![CHAPTER XI. TRIBAL LIFE OF THE EPIC
PERIOD
Specially Contributed to the Present Work
By Dr. JULIUS WELLHAUSEN[41]
Professor in the University at Göttingen
People who are unlearned in the law, are apt to assume that it
executes itself; or at least they think it absolutely necessary that law
and the execution of law should go hand in hand. But in the
primitive stages of human society it was not so. The law existed long
before there was any magistracy to carry it into effect, and even
after magisterial authority had been established, it frequently left,
not only the pursuit, but the execution of law to the parties
concerned. An instructive picture of such a state of things is found in
the copious literature that has been preserved with regard to the
Epic Period of the ancient Arabs, i.e., the period immediately
preceding their amazing irruption into the world’s history through the
gate of Islam.
The desert has imprinted its stamp upon the Arabs. They are
particularly interesting for this very reason, that by the desert they](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/70041-241202133318-ff8453b4/85/Instant-download-Angular-2-Cookbook-Frisbie-pdf-all-chapter-47-320.jpg)
![me a man who was travelling alone with his wife and his herd of
camels; I slew him and took his wife and camels for my own.” He
considers the murder perfectly lawful, and is only surprised that a
stranger should presume to rove about the country with his wife and
his cattle and without a strong escort.
Yet the narrow bounds of the tribal community are capable of
enlargement. There are means whereby even the alien can attain
the security of a member of the tribe. If he seizes the hem of his
enemy’s garment from behind, or ties a knot in the end of his
turban, or knots his rope with his own, he has nothing further to
fear. If he succeeds in creeping into the other’s tent, or in being
introduced and entertained there by the wife or child, his life is
sacred. The sanctity of the hearth is unknown among the Arabs,
even their altar is not a hearth and is without any fire; but, on the
other hand, the tent and those within it are sacred, and even to
touch the tent-cords from outside renders a stranger safe from
attack. By a sacramental act, accompanied with a simple form of
words, he disarms his enemy and assures his own safety. Of course
protection is not always stolen, as it were, in this fashion, it may be
extended voluntarily; for example, there are cases when the man
who grants protection flings his mantle over the one who implores it,
thus making him out as his own property which no man may injure.
If a foreign trader desires to travel through the tribe without peril,
one of its members must give him a safe-conduct; very often he
merely gives him some recognisable piece of his own property to
take with him as a passport or charter of legitimation. The relations
which arise in this manner are, for the most part, transitory.[42]
But there are also permanent and hereditary relations of this sort,
based in part upon contract and oath. A member of a tribe may
allow a stranger to sojourn permanently with his clan, and by
adoption into the clan the sojourner is considered naturalised by the
whole tribe. Not individuals only, but whole clans and families can
thus be naturalised, and instances thereof are not uncommon. A
fresh element is consequently grafted on the pure tribal stock in](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/70041-241202133318-ff8453b4/85/Instant-download-Angular-2-Cookbook-Frisbie-pdf-all-chapter-50-320.jpg)
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- 7. Table of Contents Angular 2 Cookbook Credits About the Author About the Reviewer www.PacktPub.com Why subscribe? Customer Feedback Dedication Preface What this book covers What you need for this book Who this book is for Conventions Reader feedback Customer support Downloading the example code Errata Piracy Questions 1. Strategies for Upgrading to Angular 2 Introduction Componentizing directives using controllerAs encapsulation Getting ready How to do it... How it works... There's more... See also Migrating an application to component directives Getting ready How to do it... How it works... There's more...
- 8. See also Implementing a basic component in AngularJS 1.5 Getting ready How to do it... How it works... There's more... See also Normalizing service types Getting ready How to do it... How it works... There's more... See also Connecting Angular 1 and Angular 2 with UpgradeModule Getting ready How to do it... Connecting Angular 1 to Angular 2 How it works... There's more... See also Downgrading Angular 2 components to Angular 1 directives with downgradeComponent Getting ready How to do it... How it works... See also Downgrade Angular 2 providers to Angular 1 services with downgradeInjectable Getting ready How to do it... See also 2. Conquering Components and Directives Introduction Using decorators to build and style a simple component Getting ready How to do it...
- 9. Writing the class definition Writing the component class decorator How it works... There's more... See also Passing members from a parent component into a child component Getting ready How to do it... Connecting the components Declaring inputs How it works... There's more... Angular expressions Unidirectional data binding Member methods See also Binding to native element attributes How to do it... How it works... See also Registering handlers on native browser events Getting ready How to do it... How it works... There's more... See also Generating and capturing custom events using EventEmitter Getting ready How to do it... Capturing the event data Emitting a custom event Listening for custom events How it works... There's more... See also
- 10. Attaching behavior to DOM elements with directives Getting ready How to do it... Attaching to events with HostListeners How it works... There's more... See also Projecting nested content using ngContent Getting ready How to do it... How it works... There's more... See also Using ngFor and ngIf structural directives for model-based DOM control Getting ready How to do it... How it works... There's more... See also Referencing elements using template variables Getting ready How to do it... There's more... See also Attribute property binding Getting ready How to do it... How it works... There's more... See also Utilizing component lifecycle hooks Getting ready How to do it... How it works... There's more...
- 11. See also Referencing a parent component from a child component Getting ready How to do it... How it works... There's more... See also Configuring mutual parent-child awareness with ViewChild and forwardRef Getting ready How to do it... Configuring a ViewChild reference Correcting the dependency cycle with forwardRef Adding the disable behavior How it works... There's more... ViewChildren See also Configuring mutual parent-child awareness with ContentChild and forwardRef Getting ready How to do it... Converting to ContentChild Correcting data binding How it works... There's more... ContentChildren See also 3. Building Template-Driven and Reactive Forms Introduction Implementing simple two-way data binding with ngModel How to do it... How it works... There's more... See also Implementing basic field validation with a FormControl
- 12. Getting ready How to do it... How it works... There's more... Validators and attribute duality Tagless controls See also Bundling controls with a FormGroup Getting ready How to do it... How it works... There's more... FormGroup validators Error propagation See also Bundling FormControls with a FormArray Getting ready How to do it... How it works... There's more... See also Implementing basic forms with NgForm Getting ready How to do it... Declaring form fields with ngModel How it works... There's more... See also Implementing basic forms with FormBuilder and formControlName Getting ready How to do it... How it works... There's more... See also Creating and using a custom validator Getting ready
- 13. How to do it... How it works... There's more... Refactoring into validator attributes See also Creating and using a custom asynchronous validator with Promises Getting ready How to do it... How it works... There's more... Validator execution See also 4. Mastering Promises Introduction Understanding and implementing basic Promises Getting ready How to do it... How it works... There's more... Decoupled and duplicated Promise control Resolving a Promise to a value Delayed handler definition Multiple handler definition Private Promise members See also Chaining Promises and Promise handlers How to do it... Chained handlers' data handoff Rejecting a chained handler How it works... There's more... Promise handler trees catch() See also
- 14. Creating Promise wrappers with Promise.resolve() and Promise.reject() How to do it... Promise normalization How it works... There's more... See also Implementing Promise barriers with Promise.all() How to do it... How it works... There's more... See also Canceling asynchronous actions with Promise.race() Getting ready How to do it... How it works... See also Converting a Promise into an Observable How to do it... How it works... There's more... See also Converting an HTTP service Observable into a ZoneAwarePromise Getting ready How to do it... How it works... See also 5. ReactiveX Observables Introduction The Observer Pattern ReactiveX and RxJS Observables in Angular 2 Observables and Promises Basic utilization of Observables with HTTP Getting ready How to do it...
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- 16. How it works... Observable<Response> The RxJS map() operator Subscribe There's more... Hot and cold Observables See also Implementing a Publish-Subscribe model using Subjects Getting ready How to do it... How it works... There's more... Native RxJS implementation See also Creating an Observable authentication service using BehaviorSubjects Getting ready How to do it... Injecting the authentication service Adding BehaviorSubject to the authentication service Adding API methods to the authentication service Wiring the service methods into the component How it works... There's more... See also Building a generalized Publish-Subscribe service to replace $broadcast, $emit, and $on Getting ready How to do it... Introducing channel abstraction Hooking components into the service Unsubscribing from channels How it works... There's more... Considerations of an Observable's composition and manipulation
- 17. See also Using QueryLists and Observables to follow changes in ViewChildren Getting ready How to do it... Dealing with QueryLists Correcting the expression changed error How it works... Hate the player, not the game See also Building a fully featured AutoComplete with Observables Getting ready How to do it... Using the FormControl valueChanges Observable Debouncing the input Ignoring serial duplicates Flattening Observables Handling unordered responses How it works... See also 6. The Component Router Introduction Setting up an application to support simple routes Getting ready How to do it... Setting the base URL Defining routes Providing routes to the application Rendering route components with RouterOutlet How it works... There's more... Initial page load See also Navigating with routerLinks Getting ready How to do it...
- 18. How it works... There's more... Route order considerations See also Navigating with the Router service Getting ready How to do it... How it works... There's more... See also Selecting a LocationStrategy for path construction How to do it... There's more... Configuring your application server for PathLocationStrategy Building stateful route behavior with RouterLinkActive Getting ready How to do it... How it works... There's more... See also Implementing nested views with route parameters and child routes Getting ready How to do it... Adding a routing target to the parent component Defining nested child views Defining the child routes Defining child view links Extracting route parameters How it works... There's more... Refactoring with async pipes See also Working with matrix URL parameters and routing arrays Getting ready How to do it...
- 19. How it works... There's more... See also Adding route authentication controls with route guards Getting ready How to do it... Implementing the Auth service Wiring up the profile view Restricting route access with route guards Adding login behavior Adding the logout behavior How it works... There's more... The actual authentication Secure data and views See also 7. Services, Dependency Injection, and NgModule Introduction Injecting a simple service into a component Getting ready How to do it... How it works... There's more... See also Controlling service instance creation and injection with NgModule Getting ready How to do it... Splitting up the root module How it works... There's more... Injecting different service instances into different components Service instantiation See also Service injection aliasing with useClass and useExisting Getting ready
- 20. Dual services A unified component How to do it... How it works... There's more... Refactoring with directive providers See also Injecting a value as a service with useValue and OpaqueTokens Getting ready How to do it... How it works... There's more... See also Building a provider-configured service with useFactory Getting ready How to do it... Defining the factory Injecting OpaqueToken Creating provider directives with useFactory How it works... There's more... See also 8. Application Organization and Management Introduction Composing package.json for a minimum viable Angular 2 application Getting ready How to do it... package.json dependencies package.json devDependencies package.json scripts See also Configuring TypeScript for a minimum viable Angular 2 application Getting ready How to do it... Declaration files
- 21. tsconfig.json How it works... Compilation There's more... Source map generation Single file compilation See also Performing in-browser transpilation with SystemJS Getting ready How to do it... How it works... There's more... See also Composing application files for a minimum viable Angular 2 application Getting ready How to do it... app.component.ts app.module.ts main.ts index.html Configuring SystemJS See also Migrating the minimum viable application to Webpack bundling Getting ready How to do it... webpack.config.js See also Incorporating shims and polyfills into Webpack Getting ready How to do it... How it works... See also HTML generation with html-webpack-plugin Getting ready How to do it...
- 22. How it works... See also Setting up an application with Angular CLI Getting ready How to do it... Running the application locally Testing the application How it works... Project configuration files TypeScript configuration files Test configuration files Core application files Environment files AppComponent files AppComponent test files There's more... See also 9. Angular 2 Testing Introduction Creating a minimum viable unit test suite with Karma, Jasmine, and TypeScript Getting ready How to do it... Writing a unit test Configuring Karma and Jasmine Configuring PhantomJS Compiling files and tests with TypeScript Incorporating Webpack into Karma Writing the test script How it works... There's more... See also Writing a minimum viable unit test suite for a simple component Getting ready How to do it... Using TestBed and async
- 23. Creating a ComponentFixture How it works... See also Writing a minimum viable end-to-end test suite for a simple application Getting ready How to do it... Getting Protractor up and running Making Protractor compatible with Jasmine and TypeScript Building a page object Writing the e2e test Scripting the e2e tests How it works... There's more... See also Unit testing a synchronous service Getting ready How to do it... How it works... There's more... Testing without injection See also Unit testing a component with a service dependency using stubs Getting ready How to do it... Stubbing a service dependency Triggering events inside the component fixture How it works... See also Unit testing a component with a service dependency using spies Getting ready How to do it... Setting a spy on the injected service How it works... There's more... See also
- 24. 10. Performance and Advanced Concepts Introduction Understanding and properly utilizing enableProdMode with pure and impure pipes Getting ready How to do it... Generating a consistency error Introducing change detection compliance Switching on enableProdMode How it works... There's more... See also Working with zones outside Angular Getting ready How to do it... Forking a zone Overriding zone events with ZoneSpec How it works... There's more... Understanding zone.run() Microtasks and macrotasks See also Listening for NgZone events zone.js NgZone Getting ready How to do it... Demonstrating the zone life cycle How it works... The utility of zone.js See also Execution outside the Angular zone How to do it... How it works... There's more... See also
- 25. Configuring components to use explicit change detection with OnPush Getting ready How to do it... Configuring the ChangeDetectionStrategy Requesting explicit change detection How it works... There's more... See also Configuring ViewEncapsulation for maximum efficiency Getting ready How to do it... Emulated styling encapsulation No styling encapsulation Native styling encapsulation How it works... There's more... See also Configuring the Angular 2 Renderer to use web workers Getting ready How to do it... How it works... There's more... Optimizing for performance gains Compatibility considerations See also Configuring applications to use ahead-of-time compilation Getting ready How to do it... Installing AOT dependencies Configuring ngc Aligning component definitions with AOT requirements Compiling with ngc Bootstrapping with AOT How it works... There's more...
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- 27. Going further with Tree Shaking See also Configuring an application to use lazy loading Getting ready How to do it... How it works... There's more... Accounting for shared modules See also
- 29. Angular 2 Cookbook Copyright © 2017 Packt Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews. Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book. Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information. First published: January 2017 Production reference: 1160117 Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. Livery Place 35 Livery Street Birmingham B3 2PB, UK. ISBN 978-1-78588-192-3
- 30. www.packtpub.com
- 31. Credits Author Matt Frisbie Project Coordinator Ritika Manoj Reviewer Patrick Gillespie Proofreader Safis Editing Acquisition Editor Vinay Argekar Indexer Francy Puthiry Content Development Editor Arun Nadar Graphics Kirk D'Penha Technical Editor Vivek Arora Production Coordinator Deepika Naik Copy Editor Gladson Monteiro Cover Work Deepika Naik
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- 33. “The nations of Europe,” says Bailly in one of his letters to Voltaire, “after having grown old in barbarism, were only enlightened by the invasion of the Moors and the arrival of the Greeks.” We venture to add—and far more by the invasion of the Moors, or of those to whom Bailly gives the name, than by the arrival of the Greeks of the Lower Empire. And, indeed, one of the distinctive and prominent characteristics of the influence which the Arabs exercised on all branches of modern civilisation, is precisely that of having restored to Europe a knowledge of the ancient Greek authors, whose language, works, and even names, were completely forgotten. It may be boldly asserted that the numerous translations and still more numerous commentaries which the Arabs wrote on all the works of Ancient Greece, and which makes their literature the second daughter of Greek literature, served to give the modern peoples their first notions of the sciences and letters of antiquity. It was only after having known them through the versions of the Arabs that the desire to possess and understand the original writers took shape, and that the language of Homer and Plato found several diligent interpreters. Indeed, “The greater part of Greek erudition,” according to Hyde,h “which we have to-day from those sources, we received first from the hands of the Arabs.” In order to justify this assertion, which may seem a little paradoxical, it will be sufficient to call attention to the fact that the Arabs had transmitted to Europe, without disguising its origin, the knowledge they borrowed from the Greeks, long before Boccaccio’s guest, Leontius Pilatus, had started a course on the Greek language at Florence (about 1360), and the dispersal of the inhabitants of Constantinople, after the taking of that town by Muhammed II (1453), had rendered their idiom a common study in Europe. Indeed many Greek books, and notably those which treated of the sciences, were originally translated from Arab into Latin. Among others may be cited the earliest versions of Euclid and Ptolemy. A not less certain proof that Greek letters first received an asylum from the Arabs, is that several works of Ancient Greece have been
- 34. preserved by them, and discovered in their own works. Mathematicians, for instance, would never have possessed the Sphericals of the geometrician Menelaus of Alexandria, who was antecedent to Ptolemy, but for the Arab translation (Kitab al-Okar), which was afterwards translated into Latin, nor the eight books of Apollonius of Perga’s Conic Sections, if the Maronite, Abraham Ecchellensis, had not copied and translated (1661) the missing fifth and sixth and seventh books from an Arab manuscript in the Medici library in Florence; neither would the doctors have been able to complete Galen’s Commentaries on Hippocrates’ Epidemics without the Arab translation discovered in the Escurial, and the naturalists would not even possess an abridgement of Aristotle’s Treatise on Stones but for the Arab manuscript in our (the French) National library. If we trace the whole history of human knowledge, and recall the fact that Greece survived Rome in Alexandria, we may well assign the Arabs the position of guardians to that sacred depôt between Greece and the Renaissance. “They merit,” says M. Libri,i “eternal gratitude for having been the preservers of the learning of the Greeks and Hindus, when those people were no longer producing anything and Europe was still too ignorant to undertake the charge of the precious deposit. Efface the Arabs from history and the Renaissance of letters will be retarded in Europe by several centuries.” Bronze Cannon and Mounting In the matter of science especially, and far more than their forerunners the Romans, the Arabs were the heirs of the Greeks. If
- 35. they far preferred Aristotle’s philosophy to that of Plato, it may have been because they saw in Plato what he actually was, namely one of the fathers of the Christian church, but it was certainly because Aristotle mingled the positive sciences with metaphysical speculation. Nevertheless Plato (Aflathoun), as well as Aristotle (Aristhathlis or Aristou), received from them the surname of Al-Elahi, or the Divine. It was not only on the masters, principes Scriptores, on Aristotle, Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Euclid, Ptolemy, Strabo, that their studies were directed and concentrated; there is no grammarian so mediocre, no rhetorician so poor, no sophist so subtle, that the Arabs have not translated and commented on him. SCHOLASTICISM It was in passing through their hands that the peripatetic doctrine engendered scholasticism. It is certain that, in the interminable wrangle between Realists and Nominalists the former leaned on the authority of Avicenna, the others on that of Averrhoës; it is certain, according to the observation of M. Hauréau,j that the philosopher Al- Kendi is often quoted by Alexander of Hales, Henry of Ghent and St. Bonaventura, whilst Al-Farabi furnished his aphorisms to William d’Auvergne, Vincent de Beauvais, and Albertus Magnus; and that this same William d’Auvergne prefers the Arabs far above the Greeks, finding the Greeks too much of philosophers and the Arabs more of theologians. Doubtless scholasticism was a vain and regrettable learning, for the schools of the Middle Ages, as Condillac says, resembled the knights’ tournaments, but, all the same, it produced some free thinkers, such as Johannes Scotus Erigena, Berengarius, Abélard, and William of Occam; and it was from it that, in after time, proceeded John Huss, Savonarola, Luther, Bruno, and Campanella. After having laid hands on the various branches of the knowledge possessed by the ancient Greeks, who had remained superior to the Latins, in the sciences even more than in letters and not less than in the arts, and after having enlarged its domain in all directions, the Arabs laid it open to the nations of Europe, all of whom they had
- 36. outdistanced. Spain was naturally the first to receive and spread their gifts. In the tenth century, in the most profound darkness of the Middle Ages, that country “to which,” says Haller,o “the humanities fled together,” was the only one which accepted and welcomed those solid studies, which were everywhere else repelled and destroyed, even in Constantinople, since the time of Leo the Isaurian (717). Indeed, as early as the tenth century, when the Muzarab, John of Seville, translated the Holy Scriptures into Arabic, and when another Muzarab, Alvaro of Cordova, reproached his compatriots with forgetting their language and their law (legem suam nesciunt christiani et linguam propriam non advertunt Latini), in order to train themselves in the Arab doctrine (Arabico eloquio sublimati), Spain counted several illustrious scholars, Ayton, bishop of Vich, a Lupit of Barcelona, and a Joseph, who instructed Adalbero, archbishop of Rheims, all versed in mathematics and astronomy. MATHEMATICAL SCIENCE To Spain then came the small number of foreigners who were tormented by the desire to know. Gerbert (born in Auvergne about 930, elected pope in 999, under the name of Silvester II, died in 1003), so celebrated for his adventures, his learning, and his labours, after going through all the schools of France, Italy, and Germany without being able to satisfy the passion for instruction which possessed him, came finally to Spain to seek that physical and mathematical knowledge which raised such admiration in France, Germany, and Italy, whither he returned to spread them, that the prodigies of his learning could only be explained by the accusation of having delivered himself over to the devil. Gerbert is unanimously credited with having been the first to introduce the use of Arabic figures into these countries, and with having added some elementary notions of algebra to the calculations of arithmetic. He also passes as the first constructor of clocks. Whether, as most of his biographers affirm, Gerbert pursued his studies as far as the homes of the Arabs in Cordova and Seville, or
- 37. whether he only made a long sojourn in Catalonia and associated with the scholars of that country, as is witnessed to by his collection of Epistles, addressed in great part to Catalans like Borrell, count of Barcelona, Ayton, Joseph, and Lupit, it is none the less certain that Gerbert learned all he knew from the Arabs, and that that knowledge, so prodigious as to appear supernatural, was, as William of Malmesbury says, “stolen from the Saracens.” His example and his success roused other foreigners to come and glean, where he had made so ample a harvest. The German Hermannus-Contractus (who died in 1054), author of the book, De Compositione Astrolabii; the English Adelard, who translated the first Arabic Euclid into Latin (about 1130); the Italian Campano of Novara, who published a Theory of the Planets; Daniel Morley; Otto of Freising; with Hermann the German; Plato of Tivoli; Gerard of Cremona, who translated at Toledo itself, Alhazen; Avicenna, Rhazes, Albucasis, and even Ptolemy’s Almagest, not from the Greek, but from the Arabic—that Gerard of Cremona of whom it was said: “At Toledo he lived, Toledo he raised to the stars”—all went in succession to gather in Spain the elements of mathematics, physics, and astronomy, which they carried thence to their compatriots. Montuclak not only says that “the Arabs were long the sole depositaries of learning, and that it is to their commerce that we owe the first rays of light which came to chase away the darkness of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries”; he adds that “during this period, all who obtained the greatest reputation in mathematics had been to acquire their knowledge amongst the Arabs.” It is asserted that all the authors who wrote on the exact sciences before the fifteenth century did nothing but copy the Arabs, or, at the most, enlarge upon their lessons. Such were the Italian Leonardo da Pisa, the Polish Vitellio, the Spaniard Raymond Lully, the English Roger Bacon, and finally the French Arnauld de Villeneuve, who is credited with having discovered spirits of wine, oil of turpentine, and other chemical preparations.
- 38. During the same period, the whole of European geography was limited to the Seven Climates of Edrisi, and, in the seventeenth century, when correcting by Abu Ishak Ibrahim ben Yahya certain geographical errors, Abraham Hinckelmann was able to say: “The greatest assistance and illumination for posterity we owe to Arabism.” As to the famous Astronomical Tables of Alfonso X, they, like his book on Armillaries or celebrated spheres, only sum up the discoveries of the Arabs previous to the thirteenth century. It was from their works that all his learning was drawn by that celebrated monarch, who received the surname of the Wise (or learned), and who did indeed effect some advancement in science, between the system of Ptolemy and that of Copernicus. The Alphonsine Tables are borrowed from the various Ziji or tables of the Arab astronomers, and reproduce their form and substance. When Louis XIV had a degree of the meridian measured geometrically, in order to determine the size of the earth, he doubtless did not know that five centuries before, the caliph Al- Mamun had ordered the same operation to be performed by his astronomers at Baghdad. In the Middle Ages, according to Bailly,l “the first step taken towards the revival of learning was the translation of Alfergan’s Elements of Astronomy.” That famous Spanish rabbi, Aben-hezra (or Esdra), who was surnamed the Great, the Wise, the Admirable, on account of his book on The Sphere, was born at Toledo, in 1119, and had been a disciple of the Arabs in astronomy. He spread his masters’ lessons throughout Europe. It was from Albategnius, more than from Ptolemy, that Sacrobosco (John of Holywood) had drawn the materials for his book De Sphera Mundi; it was in Albategnius, too, that the commentator on that great astronomer, Regiomontanus (Johann Müller, of Königsberg, Regius Mons), had found the first notion of tangents. It was from Alhazen’s Twilight that the illustrious Kepler took his ideas of atmospheric refraction; and it may be that Newton himself owes to the Arabs, rather than to the apple in his orchard at Woolsthorpe, the first apperception of the system of the universe; for Muhammed ben Musa (quoted in the Bibliot. arab. Philosophorum) seems, when
- 39. writing his books on The Movement of the Celestial Bodies and on The Force of Attraction, to have had an inkling of the great law of general harmony. MEDICINE The influence of the Arabs on all the natural sciences, chemical or medical, is not less incontestable than their influence on the mathematical sciences. Roger Bacon and Raymond Lully were as much their pupils in the attempted science of alchemy, the “grand art,” as in the actual science of numerical calculations. It was by them also that Albertus Magnus (Albrecht Grotus or Gross, born in Swabia in 1193), that universal scholar, the eminent master of St. Thomas Aquinas, whom, like Gerbert, men called “the magician,” was initiated into all the learning of the Aristotelian school. And even after the year 1600, Fabricius Acquapendente could say, “Celsus amongst the Latins, Paulus Ægineta amongst the Greeks, and Albucasis amongst the Arabs, form a triumvirate to whom I confess that I am under the greatest obligations.” Even as the astronomer Albategnius in the domain of heaven, or the geographer Edrisi in that of the earth, so Avicenna and Averrhoës reigned supreme over medicine, during six hundred years, down to the sixteenth century. At Montpellier and Louvain, commentaries on Avicenna were still being made in the last century. Both Boerhaave and Haller concede this long predominance to Arab medicine, and Brucker could say with perfect truth: “Until the renascence of literature, not only among the Arabs, but also indeed among the Christians, Avicenna rules all but alone.” When, in the very beginning of the thirteenth century, the Portuguese doctor Pedro Juan, who was archbishop of Braga and then pope under the title of John XXI, wrote his Treasury of the Poor, or Remedies for all Maladies, his Treatise on Hygiene, and his Treatise on the Formation of Man, he was copying the Arabs.
- 40. It was from Spain then that all the doctors of Europe came, and that, through them, the taste for science and letters was extended. “The Spanish doctors,” says Haller, “while their people were gradually recovering the country, communicated the love of letters to the Italians.” It was to Spain, at all events, that the Jews, then so renowned for their healing art, went to study, to afterwards scatter, like young doctors leaving the university, through the various countries of Europe. Kings and popes took their doctors from the Jews. To cite only a few famous instances, we call attention to the fact that the physician of Alfonso the Fighter, king of Aragon, Pedro Alfonso, author of some Latin tales, part of which were translated in Francesco Sansovino’s Cento Novelle Antiche, was a converted Jew; and Paul Ricius, physician to the emperor Maximilian I, was a Jew who remained a Jew. The latter had studied in Spain, where he translated the at-Takrif of Albucasis, the book which Haller calls the “common fountain” of modern medicine. We have seen that the Arabs practised a multitude of surgical operations, unknown to the ancients, and in like manner enriched pharmacy by a multitude of new medicaments. But one fact sums up in itself all the proofs of the influence which the Arabs exerted on the medical art, and that is that the famous school of Salerno, whose laws were once followed throughout Europe, owes its origin to the Arabs. When (about 1000) the Norman, Robert Guiscard, took Salerno from the people called Saracens, who had occupied the south of Italy for more than two centuries, he found a school of medicine established there by these infidels. He had the wisdom to preserve it, enrich it, and to give it Constantine Africanus as chief. This man was a Moor from Carthage, whom travels and adventures flung, like Edrisi, into the power of the Normans of Sicily; who took the cowl at the monastery of Monte Cassino under the celebrated abbot Desiderius, afterwards Pope Victor III; and, in his retreat, translated into Latin all his compatriots’ works on the healing art. He thus ended by founding the school of Salerno, for it was from his works that all the aphorisms of the Medicina Salertina were taken. As the University of Montpellier had
- 41. for founders (about 1200) the Aragonese, to whom that town, which was then almost modern and had not yet inherited the bishopric of Maguelonne, at that time belonged, it may be asserted, according to the generally received tradition, that its faculty of medicine was founded at least indirectly by the Arabs, and that it was in that sense grounded on their teaching—the sole adopted, the sole reigning one, the most enlightened and scientific of the age. ARCHITECTURE As to the influence of Arabs on architecture, the only one of the fine arts which religion permitted Moslems to cultivate, it seems that it cannot be set in doubt that it appears with as much certainty as distinction. The question has often been asked: Whence came it that the architecture of the close of the Middle Ages, that which passed from the round to the pointed arch, and from basilicas to cathedrals, was called Gothic? As this name, if it implied a northern origin, would be in flagrant contradiction with the facts, the question has remained unanswered. But we must remind ourselves that the name Gothic has not been given only to the architecture which the twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw prevailing. The handwriting and the missal, which in the year 1091 were replaced in Spain by the Latin (then called French) characters, and by the Roman ritual, were also called Gothic. They had received and preserved this name of Gothic because their use dated from the time when Spain was the domain of the Goths. Might it not also be because the first lessons in the new architecture came to Europe through Spain, that this architecture, e.g., like the Spanish handwriting and liturgy, was named Gothic? This perfectly simple and natural explanation is, moreover, in complete accordance with history. The conjectures of men versed in the matter are agreed on this point—that modern architecture had its birth at Byzantium, that second Rome where the arts took refuge
- 42. when they were driven out of Italy. The Byzantine architects, who were the first to mingle the capricious and flowery style of the East with the sober and regular style of ancient Greece, had two sorts of pupils—the Arabs and the Germanic peoples. The former first founded the architecture called Moorish or Saracen; and afterwards the latter, that which later on was called Gothic. Starting from the same point the two architectures remain analogous, almost similar, during two centuries, both preserving, with the differences imposed by the climate, the traditions of their common origin. Thus the mosque of Cordova, raised by a prince of Syria, and the old basilicas of Germany are equally sprung from the Byzantine style. Then they separate, to take each a style of its own. The Moslem architecture preserves the system of surbased naves, and takes as its special characteristic the horseshoe arch, that is to say, one narrowing at its base, and having the form of an inverted crescent. Christian architecture adopts the system of high, pointed naves, and its distinctive characteristic becomes the pointed arch, substituted for the pagan round arch. But it must be noticed that the Arabs had employed the pointed arch before the Christians; that, in Spain especially, a multitude of monuments prove their use of this form which was unknown to antiquity; and that it is doubtless because the pointed arch, now become the striking and characteristic feature of Christian architecture, had passed from Spain into Europe, that the whole system was named Gothic. Finally, these two architectures derived from Byzantium, the Arab and the Germanic, becoming ever more and more assimilated, end by merging, at the close of eight centuries, into the style called Renaissance. No one denies, no one disputes, the striking resemblance which exists between the Arab monuments and those of Europe in the Middle Ages. This resemblance is not only found in the great edifices of the capitals, for the construction of which Saracen architects were sometimes called in, as happened in the case of Notre Dame de Paris itself. It can be traced even in the humblest buildings of the little towns.
- 43. “Thus,” says Viardot,m “I have found the multilobar arch of the Mezquita at Cordova in the cloisters of Norwich cathedral, and the delicate colonnette of the Alhambra in the church of Notre Dame at Dijon. This resemblance was, then, not merely casual and fortuitous; it was general and permanent. Nothing further is needed to prove the thesis. If Christian and Arab art resembled each other, and if one preceded the other, it is evident that of the two one was imitated and the other the imitator. Was it the Arab art which imitated the Christian art? No; for the priority of its works is manifest and incontestable; for Europe, in the Middle Ages, received all its knowledge from the Arabs, and must also have received from them the only art whose cultivation the law of religion permitted.” MUSIC The impossibility which exists, in spite of the efforts of all modern scholars, of our having an acquaintance, even an imperfect and approximate one, with the music of the Greeks, must teach and give a conception of the great difficulty of procuring proofs of the state of this art, or discovering and understanding monuments of it, once the traditions are interrupted. It is a dead language in which none can now read. In the preceding section we have had to limit ourselves to demonstrating that the Arabs cultivated music as a very important and very advanced art. In the archives of the chapter of Toledo, there exists a precious monument of the influence which they exercised on modern music. This is a manuscript, annotated in the hand of Alfonso the Wise himself, and including the canticles (cantigas) composed by that prince, with the music to which they were sung. In it we find not only the six notes ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, invented, towards 1030, by the monk Guido of Arezzo, but also the seventh note, the five lines, and the keys, whose discovery was subsequent, and even the upward and downward tails of the notes, the use of which was not introduced into the musical writing of the rest of Europe until much later. Up till then music had served only for the psalmodies of the church, for the plain chant of hymns and
- 44. antiphons. This manuscript, copied and cited in the Paleographia Castellana is, according to all appearance, the most ancient monument of the regular application of music to ordinary and profane poetry. As Alfonso X owes his prodigious learning chiefly to the study of the Arabs, it would be scarcely possible to doubt that, for this book as for all his works, he borrowed from them a science already formed and even then committed to writing by Al-Farabi, Abul-Faraj, etc., and which Alfonso might very well have understood with the help of the Muzarabs of Seville. This supposition, which would attribute to the Arabs a notable share in the creation of modern music, has all the more the appearance of truth since the first instruments adopted by the Spaniards, the French, and the other nations of Europe were named moresques in all languages. To this day the chirimia and dulzaina of the Moors, so often mentioned by Cervantes and his contemporaries, are still used in the country of Valencia. As to the modern stringed instruments, they all had as model the lute (al-aoud, whence laud in Spanish) of the Arabs, who have also given Spain the kitara (guitarra), since become the national instrument of the people whose masters they were in all things. Several theorists, J. J. Rousseau amongst others, have proposed to write music in figures, assuredly without suspecting that the Arabs had already practised that mode of notation. Kiesewettern calls attention to the fact that, the Arab scale having seventeen intervals, the Arabs were able to write and actually did write music with their figures, employing the numbers one to eighteen for the first octave, one to thirty-five for two octaves, and so on. May it not be from this ancient use of the Arab figures in musical writing that the employment of the same figures for the figured bass, in which a simple number denotes a chord, came into vogue? It is possible and very probable. The old Spanish music, that which is preserved in Andalusia under the name of cañas, rondeñas, playeras, etc., differing greatly from
- 45. the boleros of comic operas and eluding the modern notation, is certainly of Arab origin. Who are they who have preserved it in the tradition of this country? An eastern race, a nomadic race, that of those Bohemians who, coming from Egypt about the fourteenth century, and perhaps before that from India, spread themselves throughout Europe and were called gitanos in Spain, zingari in Italy, gipsies in England, zigeuner in Germany, and tzigani in Russia, whilst naming themselves pharaons. These nomads, with their immutable customs, who are still to-day not only in Spain but in Russia the same in physique and moral character as Cervantes has depicted them, have carried and retained everywhere the ancient songs of their problematic country. As the musicians of the people, formed into troupes of singers and dancers, they have everywhere spread the form and sentiment of their antique melodies. “It was through them,” concludes Viardot, “that, in Russia as in Spain, popular music took or kept the oriental character; it was from them that in Moscow, at the foot of the towers of the Kremlin, I listened to the same songs as in the gardens of the Alhambra of Granada. In both places I had heard from their lips a living echo of the Arab music.”m
- 47. CHAPTER XI. TRIBAL LIFE OF THE EPIC PERIOD Specially Contributed to the Present Work By Dr. JULIUS WELLHAUSEN[41] Professor in the University at Göttingen People who are unlearned in the law, are apt to assume that it executes itself; or at least they think it absolutely necessary that law and the execution of law should go hand in hand. But in the primitive stages of human society it was not so. The law existed long before there was any magistracy to carry it into effect, and even after magisterial authority had been established, it frequently left, not only the pursuit, but the execution of law to the parties concerned. An instructive picture of such a state of things is found in the copious literature that has been preserved with regard to the Epic Period of the ancient Arabs, i.e., the period immediately preceding their amazing irruption into the world’s history through the gate of Islam. The desert has imprinted its stamp upon the Arabs. They are particularly interesting for this very reason, that by the desert they
- 48. have, so to speak, been arrested at what is in many respects a very primitive stage of development. Yet we must not imagine them roving about it like wild animals, gathering together for temporary ends and dispersing just as they please. As a matter of fact, they have no settled abodes, they are not tied to the soil nor linked with one another by a fixed domicile, and consequently they are not organised on the basis of locality, according to districts, towns, and villages. But they have instead an inner principle of association and organisation, of union and distinction, inherent in the very elements of race. It is the principle of consanguinity, of kinship. For the Arab, his political genus, his differentia specifica, are innate as indelible characteristics. He knows the clan to which he belongs, and the stock to which his clan belongs; the tribe or nation of which the stock is a part, and the larger group that includes the tribe or nation. Associations are regarded by them as natural units, founded on consanguinity, and they stand in a close and natural relationship, one to another, corresponding to nearer or remoter degrees of consanguinity (by the father’s side) so that their statistics assume the form of a genealogy. Among the ancient Hebrews this form survived even after they had settled in towns and villages; Isaac was the father of the nations of Israel and Edom, Israel the father of twelve tribes, Judah the father of five lineages, and each lineage in its turn father or grandfather of clans and families. Such a principle of organisation is equally serviceable for settlement or migration, for war or peace; and being independent of all conditions of fixed localities, it makes the tribe as mobile as an army. For an army, too, must possess an organisation adaptable to every place, and as suitable to a hostile country as to its own. But an army is broken up into artificial divisions; the men may be put into one branch or another at will, and the place of the individual in the whole scheme is notified by artificial marks of distinction. With the Arabs, on the other hand, the form is indistinguishable from the substance, they are born into their cadres, and their uniform is, as it were, innate to them. The closer or remoter circles of kindred, from the clan to the nation, are their
- 49. companies, battalions, and regiments, which include not only the fighting men, but their wives and children also, though the latter take no direct part in any fight. The two most important stages of the political affinity are the highest and the lowest, the two poles, as it were, of the system; the intermediate stages are less important, because they assume the qualities of one pole or the other, according to circumstances. The highest association, which we call the tribe, includes all the families which migrate together regularly, i.e., which make the circuit of certain hunting-grounds, often great distances apart, according to the season of the year. One tribe will not contain more than a few thousand souls; if it exceeds that number, it becomes too large for common migration and pasturage and is obliged to divide. The lowest is the clan, which consists of families within the nearest degrees of kinship, which invariably pitch their tents close together in a common quarter (dâr). Beyond the tribe the bond of consanguinity does not break off abruptly; it embraces also the group of such tribes which stand in any sort of historic relation to one another. But in this wider circle the ties of kinship cease to be really effective. The Arabs as a whole, though linked together by community of speech, of intellectual acquirements and social forms, are not really a nation; neither can the larger groups into which they have split up be called nations; the nation is the tribe. The tribe is the source and the limit of political obligation; what lies outside the tribe is alien. This does not mean that a perpetual and open bellum omnium contra omnes prevails in Arabia; the relations of the tribes among themselves vary greatly, and may be friendly as a result of kinship and treaty. But inasmuch as the idea of common duty of man to man does not exist among them, and no moral law is valid beyond the tribe, everybody alien from the tribe is an enemy as a matter of course. If he is caught in the hunting-grounds of the tribe without a special security, he is an outlaw and fair game. “When I and my people were tormented with hunger,” says an old Bedouin, “God sent
- 50. me a man who was travelling alone with his wife and his herd of camels; I slew him and took his wife and camels for my own.” He considers the murder perfectly lawful, and is only surprised that a stranger should presume to rove about the country with his wife and his cattle and without a strong escort. Yet the narrow bounds of the tribal community are capable of enlargement. There are means whereby even the alien can attain the security of a member of the tribe. If he seizes the hem of his enemy’s garment from behind, or ties a knot in the end of his turban, or knots his rope with his own, he has nothing further to fear. If he succeeds in creeping into the other’s tent, or in being introduced and entertained there by the wife or child, his life is sacred. The sanctity of the hearth is unknown among the Arabs, even their altar is not a hearth and is without any fire; but, on the other hand, the tent and those within it are sacred, and even to touch the tent-cords from outside renders a stranger safe from attack. By a sacramental act, accompanied with a simple form of words, he disarms his enemy and assures his own safety. Of course protection is not always stolen, as it were, in this fashion, it may be extended voluntarily; for example, there are cases when the man who grants protection flings his mantle over the one who implores it, thus making him out as his own property which no man may injure. If a foreign trader desires to travel through the tribe without peril, one of its members must give him a safe-conduct; very often he merely gives him some recognisable piece of his own property to take with him as a passport or charter of legitimation. The relations which arise in this manner are, for the most part, transitory.[42] But there are also permanent and hereditary relations of this sort, based in part upon contract and oath. A member of a tribe may allow a stranger to sojourn permanently with his clan, and by adoption into the clan the sojourner is considered naturalised by the whole tribe. Not individuals only, but whole clans and families can thus be naturalised, and instances thereof are not uncommon. A fresh element is consequently grafted on the pure tribal stock in
- 51. these sojourners or protégés. In a few generations they may amalgamate with the tribal stock, but as fresh batches are constantly coming in from without, the distinction between the two elements within the tribe remains. Consanguinity and contiguity combine to weld the tribe together; external bonds there are none. Blood-relationship is the higher and stronger principle, and neighbourhood passes into brotherhood. All political and military duties are looked upon as obligations of blood or brotherhood. The relations of the individual to larger associations and the community as a whole are precisely the same in character, though less intimate in degree, as those which bind him to his own family. There is no res publica in contradistinction to domestic concerns, no difference, in fact, between what is public and what is private. In principle, at least, all men have the same rights and duties, and no man has one-sided rights or duties. Everything is based on reciprocity, on loyalty and fellowship, and the complementary notions of duty and right, of ruler and subject, of patron and client, are expressed by one and the same word. There are neither officers nor officials, neither jailers nor executioners. There is no magisterial authority, no sovereign power, separable from the association and the individual, with a revenue of its own drawn from taxation and an independent administration by official organisation. The functions of the community are exercised by all its members equally. The prerogative and obligations of the state as we understand it, which can only be fitly discharged by its civil officers, are to the Arab things that the individual is bound to do, not under compulsion from without, but from the corporate feeling of neighbourhood and brotherhood. By his own active exertions the individual has constantly to create afresh those things which with us are permanent organisations and institutions, which lead or seem to lead an independent life of their own. The Arabs stop at the foundations, building no upper story upon them which could be handed over ready-made to their heirs and in which they might live at their ease.
- 52. In other words, among the Arabs political relations are moral, for morality is confined within the limits of the tribe. Political organisation is represented by the corporate feeling which finds expression in the exercise of the duties of brotherhood. These require a man to say “good day” to his fellows, or “God bless you,” if anyone sneezes, not to shut himself up from others, nor to take offence easily, to visit the sick, to pay the last honours to the dead, to feed the poor in time of dearth, to protect and care for the widow and the orphan; likewise to slaughter a camel now and again in winter, to arrange sports and there regale the rest with its flesh, for no man slaughters for himself alone, and every such occasion is a feast for the whole company. Such are the common demonstrations of brotherly kindness by which corporate spirit is kept alive under ordinary circumstances. But the greatest duty in which all others culminate is to help a brother in need. Political duty therefore occupies an essentially subordinate place. The great thing in all cases is that the individual should act and should see himself how to get along, but, of course, he is quite at liberty to concert measures with his comrades. The rest are only bound to assist him in time of need, and then they must answer to his call without asking whether he is right or wrong; as he has brewed, so they must drink. The whole tribe does not always rise at once, the primary obligation rests with the clan. The clan has the right of inheritance together with the next duty of paying the debts of any member of it, delivering him from captivity, acting as his compurgators, and assisting him in procuring vengeance or paying mulcts. The larger associations only become involved when the need is great, and more particularly in cases of enmity with another tribe. It will readily be imagined that a community based so exclusively on mutual fellowship does not fulfil its tasks very satisfactorily, and that the system is not particularly workable. There are many indolent or refractory members who do not fulfil their duties towards the community for lack of coercion from without, and because the only pressure that can be brought to bear upon them, the shame of falling short in the eyes of their kinsfolk or in public opinion, is of no
- 53. avail against their cowardice or perverse obstinacy. Moreover, individual liberty of action is too little restricted by a due regard for the interests of the community. There is nothing to prevent a man from undertaking on his own account a raid which may kindle a flame of war that will wrap his whole tribe in its conflagration and even spread beyond. Or by the admittance of a stranger into his tent and his clan, which he regards as an obligation of honour and of religion, he may involve his tribe in great difficulties by imposing on them the burden of henceforth protecting the said stranger against his pursuers who may be seeking to arrest him for some crime. But a more fruitful source of discord than individual cases of friction is the competition between the tribe and the clan. There is no doubt that these polar associations did not spring from the same root, but differ in their very origin; the tribe probably coalesced under the rule of a communistic matriarchal system (endogamous), while the clan is based on an aristocratic patriarchal system (exogamous). At the present time the tribe is regarded as merely an expansion of the clan, both being held together by the same paternal consanguinity. But the degrees of political kinship vary, the ties of blood have not the same force throughout; they act far more effectively in the smaller circle than in the larger. The individual stands in no direct relation to the tribe; his connection with it is through the intermediate links of the clan and the family; his membership in the community is conditioned by his membership of the subordinate groups. As a rule, therefore, the individual finds that his skin is nearer to him than his shirt whenever the interests of tribe and clan diverge. And it goes without saying that this is very often the case. The defects of the system are to some extent compensated by certain rudiments of government to be found among the Arabs. There is a leading aristocracy; the clans have their chief, and a head chief, the said, is at the head of every tribe. The position of all these chiefs depends upon voluntary recognition of the fact that they are fitted to hold it by their personal qualities and their fortune. They are spontaneously appointed by the common voice, without election or
- 54. any similar process, and though there is an inclination to make the authority hereditary and the sons reap the advantage of gratitude felt toward their fathers, yet each man must, by his own ability, anew make good his claim to the honours he has inherited if he is to remain in power and public esteem. The word of these chieftains carries most weight in the assemblies in which they meet every evening to talk, dispute, and deliberate. The said gives the casting vote. He decides, for instance, when the tribe shall start on its migrations and when it shall encamp. Generally speaking, however, the chiefs and the said have no advantage over the rest in privilege, but only in obligation. Among the Arabs noblesse oblige is no empty phrase, but a substantial truth. The nobles must distinguish themselves above the rest in the duties incumbent upon all; they must take on their shoulders the burden which others pass by, and out of their own abundance make good the deficit caused by lack of corporate feeling in the multitude. They must be liberal in all things; must not spare their blood in feud nor their goods in peace; they must entertain the stranger, maintain the widow and the orphan, feed the hungry and help the debtor to pay. The principal share in bearing the common burden falls to the said. In return he receives the fourth part of all booty, but he nevertheless often spends his whole fortune for the common stock; his position brings him honour and reputation, but never gain, and therefore does not procure him the envy of baser natures. But his most important duty is to maintain the unity of the tribe and to check the disintegration to which it is liable from individual selfishness and the particularism of the various clans. He is there to step into the breach, as the biblical phrase has it. He is the born mediator and peacemaker. For all that, he can only negotiate and apply moral pressure. He is but the first among equals; he has great authority but no supreme power, and in the last resort that is not enough either for the external or internal affairs of the community. In war there is no thought of compulsory service, no idea of discipline, of absolute command and obedience. If one clan will not go out with the rest, it separates from them and hardens its heart against their mockery
- 55. and contempt. If the men will not follow their leader, he sometimes has recourse to an attempt to put them to shame by setting up his sword and threatening to fall upon it, unless he is obeyed. Danger from without is, however, the readiest means of inducing them to submit to a single will, whereas the lack of a central sovereign authority is much more sorely felt in internal affairs. The only function of the ancient community, apart from self- defence, is the maintenance of peace within its own borders, and the means to this end is the law. The Old Testament, for instance, knows nothing of administration as a function of the state; to rule is to judge, and the generic term for ruler is judge. The Arabs are not without law, though with them its limits are wider and less strictly defined than with us and include the decision of questions which do not lead to impeachments and law-suits, but refer to duties, not rights. They also have judges who administer justice. Disputes between fellow tribesmen are brought under discussion in the daily palaver and are there settled without any legal formalities. But international disputes, i.e., matters disputed between members of different tribes, may also be settled by law, if both parties agree to choose an arbitrator to whom they will refer the decision. Anyone may undertake this office; in difficult cases a seer or priest is frequently applied to, or some other man who enjoys general confidence and has a reputation for exceptional wisdom. The arbitrator sometimes makes the parties swear to accept his verdict, whatever it may be, but his business is merely to discover and interpret the law, and he has no power to enforce it. The disputants consequently apply to the judge merely to learn the rules of the law, not to sue for and obtain their rights. His judgment has no legal force and does not entail the execution of the sentence, with which, in fact, it has nothing to do. An instance of what appears to us so singular a state of things, may make the matter clearer. Shortly before Mohammed’s arrival at Medina, a man of that city went to law with a Bedouin from the neighbourhood before a wise woman about a sum of money, i.e.,
- 56. camels. The woman decided in favour of the man of Medina; he was a well-known person, Suwaid, the son of Samit, by name. When they came to the parting of the ways, Suwaid said to the Bedouin, “Who will be surety that thou wilt pay me the camels?” The other promised to send them as soon as he reached home. But Suwaid, not satisfied with this, wrestled with his debtor, threw him, and bound him. He then carried him off to Medina and kept him in custody, until his kinsmen redeemed him by paying him what he owed. Criminal jurisdiction, as we understand it, is rendered impossible by the absence of a supreme authority, a magisterial tribunal. Although fidelity to one’s kindred is a moral law and the violation of it a sin, yet the Arabs have not reached the abstract conception of crime against the community at large, still less of punishment inflicted by the community—since for the community to cast off a troublesome or unworthy member is not, strictly speaking, a punishment. They only recognise private offences, and the punishment of these is the business of the individual. There is no official process of investigation with the coercive methods of vigorous cross-examination. If anything is stolen, the owner proclaims his loss aloud and lays the thief under a curse unless he restores the missing article, and all his accomplices likewise, unless they tell what they know of it. If murder or manslaughter has been committed by an unknown hand and this or that man is suspected of being the perpetrator, his clan takes an oath of purgation for him, which may, however, be counterbalanced by an oath to the opposite effect on the part of the dead man’s clan. The punishment of an offence is of course left to the sufferer. It is his business to see how he can best get compensation for the wrong done him and to seek for help wherever he may find it. He is not forbidden to take vengeance into his own hands, nor is there any compulsion to make him have recourse to law instead of so doing. The individual may, of his own free will, refrain from violent measures, if he pleases, and may enter into negotiations, which are then conducted on the basis of a legal principle, of an inner material
- 57. law. But if, instead of avenging himself, he resorts to legal proceedings, the question is never one of the punishment of a crime, —which, indeed, could hardly be settled by agreement between the contending parties,—but merely of compensation for a loss. Compensation can be given for everything for which vengeance might be exacted. All crimes are treated in the same manner by the law, and assessed as economic damage. Every loss of honour, property, or life can be appraised by agreement; they all have their price in camels. Vengeance is not thereby appeased, but if revenge is relinquished, the law demands no more. The worst and most serious crime is bloodshed. Malice or accident, war or peace, make no difference to this. Its natural and primary consequence is blood-revenge. This is, in the first place, the duty of the next heir, but it quickly extends to others, for the clan of the slayer does not desert him, but takes his part, and consequently also the slain man’s whole clan naturally helps the avenger against them. The result is a state of war between the two clans, which finds expression in occasional murders, often at long intervals. All members of the clan are considered accomplices; they espouse one another’s quarrel as in war, and fall victims to vengeance without distinction of persons. Every new member is a fresh motive for vengeance, and thus revenge incessantly breeds revenge. Thus blood-revenge necessarily results in blood-feud between the clans. It has been supposed that blood-feuds are only carried on between two hostile tribes, and not between kindred clans belonging to the same tribe, as that would constitute a breach of tribal unity. But the preservation of tribal unity is a moral axiom only, and incapable of keeping the centrifugal forces under effective control. The clan’s right of feud is undisputed, and, as a matter of fact, blood-feuds are carried on also within the tribe as well as without. The duty of vengeance is more vividly realised than duty to the tribe; it is a sacred primary law which takes precedence of all political considerations. Even if brother slays brother in the same clan, the result is a blood-feud, though the cases on record are as a rule
- 58. supposititious, not real, just as similar cases are treated by the Greeks as tragic problems in the Oresteia and the Œdipodeia. Law can be substituted for revenge in murder as in other crimes, that is to say, even blood-guiltiness can be paid off in money, i.e., in camels. This is done by agreement between debtor and creditor or between the clans of both; and when the agreement is brought about, the source of the blood-feud is estopped. In quarrels within the tribe it is the duty of the chiefs, and of the head chief more particularly, to induce the disputants to consent to an accommodation by law. They then negotiate as between two belligerent powers; they can only mediate for peace, not impose it. Sometimes they are successful, sometimes not. Mecca and Medina furnish the best instances of both results. Very often the disputants do not make peace until their strength is utterly exhausted. Then the balance-sheet is drawn up, the debit and credit in dead and wounded compared, and the difference made up in camels. But it is obvious that in this case the incongruity between what vengeance demands and what the law accords is too glaring. The Arabs are keenly alive to this fact, and it is not considered honourable to accept camels as satisfaction for a murder—to sell blood for milk, as their phrase goes. Vengeance is far better appeased by positive amends on a less unequal scale, by blood for blood, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. This is sometimes made by peaceful means, and that is what is called talio. The criminal is not sheltered by his own people, but is handed over to the avenger that he may requite him for what he has done. If the heritage of vengeance has passed to a child, the execution is often deferred till his majority. By this means the quarrel is confined to the parties immediately concerned, the clans are not implicated, blood-revenge does not degenerate into blood-feud, nor does it exceed in the heat of passion the measure of strict retribution. As a matter of fact talio appears to have been common in cases of mere bodily injury. An amusing instance is recorded in the life of Mohammed. At the battle
- 59. of Bedr he ranged his men in a long straight row, forming them into line with the shaft of a spear. In so doing he struck somewhat heavily upon the body of a man whose figure projected beyond the straight line, and the individual, whose name and race are exactly recorded, complained of his violence. Mohammed promptly offered his own body and said, “Take unto thyself the talio,” which, however, the other magnanimously declined to do. From this we see that also a military commander in the exercise of his official functions differs in nothing from a private person in the eyes of the law. Imagine a scene of this sort between officer and private on a modern parade- ground! If, however, it is not a question of satisfaction for mere corporeal injuries, but of blood for blood, the situation becomes far more difficult; for if mulct is unwillingly taken, talio is far more unwillingly given. It is the direst disgrace for any clan to give up one of its members, no matter what his crime, into the hands of another clan which intends to put him to death; rather will they slay him themselves. Hence the talio, though an efficacious means of keeping blood-revenge within bounds and blunting its dangerous edges as far as the peace and unity of the tribe are concerned, cannot be practically enforced in the ancient Arabic community, because it has no sovereign power over the tribe. The first Arabic community with sovereign powers was established by Mohammed in the city of Medina, not upon the basis of blood, which naturally tends to diversity, but upon that of religion, which is equally binding on all. There for the first time the talio becomes effective, there it can be enforced. The community, at the head of which God stands, and the prophet as God’s representative, has power to deliver the shedder of blood over to the avenger, and it is the duty of the community to see that this is done. “In the talio ye have the life,” says the Koran; and a commentary is provided by the hideous anarchy, conjured up by blood-feuds, which prevailed in Medina before the coming of Mohammed—life was then indeed impossible. And in another place the Koran says, “If a man have slain one person unlawfully, it is as if he had slain all men.” In other
- 60. words the murder of an individual is to be regarded as a crime committed against the whole community, and the whole body must see to it that lawful vengeance may have its course. The execution of vengeance is, however, still left to the rightful avenger; and he is at liberty to exercise his right or renounce it, either freely or for a price. The talio is not yet a punishment, it is only the transition stage to it from revenge. Originally even Islam knew nothing of the capital punishment publicly inflicted, of a ritual execution by the community and its officers, at least not in cases of murder or manslaughter. Even in the earlier caliphate there were enormous difficulties in the way of the execution of a Moslem who had not shed innocent blood. Apart from the talio the official infliction of capital punishment was hardly possible, for as long as Arab sentiment survived, the people could not grasp the distinction between an executioner and a murderer. A change did not take place until with the accession of the Abbasids the Iranians took the reins of government from the Arabs and brought with them Iranian conceptions of state and law. On the other hand, the Hebrews, near kinsmen of the Arabs, arrived at just conceptions of capital crime and capital punishment fifteen hundred years earlier than they. According to the Hebrew view, the guilt of sin, which is held to be an offence against the Deity, weighs upon the whole community, until the actual perpetrator of the crime is extirpated or purged out of its midst. The sentence of death is carried out by the whole community and takes the form of stoning, its characteristic features being that every man of the congregation takes part in it and casts his stone. Murder and manslaughter, indeed, are not as yet classed among the offences against God, for which capital punishment at the hands of the community is due; bloodshed is in the main a private wrong still, and its punishment is left to the injured person. But it is not associated with blood-feud between clans, and the criminal is not protected by his family. Blood-revenge is tamed already and restricted by law to what we know as the talio. The shedder of blood is abandoned by his family, the heir and avenger may pursue and slay him. Should he
- 61. take refuge in a sanctuary, he is safe if he has shed blood by mischance only. Otherwise the sanctuary affords him no protection. It is the right and duty of the community, represented by its elders, to drag him away from the altar and hand him over to the avenger. The act of slaughter is always left to the latter; the ceremonial infliction of capital punishment, execution by the congregation, is never the penalty assigned for murder or manslaughter. But the avenger is not allowed to take a ransom for the murderer or give him his life. For here the idea insinuates itself that bloodshed is not only a wrong and injury done to the individual, but a crime, that is to say an offence against God. The murderer has sinned also against the Deity, and his guilt lies upon the whole community, until they are rid of him. Thus the religious obligation of the community, to wash away the blood shed within its borders, goes hand in hand with the individual obligation of vengeance. If the murderer cannot be discovered, vengeance is impossible; but a symbolical ceremony is substituted for the purification of the community, and the city within whose borders a man is found dead by an unknown hand must slay a cow in place of the murderer. We see that among the Hebrews the ideas of crime and punishment had their root in religion; the crime is an offence against God, and its punishment is the purging of the community from this offence; execution is the only real punishment, and must be distinguished from talio on the one hand and mere chastisement on the other. Among the Arabs the religious root of the penal law has withered away and nothing but human vengeance is left. This can hardly be the ancient conception. Vengeance itself is in its origin not a human passion merely, it is likewise a religious duty. True, this duty was originally believed to have been imposed, not by the Almighty, but by a demon. And this demon was the wrathful spirit of the murdered man himself, who would not let his clan rest until they had given him to drink the murderer’s blood for which he thirsted. We can still find
- 62. traces of this belief among the Arabs. Amongst them the avenger of blood is under a solemn vow, exactly like the man who has to offer sacrifice or fulfil any other religious duty; he may not wash nor comb his hair, nor drink wine, with many other prohibitions of the same kind. As he accomplishes the act of vengeance, he must call upon the name of him for whom he takes it, in a brief form of words; then he is free and returned from the state of sanctification and uncleanness to that of cleanness and common life; exactly like a sacrificer after he has made a sacrifice. But these are petrified remains, as it were, of a motive that has no present potency. The poetry which has come down to us invariably speaks only of the ungovernable rage of the avenger, not of the person to be avenged; of burning pain in the breast of the survivor, which demands relief at any price; and of the shame which weighs him down as long as the murderer still treads the earth alive. Moreover—and this is a particularly striking point—religion has not retained any influence upon actual law amongst the ancient Arabs, apart, perhaps, from the process of inquiry by curse and oath. Ancient Arab law is singularly profane, dry, and formless; it is throughout a matter of bargain and contract, for even the penal law operates only through compensation and payment. Such, in brief outline, is the picture of the Arabic community, a community devoid of supreme authority and executive power. We are fond of calling it patriarchal, but what do we mean by the phrase? Of the amenities of family life we find no trace, nor any trace of patriarchal guardianship. Each man has to give his help, if anything is to be done. There is more scope in such a community for the display of courage, self-sacrifice, and brotherly kindness than in our own, where the state seems to work like a machine for which we have merely to provide the fuel. It is a pity, however, that so fair an opportunity is not put to the fullest use. In critical cases, the corporate feeling on which the whole system depends is often shown by but few. There are hitches and difficulties everywhere, though in the desert the conditions of life are very simple, narrow, and easy to