a first difficulty of the arab movement was to say who the arabs were. being a manufactured people, their name had been changing in sense slowly year by year. once it meant an arabian. there was a country called arabia; but this was nothing to the point. there was a language called arabic; and in it lay the test. it was the current tongue of syria and palestine, of mesopotamia, and of the great peninsula called arabia on the map. before the moslem conquest, these areas were inhabited by diverse peoples, speaking languages of the arabic family. we called them semitic, but (as with most scientific terms) incorrectly. however, arabic, assyrian, babylonian, phoenician, hebrew, aramaic and syriac were related tongues; and indications of common influences in the past, or even of a common origin, were strengthened by our knowledge that the appearances and customs of the present arabic-speaking peoples of asia, while as varied as a field — full of poppies, had an equal and essential likeness. we might with perfect propriety call them cousins — and cousins certainly, if sadly, aware of their own relationship.
the arabic-speaking areas of asia in this sense were a rough parallelogram. the northern side ran from alexandretta, on the mediterranean, across mesopotamia eastward to the tigris. the south side was the edge of the indian ocean, from aden to muscat. on the west it was bounded by the mediterranean, the suez canal, and the red sea to aden. on the east by the tigris, and the persian gulf to muscat. this square of land, as large as india, formed the homeland of our semites, in which no foreign race had kept a permanent footing, though egyptians, hittites, philistines, persians, greeks, romans, turks and franks had variously tried. all had in the end been broken, and their scattered elements drowned in the strong characteristics of the semitic race. semites had sometimes pushed outside this area, and themselves been drowned in the outer world. egypt, algiers, morocco, malta, sicily, spain, cilicia and france absorbed and obliterated semitic colonies. only in tripoli of africa, and in the everlasting miracle of jewry, had distant semites kept some of their identity and force.
the origin of these peoples was an academic question; but for the understanding of their revolt their present social and political differences were important, and could only be grasped by looking at their geography. this continent of theirs fell into certain great regions, whose gross physical diversities imposed varying habits on the dwellers in them. on the west the parallelogram was framed, from alexandretta to aden, by a mountain belt, called (in the north) syria, and thence progressively southward called palestine, midian, hejaz, and lastly yemen. it had an average height of perhaps three thousand feet, with peaks of ten to twelve thousand feet. it faced west, was well watered with rain and cloud from the sea, and in general was fully peopled.
another range of inhabited hills, facing the indian ocean, was the south edge of the parallelogram. the eastern frontier was at first an alluvial plain called mesopotamia, but south of basra a level littoral, called kuweit, and hasa, to gattar. much of this plain was peopled. these inhabited hills and plains framed a gulf of thirsty desert, in whose heart was an archipelago of watered and populous oases called kasim and aridh. in this group of oases lay the true centre of arabia, the preserve of its native spirit, and its most conscious individuality. the desert lapped it round and kept it pure of contact.
the desert which performed this great function around the oases, and so made the character of arabia, varied in nature. south of the oases it appeared to be a pathless sea of sand, stretching nearly to the populous escarpment of the indian ocean shore, shutting it out from arabian history, and from all influence on arabian morals and politics. hadhramaut, as they called this southern coast, formed part of the history of the dutch indies; and its thought swayed java rather than arabia. to the west of the oases, between them and the hejaz hills, was the nejd desert, an area of gravel and lava, with little sand in it. to the east of these oases, between them and kuweit, spread a similar expanse of gravel, but with some great stretches of soft sand, making the road difficult. to the north of the oases lay a belt of sand, and then an immense gravel and lava plain, filling up everything between the eastern edge of syria and the banks of the euphrates where mesopotamia began. the practicability of this northern desert for men and motor-cars enabled the arab revolt to win its ready success.
the hills of the west and the plains of the east were the parts of arabia always most populous and active. in particular on the west, the mountains of syria and palestine, of hejaz and yemen, entered time and again into the current of our european life. ethically, these fertile healthy hills were in europe, not in asia, just as the arabs looked always to the mediterranean, not to the indian ocean, for their cultural sympathies, for their enterprises, and particularly for their expansions, since the migration problem was the greatest and most complex force in arabia, and general to it, however it might vary in the different arabic districts.
in the north (syria) the birth rate was low in the cities and the death rate high, because of the insanitary conditions and the hectic life led by the majority. consequently the surplus peasantry found openings in the towns, and were there swallowed up. in the lebanon, where sanitation had been improved, a greater exodus of youth took place to america each year, threatening (for the first time since greek days) to change the outlook of an entire district.
in yemen the solution was different. there was no foreign trade, and no massed industries to accumulate population in unhealthy places. the towns were just market towns, as clean and simple as ordinary villages. therefore the population slowly increased; the scale of living was brought down very low; and a congestion of numbers was generally felt. they could not emigrate overseas; for the sudan was even worse country than arabia, and the few tribes which did venture across were compelled to modify their manner of life and their semitic culture profoundly, in order to exist. they could not move northward along the hills; for these were barred by the holy town of mecca and its port jidda: an alien belt, continually reinforced by strangers from india and java and bokhara and africa, very strong in vitality, violently hostile to the semitic consciousness, and maintained despite economics and geography and climate by the artificial factor of a world-religion. the congestion of yemen, therefore, becoming extreme, found its only relief in the east, by forcing the weaker aggregations of its border down and down the slopes of the hills along the widian, the half-waste district of the great water-bearing valleys of bisha, dawasir, ranya and taraba, which ran out towards the deserts of nejd. these weaker clans had continually to exchange good springs and fertile palms for poorer springs and scantier palms, till at last they reached an area where a proper agricultural life became impossible. they then began to eke out their precarious husbandry by breeding sheep and camels, and in time came to depend more and more on these herds for their living.
finally, under a last impulse from the straining population behind them, the border people (now almost wholly pastoral), were flung out of the furthest crazy oasis into the untrodden wilderness as nomads. this process, to be watched to-day with individual families and tribes to whose marches an exact name and date might be put, must have been going on since the first day of full settlement of yemen. the widian below mecca and taif are crowded with the memories and place-names of half a hundred tribes which have gone from there, and may be found to-day in nejd, in jebel sham-mar, in the hamad, even on the frontiers of syria and mesopotamia. there was the source of migration, the factory of nomads, the springing of the gulf-stream of desert wanderers.
for the people of the desert were as little static as the people of the hills. the economic life of the desert was based on the supply of camels, which were best bred on the rigorous upland pastures with their strong nutritive thorns. by this industry the bedouins lived; and it in turn moulded their life, apportioned the tribal areas, and kept the clans revolving through their rote of spring, summer and winter pasturages, as the herds cropped the scanty growths of each in turn. the camel markets in syria, mesopotamia, and egypt determined the population which the deserts could support, and regulated strictly their standard of living. so the desert likewise overpeopled itself upon occasion; and then there were heavings and thrustings of the crowded tribes as they elbowed themselves by natural courses towards the light. they might not go south towards the inhospitable sand or sea. they could not turn west; for there the steep hills of hejaz were thickly lined by mountain peoples taking full advantage of their defensiveness. sometimes they went towards the central oases of aridh and kasim, and, if the tribes looking for new homes were strong and vigorous, might succeed in occupying parts of them. if, however, the desert had not this strength, its peoples were pushed gradually north, up between medina of the hejaz and kasim of nejd, till they found themselves at the fork of two roads. they could strike eastward, by wadi rumh or jebel sham-mar, to follow eventually the batn to shamiya, where they would become riverine arabs of the lower euphrates; or they could climb, by slow degrees, the ladder of western oases — henakiya, kheibar, teima, jauf, and the sirhan — till fate saw them nearing jebel druse, in syria, or watering their herds about tadmor of the northern desert, on their way to aleppo or assyria.
nor then did the pressure cease: the inexorable trend northward continued. the tribes found themselves driven to the very edge of cultivation in syria or mesopotamia. opportunity and their bellies persuaded them of the advantages of possessing goats, and then of possessing sheep; and lastly they began to sow, if only a little barley for their animals. they were now no longer bedouin, and began to suffer like the villagers from the ravages of the nomads behind. insensibly, they made common cause with the peasants already on the soil, and found out that they, too, were peasantry. so we see clans, born in the highlands of yemen, thrust by stronger clans into the desert, where, unwillingly, they became nomad to keep themselves alive. we see them wandering, every year moving a little further north or a little further east as chance has sent them down one or other of the well-roads of the wilderness, till finally this pressure drives them from the desert again into the sown, with the like unwillingness of their first shrinking experiment in nomad life. this was the circulation which kept vigour in the semitic body. there were few, if indeed there was a single northern semite, whose ancestors had not at some dark age passed through the desert. the mark of nomadism, that most deep and biting social discipline, was on each of them in his degree.
