ably with
their position under the Koran. Women had rights and were respected. The
veil and the harem system were unknown before Mahomet. According to
Noldeke the Nabataean inscriptions and coins show that women held a high
social position in northern Arabia, owning large estates and trading
independently. Polyandry and polygamy, it is true, were practised, but
the right of divorce belonged to the woman as well as the man. Two kinds
of marriage were celebrated. One was a purely personal contract, with no
witnesses, the wife not leaving her home or passing under marital
authority. The other was a formal marriage, the woman becoming subject
to her husband by purchase or capture. Even captive women were not kept
in slavery. Arabic wealth and culture had indeed thus early reached a
stage which justified Professor Robertson Smith in writing, "In this
period the name of Arab was associated to Western writers with ideas of
effeminate indolence and peaceful opulence ... the golden age of Yemen."
But long before Mahomet's time this early Arab predominance was at an
end, possibly due in great measure to the loss of the caravan trade
through the increase of shipping. The abandonment of great cities and
the ruin of many tribes contributed to the apparent nationalization of
the Arab peoples. Though the traditional jealousy and hostility of the
two branches, the Yemenites and Maadites or Ishmaelites, remained, the
Arab world had attained by the levelling process of common misfortune
the superficial unity it presents to-day. The nation thus formed, never
a nation in the strict sense of the word, was distinctively and
thoroughly Semitic in character and language, and has remained unchanged
to the present day. The sporadic brilliancy of the ancient Arab kingdoms
gave place to a social and political lethargy, the continuation of which
for many centuries made the uprise of Saracenic empires seem a miracle
to a world ignorant of the Arab past. The Arab race up to Mahomet's day
had been in the main pagan. Monotheism, if it ever prevailed, early gave
place to sun and star worship, or simple idolatry. Professor Robertson
Smith suggests that totemism was the earliest form of Arabian idolatry,
and that each tribe had its sacred animal. This he supports by the fact
that some tribal names were derived from those of animals, and that
animal-worship was not unknown in Arabia. What seems certain is that
Arab religion was of a complex hybrid nature, no