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2 This appears from the Apostle's question, addressed to the Corinthian Greeks, I Cor. 11:14; "Doth not even nature teach you, that if a man have long hair, it is a shame to him ?" Originally the Greeks wore their hair long, as Homer describes them. But the custom had very much past away before the Peloponnesian war, as the Elgin marbles show us. Afterwards, mingling in the Roman empire, the Roman customs in this respect seem to have prevailed among them. Among the Jews the same habit, as to the hair, seems to have prevailed: for when the Nazarite let his hair grow long, it was as a badge peculiar to himself. Absalom, I conceive, cherished his hair somewhat in the spirit of Clodius; as in effeminate man. See 2 Sam. 15:26.
3 On Trajan's column the Dacians sculptured with long hair are the nobles. So Niebuhr (Ed. Schmitz) ii. 248. The same was the case with the Franks in the 5th century. "These princes (the Merovingians) allowed their hair to descend in long curia over their shoulders; while the rest of the Franks shaved the hair on the back part of the head: whence the Merovingian dynasty were entitled the longhaired kings." W. Scotes Tales of a Grandfather, France, i. 42. The Lusitanian mountaineers too had once the distinction of flowing hair... So Strabo, p. 232. (Ed. Casaub.) But these were the inhabitants only of a provincial district.
4 The beard, the long hair, and the turban, are seen on the Darics of the Achtemenides. and on the rock-engraved bas-reliefs of the Sassanides. See Mionnet for the one, and the plate in Sir R. K. Portees Travels for the other. The Lydians and Phrygians were anciently bonnetted. But after being long absorbed into the Roman empire, it is probable that their better classes, as of the Greeks, adopted Roman costumes and habits. The turban, or mitre was, I believe, never worn by the Romans.
5 L 340; " He adjusted himself properly, twirled his whiskers, and folded up his hair under his turban, drawing it from off his shoulders." L 169; " His hair flowed down his shoulders." iii. 117; " Antar cut off Maudi's hair in revenge and insult." iv. 325; " We will hang him up by his hair." ii. 4; " Thou foul-mustachio'd wretch! " &c. &c
6 So Forster in his Geography of Arabia: making these Sabman3 the descendants from Abraham and Keturah; tribes which intermingled with the Ishmaelites. See p. 419 Note 1.
7 "It was a usual saying among them, that God had bestowed four peculiar things on the Arabs; that their turbans should be to them instead of diadems, their tents instead of walls and houses, their swords instead of intrenchments, and their poems instead of written laws." Preface to Antar, p. xi; on the authority of Abulfeda, Pococke, and others. Mr. Forster in his "Mahommedanism Unveiled," i. 217, quotes, as a precept of Muhammad, from the Mishcat-ul Mosabih, "Make a point of wearing turbans, because it is the way of angels."
8 ii. 203 ; " A warrior immersed in steel armour."-ib. 42; " 13,000 men armed with cuirasses, and well accoutered for war."-4. 23 ; " They were clothed in iron armor and brilliant cuirasses iii. 274 ; "Out of the dust appeared horsemen clad in iron."-Also ii. 145; L 238, 176, &c. &c.
9 ii. 104; " God hath given you coats of mail to defend you in your wars."
10 Seven cuirasses am noted in the list of Muhammad private armory. Gagnier iii. 328-334. In his second battle with the Koreish 700 of the little army are spoken of as armed with cuirasses; &c. Gibbon, is. 296, 300. 304.
Similarly in the first Saracen irruption into Syria, under the first Caliphate, among the spoils of the defeated Roman army described as " inestimable to the Arabs," and as the instrument to them of new victories, we find particularized innumerable suits of the richest armor. lb. 391, 405.
11 Such was Derar, described as so formidable to the Christians of Syria, in Ockley's History of the Saracens. Gibb. is. 389.
12 Gibbon 10; 45: "The Arabs in the tenth century disdained the naked bravery of their ancestors." So too is 369. Gibbon is in this point, where he deviates from the Apocalyptic description, a little incorrect.
13 The name Saracen," says Niebuhr, (Roman History Lectures, Ed. Schmitz, ii. 333.) " is derived from the Semitic Shark, i. e. the East." He adds that it occurs long before the time of Mohammed. I have myself observed it in a letter of the Emperor Aurelian's given by Pollio, in his Triginta Tyranni, c. 30: " Non Arabes, non Saraceni." A century after, Ammianus Marcellinus uses it.
14 Their (the Saracen's victorious marches must have been like the flight of locusts; and the devastation they occasioned have resembled the calamities wrought by those devouring insects." Barthe, Hist. of the Christian Church, p. 80. So too in the so-called " Revelations" of Methodius of Partara
15 e. g. Ezek. 31:4 The waters made him (the cedar) great, the deep set him on high; " &c. And Ezek. 26:19, of Tyre, " I will bring up the deep, upon thee, and great waters shall cover thee." So again Job 41: 32, of the crocodile stirring upon the waters; where however the Hebrew word is different.
16 Probably this latter is the more correct expression. At present the evil spirits seem to have the range of our earth, and the power of the air. See Mede on this subject, Disc. iv: and compare Luke 8:31, alluded to above, Job 1:7, 1 Pet. 5:8, Eph. 2:2, John 14: 30, Matt. 25: 41, Rev. 20:3, 10. But this does not prevent allusions to the locality beneath, as the source of what is hellish now on earth. Thus St. James says, iii. 6; " The tongue is set on fire of hell.
17 When above the earth, as for instance in the case of Mount Sinai, Exod. 20: the smoke and the fire were simply the accompaniments and indications of the presence and majesty of Yahweh.
18 " The Arabs, or Saracens", says Gibbon, " had languished in poverty and contempt, till Muhammad breathed into those savage bodies the soul of enthusiasm."
19 " The religion of Muhammad," says Hallam, " is essentially a military system. The people of Arabia found in the law of their native prophet, not a license, but a command to desolate the world." Middle Ages, 2: 165. It only needs to read the sixth chapter of the Koran, to see the justice of this statement. Schlegel yet more exactly depicts the spirit, after the Apocalyptic picture: calling it " the infernal spirit that produced that antichristian combination of spiritual and temporal authority, &c;" "the new Power of hell." Philos. of Hist. 2: 76, 93.
Let me add that, besides the general religious fanaticism that animated them in battle, there were two principles inculcated in the Koran that exercised a mighty influence to this effect on them: Ant, the absolute belief in predestination: secondly, the ambition of a crown of martyrdom on the field of battle, as that on which the joys of the Mohammedan paradise were promised to follow. Gibbon, 6: 297.
20 In the Koran, ch. 5, the Christians of the Roman Empire were distinctly charged with worshipping the Virgin Mary as God. And in ch. 9, it is said of the priests and monks specifically; " Very many of the priests and monks devour the substance of men in vanity, and obstruct the way of God." Sale's Koran, 1: 141, 132, 2: 8. Sale explains the first charge against the priests, as having reference to their fraudulent pins, by the age, exhibition, and false miracles attached to relics.
What has been already said pp. 310, 380, 397, might well suffice to justify this charge of idolatry. But I add the following, as referring to the exact epoch we speak of, and as what Gibbon could not omit in his sketch of the rise of Islam. "The Christians of the seventh century had insensibly relapsed into a semblance of Paganism; their public and private vows were addressed to the relics and images that disgraced the tempi" of the East: and the throne of the Almighty was darkened by a cloud of martyrs, saints, and angels, the objects of popular veneration." Gib. 9: 2 6 1.
"The Greeks have been every where worsted by the Arabs," said one of his officers to the Emperor Heraclius, "because they have for a long time walked unworthy of their Christian profession, and corrupted their holy religion," &c. So Theophanes Chronogr. p. 276, cited by Hales, Chronol. 4: 331.
21 So Gibbon, ix. 311. Speaking of the siege of Tayaf, 60 miles South East of Mecca, he says that " Muhammad violated his own laws by the extirpation of the fruit. trees." It in curious that, while I am writing, a modem illustration of this law should meet my eyes. in the Evening Mail of Dec. 25, 1839, there occurs, in the Correspondence from Circassia, the following passage. "My host and a man from Seines were disputants; the latter maintaining the impropriety of burning the corn, the former its necessity in the present emergency. Our guest aid, " It is contrary to the injunction of our Book, the Koran ."
Compare the merciful ordinance in Deut. 20: 19 : for what was dictated by policy in the Koran, was dictated by mercy in the law from Sinai. " When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an ax against them, for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down; for the tree of the field is man's life. Only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat, thou shalt destroy and cut them down."
22 " I shall not be easily persuaded," says Gibbon, 7: 21, 11 that it was the common practice of the Vandals to extirpate the olives, and other fruit-trees, of a country where they intended to settle." But his authorities are against him : and his own narrative embodies the fact. See pp. 352, 354 supra
23 See the strong statements to this effect, from Muratori and others, in Robertson's Charles the 5th, Vol. i, Note, E.
24 Theophanes. in his Chronographia, notices that the administration of Persia, after its conquest by the Saracens, was regulated by an actual survey, not only of men, but of cattle and plants of the earth.
25 Mr. Birks (Myst. of Provid. p. 224) overrules this objection, comparing Luke 10:18 and Rev. 12:9. Neither passage, I think, touches my objection from the symbol. But the point of difference is one which in no wise affects the general solution.
26 Compare, "There shall come a star out of Jacob," Numb. 24: 17; and, "How art thou fallen from heaven, Lucifer, son of the morning." Isa. 14:12; said of the fall of the King of Babylon. In Antar the same figure appears The chiefs were stars in the eyes of the beholders." 4: 3 66.
27 In Mr. Forster's recently published and learned work on the Geography of Arabia, a dear and satisfactory view is given of its colonization. grounded on evidence scriptural, clinical, and that of modern researches. He traces it from six different sources, as follows,
1. Cush and his sons, who, before the confusion of tongues, colonized the coast of Bahrein and Oman along the Persian Gulf. and the north-east coast of Hadramaut.
2. Joktan, the fourth from Shem, (brother to Peleg, in whose days, Gen. 10: 25, was the confusion of tongues;) whose settle-ants occupied the interior, Nejd; and thence in time extended to Hadramaut and Yemen, where the Hamyarites preserved the name of Hamyar, grandson to Joktan.
3. Ishmael, whose twelve sons wen heads of twelve tribes, and their names still traceable through the peninsula; the chief being the Nabatheans and Kedarites; the latter the acknowledged progenitors of the Koreish and Muhammad. These (under the general names of Ismaelites, or Hagarenes) stretched from the wilderness of Sin and Sinai across the neck of the Arabian peninsula, so as at length to invade the Cushites of Bahrein.
4. Abraham's sons by Keturah, who intermixed with Ishmael. across the neck of Arabia . the most remarkable tribe being the Midianite; the Sabrina (mentioned in Ezekiel 23) another.
5. Esau; whose descendants, under the names of Edomites and Saracens, (the latter, Mr. F. thinks, meaning the children of Sarah) occupied the desert nearest to Judea; among them Amalek. On Amalek's destruction it would seem that a division, fleeing under Omar, made a final settlement in Arabia Felix, where they were known as Homerites.
6. The tribes of Ad, son of Uz, son of Aram, son of Shem, according to Arabian tradition. The Holy Scripture does not mention them.
It is of these last that the famous Hamyaritic Inscription speaks; which Mr. Forster considers himself to have deciphered. But whether correctly, is, I believe, doubtful.
28 Gibbon 9: 246, says; " The tribe of Koreish, by fraud or force, had acquired the custody of the Caaba. The sacerdotal office devolved through four lineal descents to the grandfather of Muhammad. The family of the Hashemites, whence he spring, was the most respectable and sacred in the eyes of their country." Again p. 237; " Muhammad was educated in the bosom of the noblest race of Arabia."
29 Middle Ages, ii. i62. Mecca is the Macoraba of Ptolemy; " the second member of which word," says D'Anville, (Geogr. ii. 9) " is made use of to designate a great or principal city."
30 Keith, by mistake, represents Mecca as in Yemen ; and reasons, and grounds his exposition of the little horn in Dan. 8: 9 (Signs of the Times i. 35, 8th Ed.) on that supposition.
31 The Arab tribes on the Syrian frontier often entered into alliance with the Romans; as did those on the Euphratis with the Persians.
32 " Justinian," says Gibbon, 9: 230, " relinquished a palm country of ten days journey south of Elah (Procopius, Bell. Pers. i. 19) ; and the Romans maintained a centurion and a custom-house at a place in the territory of Medina."
The Roman connection had existed in fact some centuries earlier. " Thus much is certain," says Niebuhr of the Emperor Trajan, " that he made Arabia, as far as Medina, a Roman province, and received the homage of the native princes... Nubia itself came under the dominion of Rome, and remained under it till the middle of the 3rd century." 2: 255. (Ed. Schmitz.)
Cave thinks that the Portus Romanus of which Hippolytus, of whom we have more than once spoken, was bishop, was not the Italian Portus, at the mouth of the Tiber, but that so called, and also Adana, which is now the British Gibraltar of the Red Sea. Hist. Lit. i. 67. This by its name Aden, or Eden, give the title of Arabia Felix to the country of which it was the capital on the coast of Yemen.
33 Attila's meteoric star is similarly represented as blazing in the Roman political firmament, its locality being just on the borders.
34 She (Cadijah) believed in me, said Muhammad, when men despised me; she relieved my wants when I was poor, and persecuted by the world." Gibbon 9 328; from Abulfeda.
35 "The injustice of Mecca, and the choice of Medina, transformed the citizen into a prince, the humble preacher into a leader of armies." So says Gibbon 9 322) of later operating causes.
36 The key was also an armorial bearing of the Andalusian Moors. So Peyron, ubi supra. When they crossed from Africa into Spain, it was on their standard; and was thus, with a double significance perhaps, sculptured out the archway of the Alhanihm. An engraving is given.
37 Let me note from the Koran another contrasted representation to that before us, which has struck me. Islam is here denounced as am imposture emanating from the smoke of the pit of bell. In the Koran, ch. 77, I read; "Woe be on that day (the day of judgment) to those who have accused the prophets Of imposture. It shall be said to them, "Go into the shadow of the smoke of bell ; which shall ascend in three columns, and shall nor shade you from the heat."' Saleii.470