Selections from the Kur-an

Selections from the Kur-an

Between Egypt and Assyria, jostled by both, yielding to neither, lay a strange country, unknown save at its marches even to its neighbours, dwelt-in by a people that held itself aloof from all the eartha people whom the great empires of the ancient world in vain essayed to conquer, against whom the power of Persia, Egypt, Rome, Byzantium was proven impotence, and at whose hands even the superb Alexander, had he lived to test his dream, might for once have learnt the lesson of defeat. Witnessing the struggle and fall of one and another of the great tyrannies of antiquity, yet never entering the arena of the fight;swept on its northern frontier by the conflicting armies of Khusru and Csar, but lifting never a hand in either cause;Arabia was at length to issue forth from its silent mystery, and after baffling for a thousand years the curious gaze of strangers, was at last to draw to itself the fearful eyes of all men. The people of whom almost [Pgxii] nothing before could certainly be asserted but its existence was finally of its own free will to throw aside the veil, to come forth from its fastnesses, and imperiously to bring to its feet the kingdoms of the world. It is not all Arabia of which I speak. The story to tell has nothing as yet to say to the happy tilled lands of the south, nor to the outlying princedoms of El-eereh and Ghassn bordering the territories and admitting the suzerainty of Persia and Rome. These lands were not wrapped in mystery: the Himyerites kingdom in the Yemen, the rule of Zenobia at Palmyra, were familiar to the nations around. But the cradle of Islm was not here. Along the eastern coast of the Red Sea, sometimes thrusting its spurs of red sandstone and porphyry into the waves, sometimes drawing away and leaving a wide stretch of lowland, runs a rugged range of mountain. One above another, the hills rise from the coast, leaving here and there between them a green valley, where you may see an Arab settlement or a group of Bedawees watering their flocks. Rivers there are none; and the streams that gather from the rainfall are scarcely formed but they sink into the parched earth. Yet beneath the dried-up torrent-beds a rivulet trickles at times, and straightway there spreads a rich oasis dearly prized by the wanderers of the desert. All else is bare and desolate. Climb hill after hill, and the same sight meets the eyebarren mountain-side, dry gravelly plain, and the rare green valleys. At length you have reached the topmost ridge; and you see, not a steep descent, no expected return to the plain, but a vast desert plateau, blank, inhospitable, to all but Arabs unindwellable. You have climbed the ijzthe barrierand are come to the steppes of the Nejdthe highland. In the valleys of this barrier-land are the Holy Cities, Mekka and Medina. Here is the birthplace of Islm: the Arab tribes of the ijz and the Nejd were the first disciples of Moammad. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 44515
Author: Lane-Poole, Stanley
Release Date: Dec 26, 2013
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Editor: Lane, Edward William, 1801-1876