The disastrous failure of this expedition, which took place in the year of the Elephant (570 a.d.), did not at once free Yemen from the Abyssinian yoke. The sons of Abraha, Yaksum and Masrúq, bore heavily on the Arabs. Seeing no help among his own people, a noble Ḥimyarite named Sayf b. Dhí Yazan resolved to seek foreign intervention. His choice lay between the Byzantine and Persian empires, Sayf b. Dhí Yazan. and he first betook himself to Constantinople. Disappointed there, he induced the Arab king of Ḥíra, who was under Persian suzerainty, to present him at the court of Madá’in (Ctesiphon). How he won audience of the Sásánian monarch, Núshírwán, surnamed the Just, and tempted him by an ingenious trick to raise a force of eight hundred condemned felons, who were set free and shipped to Yemen under the command of an aged general; how they literally 'burned their boats' and, drawing courage from despair, routed the Abyssinian host and made Yemen a satrapy The Persians in Yemen ( circa572 a.d.). of Persia73—this forms an almost epic narrative, which I have omitted here (apart from considerations of space) because it belongs to Persian rather than to Arabian literary history, being probably based, as Nöldeke has suggested, on traditions handed down by the Persian conquerors who settled in Yemen to their aristocratic descendants whom the Arabs called al-Abná(the Sons) or Banu ’l-Aḥrár(Sons of the Noble).
Leaving the once mighty kingdom of Yemen thus pitiably and for ever fallen from its high estate, we turn northward into the main stream of Arabian history.
CHAPTER II
THE HISTORY AND LEGENDS OF THE PAGAN ARABS
Muḥammadans include the whole period of Arabian history from the earliest times down to the establishment of Islam in the term al-Jáhiliyya, which was used by The Age of Barbarism (al-Jáhiliyya). Muḥammad in four passages of the Koran and is generally translated 'the state or ignorance' or simply 'the Ignorance.' Goldziher, however, has shown conclusively that the meaning attached to jahl(whence Jáhiliyyais derived) by the Pre-islamic poets is not so much 'ignorance' as 'wildness,' 'savagery,' and that its true antithesis is not ‘ilm(knowledge), but rather ḥilm, which denotes the moral reasonableness of a civilised man. "When Muḥammadans say that Islam put an end to the manners and customs of the Jáhiliyya, they have in view those barbarous practices, that savage temper, by which Arabian heathendom is distinguished from Islam and by the abolition of which Muḥammad sought to work a moral reformation in his countrymen: the haughty spirit of the Jáhiliyya( ḥamiyyatu ’l-Jáhiliyya), the tribal pride and the endless tribal feuds, the cult of revenge, the implacability and all the other pagan characteristics which Islam was destined to overcome."74
Our sources of information regarding this period may be classified as follows:—
(1) Poems and fragments of verse, which though not written down at the time were preserved by oral tradition and committed to writing, for the most part, two or three hundred years afterwards. The importance of this, virtually Sources of information concerning the Jáhiliyya. the sole contemporary record of Pre-islamic history, is recognised in the well-known saying, "Poetry is the public register of the Arabs ( al-shi‘ru díwánu ’l-‘Arab); thereby genealogies are kept in mind and famous actions are made familiar." Some account of the chief collections of old Arabian poetry will be given in the next chapter.
(2) Proverbs.These are of less value, as they seldom explain themselves, while the commentary attached to them is the work of scholars bent on explaining them at all costs, though in many cases their true meaning could only be conjectured and the circumstances of their origin had been entirely forgotten. Notwithstanding this very pardonable excess of zeal, we could ill afford to lose the celebrated collections of Mufaḍḍal b. Salama (õ circa900 a.d.) and Maydání (õ 1124 a.d.),75 which contain so much curious information throwing light on every aspect of Pre-islamic life.
(3) Traditions and legends.Since the art of writing was neither understood nor practised by the heathen Arabs in general, it was impossible that Prose, as a literary form, should exist among them. The germs of Arabic Prose, however, may be traced back to the Jáhiliyya. Besides the proverb ( mathal) and the oration ( khuṭba) we find elements of history and romance in the prose narratives used by the rhapsodists to introduce and set forth plainly the matter of their songs, and in the legends which recounted the glorious deeds of tribes and individuals. A vast number of such stories—some unmistakably genuine, others bearing the stamp of fiction—are preserved in various literary, historical, and geographical works composed under the ‘Abbásid Caliphate, especially in the Kitábu ’l-Aghání(Book of Songs) by Abu ’l-Faraj of Iṣfahán (õ 967 a.d.), an invaluable compilation based on the researches of the great Humanists as they have been well named by Sir Charles Lyall, of the second and third centuries after the Hijra.76 The original writings of these early critics and scholars have The Book of Songs.perished almost without exception, and beyond the copious citations in the Agháníwe possess hardly any specimens of their work. "The Book of Songs," says Ibn Khaldún, "is the Register of the Arabs. It comprises all that they had achieved in the past of excellence in every kind of poetry, history, music, et cetera. So far as I am aware, no other book can be put on a level with it in this respect. It is the final resource of the student of belles-lettres, and leaves him nothing further to desire."77
In the following pages I shall not attempt to set in due order and connection the confused mass of poetry and legend in which all that we know of Pre-islamic Arabia Scope of this chapter. lies deeply embedded. This task has already been performed with admirable skill by Caussin de Perceval in his Essai sur l'histoire des Arabes avant l'Islamisme,78 and it could serve no useful purpose to inflict a dry summary of that famous work upon the reader. The better course, I think, will be to select a few typical and outstanding features of the time and to present them, wherever possible, as they have been drawn—largely from imagination—by the Arabs themselves. If the Arabian traditions are wanting in historical accuracy they are nevertheless, taken as a whole, true in spirit to the Dark Age which they call up from the dead and reverently unfold beneath our eyes.
About the middle of the third century of our era Arabia was enclosed on the north and north-east by the rival empires of Rome and Persia, to which the Syrian desert, stretching right across the peninsula, formed a natural termination. In order to protect themselves from Bedouin raiders, who poured over the frontier-provinces, and after laying hands on all the booty within reach vanished as suddenly as they came, both Powers found it necessary to plant a line of garrisons along the edge of the wilderness. Thus the tribesmen were partially held in check, but as force alone seemed an expensive and inefficient remedy it was decided, in accordance with the well-proved maxim, divide et impera, to enlist a number of the offending tribes in the Imperial service. Regular pay and the prospect of unlimited plunder—for in those days Rome and Persia were almost perpetually at war—were inducements that no true Bedouin could resist. They fought, however, as free allies under their own chiefs or The Arab dynasties of Ḥíra and Ghassán. phylarchs. In this way two Arabian dynasties sprang up—the Ghassánids in Syria and the Lakhmites at Ḥíra, west of the Euphrates—military buffer-states, always ready to collide even when they were not urged on by the suzerain powers behind them. The Arabs soon showed what they were capable of when trained and disciplined in arms. On the defeat of Valerian by the Chosroes Sábúr I, an Arab chieftain in Palmyra, named Udhayna (Odenathus), marched at the head of a strong force against the conqueror, drove him out of Syria, and pursued him up to the very walls of Madá’in, the Persian capital (265 a.d.). His brilliant exploits were duly rewarded by the Emperor Gallienus, who bestowed on him the title of Augustus. He was, in fact, the Odenathus and Zenobia. acknowledged master of the Roman legions in the East when, a year later, he was treacherously murdered. He found a worthy successor in his wife, the noble and ambitious Zenobia, who set herself the task of building up a great Oriental Empire. She fared, however, no better than did Cleopatra in a like enterprise. For a moment the issue was doubtful, but Aurelian triumphed and the proud 'Queen of the East' was led a captive before his chariot through the streets of Rome (274 a.d.).