he destiny to which
Judaism was invited, but which Judaism failed to realise till it was
transformed in Christianity. In Islam Semitic religion is not
transformed, but enters in its own stern and uncompromising character
into the position of a universal faith.

This religion sprang up and entered on its career of conquest with
startling suddenness and even, some scholars hold, without any
natural preparation for its coming in the country of its birth. The
Arabs called the period before Islam the "time of ignorance"; in that
period they considered their race had no history; the new religion,
when it arose, had made a clean sweep of all that had gone before,
and had caused a new world to begin. The labours of Arabic scholars
have, however, done something to dispel the mists which hung over
early Arabia, and it is possible both to give a much more
satisfactory sketch than formerly of the earlier religion of the
Arabs, and to discern to some extent the processes which had
unconsciously been preparing for the advent of a higher and stronger
faith.

Arabia before Mahomet.--The Arabs of the central peninsula in the
times before Mahomet were not a nation but a set of tribes--mostly
nomadic, but some of them settled in cities, who, while united by
language, custom, and traditions, had no central government or
organisation. The desert which they inhabited, as it admitted no
cultivation, kept human life uniform and unprogressive; external
influences penetrated slowly into this corner of the world, and
society was still arranged as it had been for thousands of years. The
strongest tie was that of blood. A man's fellow-tribesmen were bound
to avenge his murder; and so one slaughter led to another, and from
generation to generation the land was filled with a perpetual series
of blood-feuds. Twice a year, however, a cessation of these feuds
took place; a month came round in which there was a universal truce.
Men who were enemies then made the same pilgrimage to a distant
shrine; at such a time trade caravans could set out and travel in
safety; and the great markets or festivals then took place, which,
while based at first on religious ideas, had in most part ceased to
have any religious character. Some of these markets were, at the time
of Mahomet, national occasions: men of every tribe met and came to
know each other there; the poetry which had been composed during the
preceding months was publicly recited, so that the rise of a n