 B.C. or later. About the Christian era the Himyaritic or Ethiopian kingdom ruled in southern Arabia. While there are traces of Minaean and Sabean domination in northern Arabia, it is unlikely that the peninsula was unified governmentally before Mohammed's day. In spite of what has been said of the kingdoms of Arabia, the general idea that the Arab is a nomad is nearly correct. Tribal life is to him the normal one. Mohammed's miracle, therefore, was not, as he claimed, the Koran, but a united Arabia. Before him, Arabia was one great battleground of the tribes. The occupations of the people were commerce and pasturage; their pastimes were the feast, the chase, or the pursuit of vengeance in the blood-feud or of war for plunder or g'ory. A striking feature was the month of truce during which feud and war were suspended that the tribes might in peace revisit and worship at
the shrines of their tribal deities. For the rest of the year, fighting was legal and normal.
IV. Religion: When Mohammed chose Allah as his god, he took one whose name was already common property throughout the country. The three goddesses who were daughters of Allah (cf. Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidenthums, Berlin, 1897, 24 sqq.) and were widely worshiped, testify to this fact. But the Koran testifies to the dominance of idolatry; the Kaaba was a home of idols. W.R.Smith has demonstrated the existence of animism, with the consequent or accompanying totemism, as native and persistent among Arabs. Stone-worship, the cults of local gods, the bloody and the mystic sacrifice, especially the primitive sacrifice in which god and worshipers were clanbrothers and commensals, are proved facts for this region. All of which is to say that the gods of Arabia were many. Yet the civilization of cities implies the supereminence of some gods with a prestige which lifted them above the horde of little deities. These greater gods were heaven-gods, a consequence of the clear atmosphere and brilliant skies. Examples of these are Athtar, a male deity, the evening or morning star (north-Semitic, Ishtar, female), and Wadd, the moon-god, known also as Amm and regnant over love. Sun-deities of different names were numerous and were often feminine. But underlying the cult of these more prominent gods was that of the local divinities, the more cherished favorites of the tribes and clans. Sometimes the images or symbols of tribal gods were collected in some shrine which then became the goal of pilgrimage,— the case of the Kaaba at Mecca. The " Black Stone " in the Kaaba, the only official relic of ancient Arabia, is pronounced meteoric. It is a remainder of a once dominant fetishism.
Owing to the difficulties offered by the physical character of the country and the rigid Mohammedanism of the people Arabia is not a promising field for Christian missionary enterprise. A few sporadic attempts have been made, however, in some of the coast towns, where foreign influence most readily finds entrance. There is a Roman Catholic vicar apostolic for Arabia with residence at Aden.
Geo. W Gilmore.
Bibliography: For the geography re'sume's of the results of travelers are found in the chapter of Hommel and the work by Hogarth mentioned in the text. For a view of the facts gleaned from native sources consult R. Ritter, Erdkunde von Arabien, 8th double volume or xii.-xiii. of his collected works, Berlin, 1846-47; A. Sprenger, Die alte Geographie Arabiens, Bern, 1875; E. Glaser, Skizze der Geschichte und Geographie Arabiens, 2 vols., Berlin, 1890. For reports of travels, J. L. Burckhardt, Travels in Arabia, 2 vols., London, 1829 (a classic); C. Niebuhr, Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien, 2 vols., Copenhagen, 1774-78, French ed., Amsterdam, 1776-80; T. R. Wellsted, Travels in Arabia, London, 1838; W. G. Palgrave, Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia, 2 vols., London, 1862-63; A. Zehme, Arabien und dieAraber seit hunderl Jahren, Halle, 1875; C. M. Doughty. Travels in Arabia Deserta, 2 vols., Cambridge, 1888; E. Nolde, Reise nach Innerarabien, Brunswick, 1895; R. E. Brunnowand A. von Domaszewski, Die Provincia Arabia, vols, i.-ii., Strasburg, 1904-06, 80 mks. per vol. For history C. de Perceval, Essai sur I'histoirn des Arabes avant I Islamisme, Paris, 1847-49; Ahmed Khan Bahadur, The Historical Geography of Arabia, 1840 (deals with the history and geography of pre-Islamic times); L. A. Sedillot, Histoire generate des Arabes, Paris, 1876; E. Glaser, Die Abes-
Arabians
Aram