34.Arabia—or When is a Part of Asia not a Part of Asia

ACCORDING to the maps in our ordinary atlases and according to the handbooks on geography, Arabia is a part of Asia. But the proverbial visitor from Mars, ignorant of the history of our planet, would probably come to a different conclusion and would decide that Nejd, the famous Arabian desert, is really nothing but a continuation of the Sahara from which it is separated by an inconsequential and rather shallow bay of the Indian Ocean known as the Red Sea.

This Red Sea is almost six times as long as it is wide and full of reefs. Its mean depth is about 300 fathoms, but where it connects with the Gulf of Aden, which is really part of the Indian Ocean, the depth varies between only two and sixteen fathoms.It is possible that the Red Sea, which is full of little volcanic islands, was originally an inland lake which did not get elevated to the rank of a sea until the Straits of Persia were formed, just as the North Sea did not really become a sea until after the formation of the British Channel.

As for the Arabs themselves, they seem to have no desire to be either African or Asiatic, for they call their country“the island of the Arabians”,which is rather a large order for a piece of territory six times as large as the whole of Germany. The number of inhabitants is not at all in proportion to the size of their country.It does not exceed that of greater London.But the original ancestors of these 7,000,000 modern Arabs must have been possessed of extraordinary physical and mental qualities for they have been able to impress themselves upon the world at large in quite an extraordinary fashion, and that without the slightest assistance from the side of Mother Nature.

In the first place, they lived in a country with a climate that is not fit for human beings. Not only is this continuation of the Sahara Desert completely deprived of rivers, but it is also one of the hottest places on earth, except in the extreme south and east where the coast is so damp and moist as to be practically uninhabitable for Europeans.But in the center of the peninsula and in the south-west where the mountain-ranges reach a height of almost 6000 feet, the life of both Man and beast is made intolerable by those sudden changes in temperature which take place immediately after dark and which cause the thermometer to fall from 80°to 20°in less than half an hour's time.

If it were not for the underground water the interior would be entirely uninhabitable. As for the coastal regions they are not much better off except the territory immediately north of the British settlement of Aden.

From a commercial point of view, however, the whole blessed peninsula is not worth as much as the lower part of the island of Manhattan. But the island of Manhattan will have to do a great deal better than it has done so far if it ever wants to equal Arabia in its general influence upon the cultural development of the world.

Curiously enough the Arab peninsula has never been a country as France or Sweden are countries. As a result of the irresponsible promises made to everybody and everything during the Great War when the Allies were badly in need of a few extra men, a baker's dozen of so-called independent states now stretches all the way from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Akaba and even further northward where Transjordania, ruled by an Emir who takes his orders from Jerusalem, separates Palestine from the Syrian desert.But most of them are mere names like El Hasa and Oman, along the Persian Gulf, and Yemen and, Asir along the Red Sea, just south of El Hejaz which is perhaps the only one of any importance.For the Hejaz not only has a railroad of its own(the final part of the Bagdad road which now runs as far as Medina and which eventually will be continued to Mecca)but it also is in control of the two holy cities of the Moslem world, Mecca, the place where Mohammed was born, the Bethlehem of the Moslems, and Medina where he lies buried.

Neither of these two oasis cities amounted to much early during the seventh century when they became the center of such stirring events. Mohammed, who was responsible for their fame, was born in 567 or 569,several months after the death of his father.Soon afterwards his mother died too and he was thereupon entrusted to the care of an impecunious grandfather.At an early age he became a camel-driver and travelled all over Arabia with the caravans who hired his services.He may even have crossed the Red Sea, and there is a possibility that he visited Abyssinia which was then trying to turn Arabia into an African colony(and having an easy time of it as the different desert tribes hated each other too cordially to be able to put up a concerted fight).

Later, he created the Mohammedanism and missionized it in Mecca. In the end, and under the pressure of his Meccan neighbors, who laughed rather heartily at the vegetable-vender turned prophet and who threatened his life when he began to take himself a bit too seriously.He fled to Medina and there he started upon his career as a preacher in all seriousness.

I cannot go into details about his doctrines. If you are interested, buy a Koran and try to read it, though you will find it hard sledding.Suffice it here to state that as a result of Mohammed's labors, the different Semite tribes of the great Arabian desert suddenly became conscious of having to fulfil a mission.In less than a century they had conquered all of Asia Minor and Syria and Palestine, together with the whole of the northern coast of Africa and Spain.Until the end of the eighteenth century they were a constant menace to the safety of Europe.

Well, a people who could do all that and in only a few years must have been possessed of extraordinary mental and physical abilities. According to all those who have ever had anything to do with them(including Napoleon, who was a bad judge of women, but who knew a good soldier when he saw one)the Arabs are terrific fighters, and their medieval universities were concrete proof of their intellectual gifts and their interest in science.Why in the end they should have lost so much of their former prestige, I could not say.It would be very easy here to indulge in a few high sounding theories about the influence of the geographical background upon the character of men and then prove that desert tribes have always been great world conquerors, but there are just as many desert people who have never amounted to anything.Also there are just as many mountaineers who have done all sorts of wonderful things.And then again there are other mountaineers who have never risen far above the ranks of drunken and careless and lazy loafers.No, I am sorry, but I have never been able to draw a single general moral lesson from success or the lack thereof on the part of any nation.

But what has happened once may happen again. The great reform movement of the middle of the eighteenth century which purged Mohammedanism of all forms of idolatry and which gave rise to the puritanical sect of the Wahhabites with their insistence upon frugal and simple living, may cause the Arabs to go on the warpath once more;and if Europe continues to waste its strength on civil warfare they may become as dangerous to us as they were twelve centuries ago.Their terrible peninsula is a vast reservoir of“hard”people, of people who rarely smile, who rarely play, who take themselves with dignified seriousness and who cannot be corrupted by the pleasant prospects of material wealth because their needs are so simple that they have never felt the lack of anything better.

Such nations are ever a potential source of danger. Especially when they have a just reason to feel themselves aggrieved.And in the case of Arabia, as in that of all Asia, Africa, America and Australia, the White Man's conscience is not quite as clear as we might wish.