"And as the Emperor doted on Theodora, so Belisarius adored Antonina, bore with melting fury her infidelities, and for divers reasons, took her with him on his campaigns.

"In June, 533, five hundred transports and ninety-two warships gathered in the Bosporus, received the commands of the Emperor and the blessings of the patriarch, and sailed for Carthage. Procopius was on Belisarius' staff and wrote a vivid account of the 'Vandal War.' Landing in Africa with only 5000 cavalry, Belisarius swept through the improvised defenses of Carthage and in a few months overthrew the Vandal power. Justinian too hastily recalled him for a triumph at Constantinople. The Moors, pouring down from the hills, attacked the Roman garrison. Belisarius hurried back just in time to quell a mutiny among the troops and lead them to victory.

"Carthaginian Africa henceforth remained under Byzantine rule until the Arabs came.

"The Emperor was grateful and suspicious. Belisarius had rewarded himself well out of the spoils of victory. He had won the too-personal loyalty of his troops. He had been offered a kingdom. Might he not aspire to seize the throne from the nephew of a usurper? Justinian recalled him and noticed uneasily the splendor of the general's retinue.

"The Byzantines, Procpius reports, 'took delight in watching Belisarius as he came forth from his home each day. His progress resembled a crowded festival procession since he was always escorted by a large number of Vandals, Goths, and Moors. Furthermore, he had a fine figure and was tall and remarkably handsme.

"But his conduct was so meek and his manners so affable tht he seemed like a very poor man and one of no repute.'"

A wolf in sheep's clothing?

"The influence of Christianity had modified legislation and interpretation. The civil laws of Rome often conflicted with the laws of the nations composing the Empire. Many of the old enactments were ill adapted to the Hellenistic tradition of the East.

"The whole vast body of Roman law had become an empirical accumulation rather than a logical code.

"Justinian's unifying passion resented this chaos as it chafed at the dismemberment of the Empire. In 528 he appointed ten jurists to systematize, clarify, and reform the laws. The most active and influential member of this commission was the quaestor Tribonian who, despite venality and suspected atheism, remained to his death the chief inspirer, adviser, and executant of Justinian legislative plans.

"The first part of the task was accomplished with undue haste and was issued in 529 as the Codex Constitutionum. It was declared to be the law of the Empire and all preceding legislation was nullified except as re-enacted herein.

"The commissioners then proceeded to the second part of their assigment:- to gather into a system those responsa or opinions of the great Roman jurists which still seemed worthy to have the force of law. The result was published as the Digesta or Pandectae (533).

"The opinions quoted, and the interpretations given, were henceforth to be binding upon all judges. All other opinions lost legal authority. Older collections of responsa ceased to be copied and for the most part disappeared.

"What remains of them suggests that Justinian's redactors omitted opinions favorable to freedom, and by impious fraud transformed some judgments of ancient jurists to better consonance with abslute rule.

"This Code, like the Theodosian, enacted orthodox Christianity into law. It began by declaring for the Trinity and anathematized Nestorius, Euryches, and Apollinaris.

"It acknowledgd the ecclesiastical leadership of the Roman Church, and orderd all Christian groups to submit to her authority.

"But ensuing chapters proclaimed the dominion of the emperor over the Church. All ecclesiastical, like all civil law, was to emanate from the throne.

"The Code proceeded to make laws for metropolitans, bishops, abbots, and monks, and specified penalties for clerics who gambled, or attended the theater or the games. Manicheans or relapsed heretics were to be put to death.

"Donatists, Montanists, Monophysites, and other dissenters were to suffer confiscation of their goods, and were declared incompetent to buy or sell, to inherit or bequeath. They were excluded from public office, forbidden to meet, and disqualified from suing orthodox Christians for debt.

"A gentler enactment empowered bishops to visit prisons, and to protect prisoners from abuses of the law.

"The Code replaced older distinctions of class. Freedmen were no longer treated as a separate group;. They enjoyed at once, on their emancipation, all the privileges of freemen. They might rise to be senators or emperors. All freemen were divided into honestiores -- men of honor or rank -- and humiliores -- commoners. A hierarchy of rank, which had developed among the honestiores since Diocletian, was sanctioned by Code:- patrici, illustres, spectabiles (hence our respectable), clarisstimi, and gloriosi.

"Certain passages of the Code legalized serfdom and prepared for feudalism. A freeman who had cultivated a tract of land for thirty years was required, with his descendants, to remain forever attached to that piece of land. The measure was explained as discouraging the desertion of the soil.

"A serf who ran away, or became a cleric without his lord's consent, could be reclaimed like a runaway slave.

"The status of woman was moderately improved by the Code. Her subjection to lifelong guardianship had been ended in the fourth century, and the old principle that inheritance could pass only through males had become obsolete. The Church, which often received legacies from a woman, did much to secure these reforms.

"Justinian sought to enforce the views of the Church on divorce, and forbade it except when one of the parties wished to enter a convent or monastery. But this was too extreme a departure from existing customs and law. Large sections of the public protested that it would increase the number of poisonings.

"The later legislation of the emperor listed a generous variety of grounds for divorce. This, with some interruptions, remained the law of the Byzantine Empire until 1453.

"Penalties imposed by Augustus upon celibacy and childlessness were removed in the Code. Constantine had made adultery a capital crime, though he had rarely enforced the decree.

"Justinian kept the death penalty for men, but reduced the penalty for the woman to immurement in a nunnery. A husband might with impunity kill the paramour of his wife if, after sending her three witnessed warnings, he found her in his own house, or in a tavern, conversing with the suspected man. Similarly severe penalties were decreed for intercourse with an unmarried woman or a widow, unless she was a concubine or a prostitute.

"Rape was punished with death and confiscation of property, and the proceeds were given to the injured woman.

"Justinian not only decreed death for homosexual acts, but often added torture, mutilation, and the public parading of the guilty persons before their execution.

"Charitable gifts and bequests were encouraged by the Code. The property of the Church, whether in realty or movables, rents, serfs, or slaves, was declared inalienable. No member, and no number of members, of the clergy or the laity, could give, sell, or bequeath anything belonging to the Church. These laws of Leo I and Anthemius, confirmed by the Code, became the legal basis of the Church's growing wealth. Secular property was dissipated -- ecclesiastical property was accumulated -- in the course of generations.

"The Church tried, and failed, to have interest forbidden. Defaulting debtors could be arrested, but were to be released on bail or on their oath of return for trial.

"No one could be imprisoned except by order of a high magistrate. There were strict limits to the time that might elapse between arrest and trial. Lawyers were so numerous that Justinian built for them a basilica whose size may be judged from its library of 150,000 volumes or rolls.

"Trial was to be held before a magistrate appointed by the emperor. But if both parties so wished, the case could be transferred to the bishop's court.

"A copy of the Bible was placed before the judge in each trial. The attorneys were required to swear on it to the justice of their cause.

"Penalties, though severe, were seldom mandatory. The judge might mitigate them for women, minors, and drunken offenders. Imprisonment was used as detention for trial, but seldom as a punishment.

"The Justinian Code retrogressed from the laws of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius by permitting mutilation as a penalty.

"Tax collectors falsifying returns, and persons copying Monophysite literature, could suffer the loss of a hand, on the theory that the offending member shold pay for the crime. Amputation of nose or throat is frequently decreed in the Code. Later Byzantine law added blinding, especially as a means for disqualifying heirs or aspirants to the throne.

"The death penalty was carried out on free persons by beheading, on some slaves by crucifixion. Sorcerers and deserters from the army were burned alive.

"The Emperor could not escape his environment and his time. In his ambition to unify everything he codified the superstition and barbarity, as well as the justice and charity of his age.

"The Code was conservative, like everything Byzantine, and served as a strait jacket for a civilization that seemed destined never to die. It soon ceased to be obeyed except in a narrowing realm.

"The Eastern nationalist heretics whom it flayed opened their arms to the Moslems, and propsered better under the Koran than under the Code. Italy under the Lombards, Gaul under the Franks, England under the Anglo-Saxons, Spain under the Visigoths, ignored the edicts of Justinian.

"Nevertheless the Code for some generations gave order and security to a motley assemblage of peoples, and allowed, across the frontiers and along the streets of a dozen nations, freer and safer movement than the same regions enjoy today.

"Probably Justinian's piety was sincere, not merely political. He himself, as far as Theodora would permit, lived like a monk in his palace -- fasting and praying -- poring over theological tomes -- and debating doctrinal niceties with professors, patriarchs, and popes.

"Procopius, with transparent concurrence, quotes a conspirator:-'It ill becomes anyone who has even a little spirit in him to refuse to murder Justinian. Nor should he entertain any fear of a man who always sits unguarded in some lobby to a late hour of the night, eagerly unrolling the Christian Scriptures in company with priests who are at the extremity of old age.'

"Almost the first use that Justinian had made of his power as regent for Justin was to end the breach that had been widened between the Eastern and The Western Church by the Emperor Zeno's Henoticon.

"By accepting the viewpoint of the papacy, Justinian won the support of the orthodox clergy in Italy against the Goths, and in the East against the Monophysites.

"This sect, arguing passionately that there was but one nature in Christ, had bcome almost as numerous in Egypt as the Catholics. In Alexandria they were so advanced that they in turn could divide into orthodox and heterodox Monophysites. These factions fought in the streets, while their women joined in with missiles from the roofs.

"When the armed forces of the Emperor installed a Catholic bishop in the see of Athanasius, the congregation greeted his first sermon with a volley of stones, and was slaughtered in situ by the imperial soldiery. While Catholicism controlled the Alexandrian episcopacy, heresy spread throughout the countryside.

"Finally accepting Theodora's view that Monophysitism could not be crushed, Justinian sought to appease its followers in a document of imperial theology known as the Three Chapters. He summoned Viglius to Constantinople and urged him to subscribe to this statement. Vigilius reluctantly consented, whereupon the African Catholic clergy excommunicated him (590). He withdrew his consent, was exiled by Justinian to a rock in the Proconnesus, again consented, obtained leave to return to Rome, but died on the way (555).

"Never had an emperor made so open an attempt to dominate the papacy. Justinian called an ecumenical council to meet at Constantinople (553). Hardly any Western bishops attended. The council approved Justinian's formulas. The Western Church rejected them.

"Eastern and Western Christianity resumed their schism for a century.

"In the end death won all arguments. Theodora's passing in 548 was to Justinian the heaviest of many blows that broke down his courage, clarity, and strength. He was then sixty-five, weakened by asceticism and recurrent crises. He left the government to subordinates, neglected the defenses he had so labored to build, and abandoned himself to theology.

"In his final years his interest in theology had borne strange fruit. The defender of the faith had become a heretic. He announced that the body of Christ was incorruptible and that Christ's human nature had never been subject to any of the wants and indignities of mortal flesh. The clergy warned him that if he died in this error his soul would 'be delivered to the flames and burn there eternally.'

"He died unrepentant (565) after a life of eighty-three years and a reign of thirty-eight.

"Justinian's death was one more point at which antiquity might be said to end. He was a true Roman emperor, thinking in terms of all the Empire East and West, struggling to keep back the barbarians and to bring again to the vast realm an orderly government of homogenous laws.

"He was a great ruler, whose very faults sprang from the logic and sincerity of his creed --his persecutions from his certainty -- his wars from his Roman spirit -- his confiscations from his wars. We mourn the narrow violence of his methods and applaud the grandeur of his aims.

"Finally accepting Theodora's view that Monophysitism could not be crushed, Justinian sought to appease its followers in a document of imperial theology known as the Three Chapters. He summoned Viglius to Constantinople and urged him to subscribe to this statement. Vigilius reluctantly consented, whereupon the African Catholic clergy excommunicated him (590). He withdrew his consent, was exiled by Justinian to a rock in the Proconnesus, again consented, obtained leave to return to Rome, but died on the way (555).

"Never had an emperor made so open an attempt to dominate the papacy. Justinian called an ecumenical council to meet at Constantinople (553). Hardly any Western bishops attended. The council approved Justinian's formulas. The Western Church rejected them.

"Eastern and Western Christianity resumed their schism for a century.

"In the end death won all arguments. Theodora's passing in 548 was to Justinian the heaviest of many blows that broke down his courage, clarity, and strength. He was then sixty-five, weakened by asceticism and recurrent crises. He left the government to subordinates, neglected the defenses he had so labored to build, and abandoned himself to theology.

"In his final years his interest in theology had borne strange fruit. The defender of the faith had become a heretic. He announced that the body of Christ was incorruptible and that Christ's human nature had never been subject to any of the wants and indignities of mortal flesh. The clergy warned him that if he died in this error his soul would 'be delivered to the flames and burn there eternally.'

"He died unrepentant (565) after a life of eighty-three years and a reign of thirty-eight.

"Justinian's death was one more point at which antiquity might be said to end. He was a true Roman emperor, thinking in terms of all the Empire East and West, struggling to keep back the barbarians and to bring again to the vast realm an orderly government of homogenous laws.

"He was a great ruler, whose very faults sprang from the logic and sincerity of his creed --his persecutions from his certainty -- his wars from his Roman spirit -- his confiscations from his wars. We mourn the narrow violence of his methods and applaud the grandeur of his aims.

"The mineral resources of the soil were owned by the state but were mostly raised by private agencies on governmental lease. The mines of Greece were exhausted but old and new veins were worked in Thrace, Pontus, and the Balkans. Most industrial labor was 'free' - i.e. compelled only by a distaste for starvation.

"Direct slavery played a negligible role outside of domestic services and the textile industry. In Syria, and probably in Egypt and North Africa, forced labor was used by the state to maintain the major irrigation canals.

"The government produced in its own factories most of the goods required by the army, the bureaucracy, and the courts.

"About the year 552 some Nestorian monks from Central Asia interested Justinian with an offer to provide the Empire with an independent source of silk. If we recall how many wars Greece and Rome had fought with Persia for control of the trade routes to China and India, and remark the name 'silk route' given to the northern passes to the Far East, the name Serica (Silk-land) given by the Romans to China, and name Serindia applied to the region between China and India, we shall understand why Justinian eagerly acccepted the proposal.

"The monks went back to Central Asia and returned with the eggs of silkworms and probably some seedlings of the mulberry tree. A small silk industry already existed in Greece but it depended upon wild silkworms, feeding on oak, ash, or cypress leves.

"When clandestine private enterprise produced and sold similar stuffs to unprivileged persons, Justinian broke this 'black market' by removing most of the restrictions on the use of luxurious silks and dyes. He flooded the shops with state textiles at prices that private competition could not meet. When the competition had disappeared, the government raised the prices.

"Following Diocletian's example, Justinian sought to extend governmental control to all prices and wages. After the plague of 542 the labor supply fell, wages, rose, and prices soared.

"From Constantine to the latter part of Justinian's reign, domestic and foreign trade flourished in the Byzantine Empire. Roman roads and bridges were there kept in repair and the creative lust for gain built maritime fleets that bound the capital with a hundred ports in East and West.

"From the fifth century to the fifteenth, Constantinople remained the greatest market and shipping center in the world. Alexandria, which had held this supremacy from the third century B.C., now ranked in trade below Antioch.

"All Syria throve with commerce and industry. It lay between Persia and Constantinople, between Constantinople and Egypt. Its merchants were shrewd and venturesome and only the effervescent Greeks could rival them in the extent of their traffic and the subtlety of their ways.

"By Justinian's time pagan art was finished, and half of its works had been mutilated or destroyed. Barbarian ravages, imperial robbery, and pious destruction had begun a process of ruination and netlect that continued until Petrarch in the fourteenth century pled, so to speak, for the lives of the survivors.

"A factor in the devastation was the popular belief that the pagan gods were demons, and that the temples were their resorts. In any case, it was felt the material could be put to better use in Christian churches or domestic walls. Pagans themselves often joined in the spoliation.

"Seveal Christian emperors, notably Honorius and Theodosius II, did their best to protect the old structures, and enlightened clergymen preserved the parthenon, the temple of Theseus, the Pantheon, and other structures by rededicating them as Christian shrines.

"Christianity at first suspected art as a support of paganism, idolatry, and immorality. These nude statues hardly comported with esteem for virginity and celibacy. When the body seemed an instrument of Satan, and the monk replaced the athlete as ideal, the study of anatomy disppeared from art, leaving a sculpture and painting of gloomy faces and shapeless drapery.

"But when Christianity had triumphed, and great basilicas were needed to house its swellng congregation, the local and national traditions of art reasserted themselves, and architecture lifted itself out of the ruins.

"Moreover, thee spacious edifices cried out for decoration. The worshipers needed statues of Christ and Mary to help the imagination, and pictures to tell to the simple letterless the story of their crucified God.

"As Syria and Asia Minor grew stronger with industry and Rome weaker with invasion, the Hellenistic tide that had rushed in with Alexander ebbed back from Asia to Europe. From Sasanian Persia -- from Nestorian Syria -- from Coptic Egypt -- Eastern art influences poured into Byzantium and reached to Italy, even to Gaul. The Greek art of naturalistic representation gave place to an Oriental art of symbolic decoration.

"The East preferred color to line -- the vault and dome to the timbered roof -- rich ornament to stern simplicity -- gorgeous silks to shapeless togas. Just as Diocletian and Constantine had adopted the forms of Persian monarchy, so the art of Constantinople looked less and less to the now barbarized West, increasingly to Asia Minor, Armenia, Persia, Syria, and Egypt.

"Perhaps the victory of Persian arms under Shapur II and Khosru Anushirvan quickened the westward march of Eastern motives and forms. Edessa and Nisibis were in this period flourishing centers of a Mesopotamian culture that mingled Iranian, Armenian, Cappadocian, and Syrian elements and transmitted them, through merchants, monks and artisans to Antioch, Alexandria, Ephesus, Constantinople, at last to Revenna and Rome.

"Justinian might have rebuilt these on their old plans and within a year or two. Instad he resolved to spend more time, money, and men, make his capital more beautiful than Rome, and raise a church that would outshine all other edifices on the earth.

"He began now one of the most ambitious building programs in history:-fortresses, palaces, monasteries, churches, porticoes, and gates rose throughout the empire. In Constantinople he rebuilt the Senate House in white marble -- and the Baths of Zeuxippus in polychrome marble -- raised a marble portico and promenade in the Augusteum -- and brought fresh water to the city in a new aqueduct that rivaled Italy's best.

"He made his own palace the acme of splendor and luxury -- its floors and walls were of marble -- its ceilings recounted in mosaic brilliance the triumphs of his reign -- and showed the senators 'in festal mood, bestowing upon the Emperor honors almost divine.'

"And across the Bosporus, near Chalcedon, he built, as a summer residence for Theodora and her court, the palatial villa of Herion, equipped with its own harbor, forum, church, and baths.

"Forty days after the Nika revolt had subsided, he began a new St. Sophia -- dedicated not to any saint of that name, but to the Hagia Sophia, the Holy Wisdom, or Creative Logos, of God Himself. From Tralles in Asia Minor, and from Ionian Miletus, he summoned Anthemius and Isidore, the most famous of living architects, to plan and superintend the work. Abandoning the traditional basilican form, they conceived a design whose center would be a spacious dome resting not on walls but on massive piers, and buttressed by a half dome at either end.

"Ten thousand workmen were engaged -- 320,000 pounds of gold ($134,000,000) were spent on the enterprise -- quite emptying the treasury. Provincial governors were directed to send to the new shrine the finest relics of ancient monuments. Marbles of a dozen kinds and tints were imported from a dozen areas. Gold, silver, ivory, and precious stones were poured into decoration.

"Justinian himself shared busily in the design and the construction, and took no small part (his scornful adulator tells us) in solving technical problems. Dressed in white linen, with a staff in his hand and a kerchief on his head, he haunted the operation day after day, encouraging the workers to complete their tasks competently and on time.

"In five years and ten months the edifice was complete and on December 26, 537, the Emperor and the Patriarch Menas led a solemn inaugural procession to the resplendoent cathedral.

"St. Sophia was Justinian's supreme achievement, more lasting than his conquests or his laws. But Procopius describes twenty-four other churches built or rebuilt by him in the capital, and remarks:-'If you should see one of them by itself you would suppose that the Emperor had built this work only, and had spent the whole time of his reign on this one alone.'

"Throughout the Empire this fury of construction raged until Justinian's death. That sixth century which marked the beginning of the Dark Ages in the West was in the East one of the richest epochs in architectural history.

"In Epheus, Antioch, Gaza, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Salonika, Ravenna, Rome, and from Crimean Kerch to African Sfax, a thousand churches celebrated the triumph both of Christianity over paganism and of the Oriental-Byzantine over the Greco-Roman style.

"External columns, architraves, pediments, and friezes made way for the vault, the pendentive, and the dome. Syria had a veritable renaissance in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries. Her schools at Antioch, Berytus (Beirut), Edessa, and Nisibis poured forth orators, lawyers, historians, and heretics.

"Iran meant more, in our third century, than Iran or Persia today. It was by its very name the land of the 'Aryans,' and included Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Sogdiana, and Balkh, as well as Iraq. 'Persia,' anciently the name of the modern province of Fars, was but a southeastern fraction of this empire. The Greeks and Romans, careless about 'barbarians,' gave the name of a part to the whole.

"Through the center of Iran, from Himalayan southeast to Causasian northwest, ran a mountainous dividing barrier. To the east was an arid lofty plateau. To the west lay the green valleys of the twin rivers, whose periodic overflow ran into a labyrinth of canals, and made Western Persia rich in wheat and dates, vines, and fruits.

"Between or along the rivers, or hiding in the hills, or hugging desert oases, were a myriad villages, a thousand towns, a hundred cities:- Ecbatana, Rai, Mosul, Istakhr (once Persepolis), Susa, Seleucia, and magnificent Cresiphon, seat of the Sasanian kings.

"Ammianus describes the Persians of this period as 'almost all slender, somewhat dark, with not uncomely beards, and long shaggy hair.' The upper classes were not shaggy, nor always slender, often handsome, proud of bearing, and of an easy grace, with a flair for dangerous sports and splendid dress.

"Men covered their heads with turbans, their legs with baggy trousers, their feet with sandals or laced boots. The rich wore coats or tunics of wool and silk, and girt themselves with belt and sword. The poor resigned themselves to garments of cotton, hair, or skins. The women dressed in boots and breeches, loose shirts and cloaks and flowing robes -- curled their black hair into a coil in front, let it hang behind, and brightened it with flowers.

"All classes loved color and ornament. Priests and zealous Zoroastrians affected white cotton clothing as a symbol of purity. Generals preferred red. Kings distinguished themselves with red shoes, blue trousers, and a heaaddress topped with an inflated ball or the head of a beast or a bird.

"The poor drank beer but nearly all classes, includng the gods, preferred wine. The pious and thrifty Persians poured it out in religious ritual, waited a reasonable time for the gods to come and drink, then drank the sacred beverage themselves.

"Persian manners, in this Sasanian period, are described as coarser than in the Achaemenid, more refined then in the Parthian. But the narratives of Procopius leave us with the impression that the Persians continued to be better gentlemen than the Greeks. The ceremonies and diplomatic forms of the Persian court were in large measure adopted by the Greek emperors. The rival sovereigns addressed each other as 'brother,' provided immunity and safe-conducts for foreign diplomats, and exempted them from customs searches and dues.

"The conventions of European and American diplomacy may be traced to the courts of the Persian kings.

"Pederasty and prostituion were less frequent among them than among the Greeks. Rabbi Gamaliel praised the Persians for three qualities:-'They are tempeate in eating, modest in the privy and in marital relations.'

"Every influence was used to stimulate marriage and the birth rate, in order that man power should suffice in war. In this aspect Mars, not Venus, is the god of love. Religion enjoined marriage, celebrated it with awesome rites, and taught that fertility strengthened Ormuzd, the god of light, in his cosmic conflict with Ahriman, the Satan of the Zorosastrian creed.

"The head of the household practiced ancestor worship at the family health, and sought offspring to ensure his own later cult and care. If no son was born to him, he adopted one.

"Parents generally arranged the marriage of their children, often with the aid of a professional matrimonial agent. A woman might marry against the wishes of her parents. Dowries and marriage settlements financed early marriage and parentage.

"Polygamy was allowed, and was recommended where the first wife proved barren. Adultery flourished. The husband might divorce his wife for infidelity. The wife might divorce her husband for desertion and cruelty. Concubines wer permiteed. Like the ancient Greek hetairai, these concuines were free to move about in public, and to attend the banquets of the men. Legal wives were usually kept in private apartments in the home. This old Persian custom was bequeathed to Islam.

"Persian women were eceptionally beautiful, and perhaps men had to be guarded from them. In the Shahnama of Firdausi, it is the women who yearn and take the initiative in courtship and seduction.

"Every Sasanian found music necessary to the operations of religion, love, and war. Lyre, guitar, flute, pipe, horn, drum, and other instruments abounded. Tradition avers that Khosru Parvez' favorite singer, Barbad, composed 360 songs, and sang them to his royal patron, one each night for a year.

"In education, too, religion played a major part. Primary schools were situated on temple grounds and were taught by priests. Higher education in literature, medicine, science, and philosophy was provided in the celebrated academy at June-i-Shapur in Suisiana.

"The sons of feudal chiefs and provincial satraps often lived near the king and were instructed with the princes of the royal family in a college attached to the court.

"Pahlavi, the Indo-European language of Parthian Persia, continued in use. Of its literature in this age only some 600,000 words survive, nearly all dealinbg wwith religion. We know that it was extensive. As the priests were its guardians and transmitters, they allowed most of the secular material to perish. (A like process may have deluded us as to the overewhelmingly religious character of early medieval literature in Christendom.)

"The Sasanian kings were enlightened patrons of letters and philosophy -- Khosru Anushirvan above all. He had Plato and Aristotle translated into Pahlavi, had them taught at Jund-i-Shapur, and even read them himself. During his reign many historical annals were compiled, of which the sole survivor is the Karnamak-i-Artakhshatr, or Deeds of Ardashir, a mixture of history and romance that served Firdausi as the basis of his Shahnama.

"Nestorian Christians were received there, and brought Syriac translations of Greek works in medicine and philosophy. Neoplatonists there planted the seeds of Sufi mysticism.

"There the medical lore of India, Persia, Syria, and Greece mingled to produce a flourishing school of therapy.

"In Persian theory disease resulted from contamination and impurity of one or more of the four elements -- fire, water, earth, and air. Public health, said Persian physicians and priests, required the burning of all putrefying matter, and individual health demanded strict obedience to the Zoroastrian code of cleanliness.

"Of Persian astronomy in this period we only know that it maintained an orderly calendar, divided the year into twelve months of thirty days, each month into two seven-day and two eight-day weeks, and added five intercalary days at the end of the year.

"Astrology and magic were universal. No imporant step was taken without reference to the status of the constellations.

"Now and then they protected the citizen against the taxgatherer, and the poor against oppression. The Magian organization was so rich that kings sometimes borrowed great sums from the temple treasuries.

"Every important town had a fire temple in which a sacred flame, supposedly inextinguishable, symbolized the god of light. Only a life of virtue and ritual cleanliness could save the soul from the Ahriman. In the battle against that devil it was vital to have the aid of the Magi and their magic -- their divinations, incantations, sorceries, and prayers.

"So helped, the soul would attain holiness and purity, pass the awful assize of the Last Judgment, and enjoy everlasting happiness in paradise.

"Around this official faith other religions found modest room. Mithras, the sun god so popular with the Parthians, received a minor worship as chief helper of Ormuzd.The Zoroastrian priests, like the Christians, Moslems, and Jews, made persistent apostasy from the national creed a capital crime.

"When Mani (c.216-76), claiming to be a fourth divine messenger in the line of Buddha, Zoroaster, and Jesus, announced a religion of celibacy, pacifism, and quietism, the militant and nationalist Magi had him cricified. Manicheism had to seek its main success abroad. To Judaism and Christianity, however, the Sasanian priests and kings were generally tolerant, much as the popes were more lenient with Jews than with heretics.

"A large number of Jews found asylum in the western provinces of the Persian Empire. Christianity was alrady established there when the Sasanians came to power. It was tolerated until it became the official faith of Persia's immemorial enemies, Greece and Rome.

"It was persecuted after its clergy, as at Nisibis in 338, took an active part in the defense of Byzantine territory against Shapur II, and the Christians in Persia revealed their natural hopes for a Byzantine victory. In 341 Shapur ordered the massacre of all Christians in his Empire. Entire villages of Christians were being slaughtered when he restricted the proscription to priests, monks, and nuns. Even so 16,000 Christians died in a persecution that lasted until Shapur's death (379). Yezdegird I (399-420) restored religious freedom to the Christians and helped them rebuild their churches.

"Much spiritual solace was needed by the Persian peasant, for usually he toiled as tenant for a feudal lord, and paid from a sixth to a third of his crops in taxes and dues.

"About 540 the Persians took from India the art of making sugar from the cane. The Greek Emperor Heraclius found a treasury of sugar in the royal palace at Cresiphon (627). The Arabs, conquering Persia fourteen years later, soon learned to cultivate the plant, and introduced it into Egypt, Sicily, Morocco, and Spain, whence it sprad through Europe.

"Animal husbandry was a Persian forte. Persian horses were second only to Arab steeds in pedigree, spirit, beauty, and speed. Evry Persian loved a horse as Rustam loved Rakush.

"Artabanus V, last of the Arsacid or Parthian kings of Persia, refused to recognize this new local dynasty. Ardashir overthrew Artabanus in battle (224) and became King of Kings (226).

"He replaced the loose feudal rule of the Arsacids with a strong royal power governing through a centralized but spreading bureaucracy -- won the support of the priestly caste by restoring the Zoroastrian hierarchy and faith -- and roused the pride of the people by announcing tht he would destroy Hellenistic influence in Persia -- avenge Darius II against the heirs of Alexander -- and reconquer all the territory once held by the Achaemenid kings.

"He almost kept his word. His swift campaigns extended the boundaries of Persia to the Oxus in the northeast, and to the Euphrates in the west.

"Dying, he placed the crown on the head of his son, Shapur, and bade him drive the Greeks and Romans into the sea.

"Shapur or Sapor I (241-72) inheritd all the vigor and craft of his father. The rock reliefs represent him as a man of handsome and noble features but these reliefs were doubtless stylized compliments. He received a good education and loved learning. He was so charmed by the conversation of the Sophist Eustathius, the Greek ambassador, that he thought of resigning his throne and becoming a philosopher.

"Unlike his later namesake, he gave full freedom to all religions, allowed Mani to preach at his court and declared that 'Magi, Manicheans, Jews, Christians, and all men of whatever religion should be left undisturbed' in his Empire.

"Continuing Ardashir's redaction of the Avesta, he persuaded the priests to include in this Persian Bible secular works on metaphysics, astronomy, and medicine, mostly borrowed from India and Greece.

"He was a liberal patron of the arts. He was not as great a general as Shapur II or the two Khosrus, but he was the ablest administrator in the long Sasanian line. He built a new capital at Shapur, whose ruins still bear his name. At Shushtar, on the Karun River, he raised one of the major engineering works of antiquity -- a dam of granite blocks, forming a bridge 1710 feet long and 20 feet wide. The course of the stream was temporarily changed to allow the construction. Its bed was solidly paved and great sluice gates regulated the flow.

"Tradition says that Shapur used Roman engineers and prisoners to design and build this dam which toninued to function to our own century.

"Turning reluctantly to war, Shapur invaded Syria, reached Antioch, was defeated by a Roman army, and made a peace (244) that restored to Rome all that he had taken.

"Resenting Armenia's co-operation with Rome, he entered that country and established there a dynasty friendly to Persia (252). His right flank so protected, he resumed the war with Rome, defeated and captured the Emperor Valerian (26), sacked Antioch, and took thousands of prisoners to forced labor in Iran.

"We do not know if these strange habits precluded his son from inheriting the throne. In any case, when Hormizd died, the nobles imprisoned his son and gave the throne to his unborn child, whom they confidiently hailed as Shapur II.

"To make matters clear they crowned the foetus by suspending the royal diadem over the mother's womb.

"With this good start Shapur II entered upon the longest reign in Asiatic history (309-79). From childhood he was trained for war. He hardened his body and will and at sixteen took the government and the field.

"Invading eastern Arabia, he laid waste a score of villages, killed thousands of captives, and led others into bondage by cords attached to their wounds.

"In 337 he renewed the war with Rome for mastery of the trade routes to the Far East, and continued it, with pacific intervals, almost until his death.

"The conversion of Rome and Armenia to Christianity gave the old struggle a new intensity, as if the gods in Homeric frenzy had joined the fray. Through forty years Shapur fought a long line of Roman emperors. Julian drove him bck to Ctesiphon, but retreated ingoriously. Jovian, outmaneuvered, was forced to a peace (363) that yielded to Shapur the Roman provinces on the Tigris, and all Armenia.

"They overcame and slew King Firuz (459-84) and forced King Balas (484- to pay them tribute.

"So threatened in the east, Persia was at the same time thrown into chaos by the struggle of the monarchy to maintain its authority against the nobles and the priests. Kavadh I (488-531) thought to weaken these enemies by encouraging a communist movement which had made them the chief object of its attack.

"About 490 Mazdak, a Zoroastrian priest, had proclaimed himself God-sent to preach an old creed:--that all men are born equal, that no one has any natural right to possess more than another, that property and marriage are human inventions and miserable mistakes, and that all goods and all women should be the common property of all men. His enemies claimed that he condoned theft, adultery, and incest as natural protests against property and marriage, and as legitimate approximations to utopia.

"The poor and some others heard himn gladly, but Mazdak was probably surprised to receive the approval of a king. His followers began to plunder not only the homes but the harems of the rich, and to carry off for their own uses the most illustrious and costly concubines. The outraged nobles imprisoned Kavadh, and set his brothr Djamasp upon the throne.

"After three years in the 'Castle of Oblivion' Kavadh escaped, and fled to the Ephthalites. Eager to have a dependent as the ruler of Persia, they provided him with an army, and helped him to take Ctesiphon. Djamasp abdicated, the nobles fled to their estates, and Kavadh was again King of Kings (499).

"Having made his power secure, he turned upon the communists, and put Mazdak and thousands of his followers to death. Perhaps the movement had raised the status of labor, for the decrees of the council of state were henceforth signed not only by princes and preltes but also by the heads of the major guilds.

"His subjects called him 'the Just', and perhaps he merited the title if we separate justice from mercy. Procopius described him as'a past master at feigning piety' and breaking his word, but Procopius was of the enemy.

"The Persian historian al-Tabari praised Khosru's 'penetration, knowledge, intelligence, courage, and prudence' and put into his mouth an inaugural speech well invented if not true.

"He completely reorganized the government, chose his aides for ability regardless of rank, and raised his son's tutor, Buzurgmihr, to be a celebratged vizier.

"He replaced untrained feudal levies with a standing army disciplined and competent. He established a more equitable system of taxation and consolidated Persian law.

"He built dams and canals to improve the water supply of the cities and the irrigation of farms. He reclaimed waste lands by giving their cultivators cattle, implements, and seed.

"He promoted commerce by the construction, repair, and protection of bridges and roads. He devoted his great energy zealously to the service of his people and the state.

"He encouraged -- compelled -- marriage on the ground that Persia needed more population to man its fields and frontiers. He persuaded bachelors to marry by dowering the wives and educating their children, with state funds. He maintained and educated orphans and poor childrne at the public expense.

"He punished apostasy with death but tolerated Christianity, even in his harem. He gathered about him philosophers, physicians, and scholars from India and Greece, and delighted to discuss with them the problems of life, government, and death.

"One discussion turned on the question:-'What is the greatest misery?' A Greek philosopher answered:-'An impoverished and imbecile old age.' A Hindu replied:-'A harassed mind in a diseased body.' Khosru's vizier won the dutiful acclaim of all by saying:-'For my part I think the extreme misery is for a man to see the end of life approaching without having practiced virtue.'

"Khosru suppported literature, science, and scholarship with substantial subsidies, and financed many translations and histories in his reign. The university at Jund-i-Shapur reached the apogee.

"Justinian had made an alliance with Abyssinia. His successor Justin II considered the Persian expulsion of the Abyssinians from Arabia an unfriendly act. Moreover, the Turks on Persia's eastern border secretly agreed to join an attack upon Khosru. Justin declared war (572).

"Despite his age, Khosru took the field in person and captured the Roman frontier town of Dara. His health failed him. He suffered his first defeat (578) and retired to Ctesiphon where he died in 579 at an uncertain age.

"In forty-eight years of rule he had won all his wars and battles except one, had extended his empire on every side, had made Persia stronger than ever since Darius I and had given it so competent a system of administration that when the Arabs conquered Persia they adopted that system practically without change.

"Almost contemporary with Justinian, he was rated by the common consent of their contemporaries as the greater king. The Persians of every later generation counted him the strongest and ablest monarch in their history.

"His son Hormizd IV )579-89) was overthrown by a general, Bahram Cobin, who made himself regent for Hormizd's son Khosru II (589) and a year later made himself king. When Khosru came of age he demanded the throne. Bahram refused. Khosru fled to Hierapolis in Roman Syria. The Greek Emperor Maurice offered to restore him to power if Persia would withdraw from Armenia.

"Byzantine being torn by sedition and faction, the Persian armies took Dara, Amida, Edessa, Hierapolis, Aleppo, Apames, Damascus (605-13). Inflamed with success, Parvez proclaimed a holy war against the Christians. 26,000 Jews joined his army. In 614 his combined forces sacked Jerusalem, and massacred 90,000 Christians.

"Many Christian churches, including that of the Holy Sepulcher, were burned to the ground. The True Cross, the most cherished of all Christian relics, was carried off to Persia.

"To Heraclius, the new Emperor, Parvez sent a theological inquiry:-'Khosru, greatest of gods and master of the whole earth, to Heraclius, his vile and insensate slave. You say that you trust in your god. Why, then, has he not delivered Jerusalem out of my hands?'

"In 616 a Persian army captured Alexandria. By 619 all Egypt, as not since Darius II, belonged to the King of Kings. Meanwhile another Persian army overran Asia Minor and captured Chalcedon (617). For ten years the Persians held that city, separated from Constantinople only by the narrow Bosporus.

"During that decade Parvez demolished churches, transported their art and wealth to Persia, and taxed Western Asia into a destitution that left it resourceless against an Arab conquest now only a generation away.

"Khosru turned over the conduct of the war to his generals, retired to his luxurious palace at Dastagird (some sixty miles north of Ctesiphon), and gave himself to art and love. He assembled architects, sculptors, and painters to make his new capital outshine the old, and to carve likenesses of Shirin, the fairest and most loved of his 3000 wives.

"The Persians complained that she was a Christian. Some alleged that she had converted the King. In any case, amid his holy war, he allowed her to build many churches and monasteries. But Persia, prospering with spoils and a resplenished slave supply, could forgive its king his self-indulgence, his art, even his toleration. It hailed his victories as the final triumph of Persia over Greece and Rome, of Ormuzd over Christ.

"Heraclius took ten years to build a new army and state out of the ruins. Then, instead of attempting a costly crossing at Chalcedon, he sailed into the Black Sea, crossed Armenia, and attacked Persia in the rear. As Khosru had desecrated Jerusalem, so now Heraclius destroyed Clorumia, birthplace of Zoroaster, and put out its sacred inextinguishable light (624).

"Khosru sent army after army against him. They were all defeated. As the Greeks advanced, Khosru fled to Ctesiphon. His generals, smarting under his insults, joined the nobles in deposing him.

"Extant Sasanian architecture is entirely secular. The fire temples have disappeared and only royal palaces remain. These are 'gigantic skeletons' with their ornamental stucco facing long since fallen away.

"The oldest of these ruins is the so-called palace of Ardashir I at Firuzabad, southeast of Shiraz. No one knows its date. Guesses range from 340 B.C. to A.D. 460. After fifteen centuries of heat and cold, theft and war, the enormous dome still covers a hall one hundred feet high and fifty-five wide. A portal arch eighty-nine feet high and forty-two wide divided a facade 170 feet long. This facade crumbled in our time.

"From the rectangular central hall squinch arches led up to a circular dome. By an unusual and interesting arrangement, the pressure of the dome was borne by a double hollow wall, whose inner and outer frames were spanned by a barrel vault. To this reinforcement of inner by outer wall were added external buttresses of attached pilasters of heavy stones.

"Northwest of Susa another ruined palace, the Ivan-Kharka, shows the oldest known example of the transverse vault, formed with diagonal ribs.

"But the most impressive of Sasanian relics -- which frightened the conquering Arabs by its mass -- was the royal palace of Ctesiphon, named by the Arabs Taq-i-Kisra, or Arch of Khosru (I). It may be the building described by a Greek historian of A.D. 638, who tells how Justinian 'provided Greek marble for Chosroes, and skilled artisans who built for him a palace in the Roman style, not far from Ctesiphon.'

"The north wing collapsed in 1888, the dome is gone, three immense walls rise to a height of one hundred and five feet, with a facade horizontally divided into five tiers of blind arcades. A lofty central arch -- the highest (eighty-five feet) and widest(seventy-two feet) elliptical arch known -- opened upon a hall one hundred and fifteen by seventy-five feet. The Sasanian kings relished room.

"Finer are those at Naqsh-i-Rustam, near Persepolis, celebrating Ardashir, Shapur I, and Bahram II. The kings are drawn as dominating figures but, like most kings and men, they find it hard to rival the grace and symmetry of the animals.

"Similar reliefs at Naqsh-i-Redjab and at Shapur present powerful stone portraits of Shapur I and Bahram I and II.

"At Taq-i-Bustan -- Arch of the Garden -- near Kermanshah, two column-supported arches are deeply cut into the cliff. Reliefs on the inner and outer faces of the arches show Shapur II and Khosru Parvez at the hunt. The stone comes alive with fat elephants and wild pigs. The foliage is carefully done and the capitals of the columns are handsomely curved.

"There is in these sculptures no Greek grace of movement or smoothness of line -- no keen individualization -- no sense of perspective -- and little modeling. But in dignity and majesty, in masculine vitality and power, they bear comparison with most of the arch reliefs of imperial Rome.

"Apparently these carvings were colored. So were many features of the palaces. Only traces of such painting remain.

"The literature, however, makes it clear that the art of painting flourished in Sasanian times. The prophet Mani is reported to have founded a school of painting.

"Firdausi speaks of Persian magnates adorning their mansions with pictures of Iranian heroes and the poet al-Buhturi (d. 897) describes the murals in the palace of Ctesiphon.

"Every Persian but the peasant and the priest aspired to dress above his class. Presents often took the form of sumptuous garments. Great colorful carpets had been an appanage of wealth in the East since Assyrian days.

"The two dozen Sasanian textiles that escaped the teeth of time are the most highly valued fabrics in existence. Even in their own day Sasanian textiles were admired and imitated from Egypt to Japan. During the Crusades these pagan products were favored for clothing the relics of Christian saints.

"When Heraclius captured the palace of Khosru Parvez at Dastagird, delicate embroideries and an immense rug were among his most precious spoils.

"Famous was the 'winter carpet' of Khosru Anushirvan, designed to make him forget winter in its spring and summer scenes -- flowers and fruits made of inwoven rubies and diamonds grew, in this carpet, beside walks of silver and brooks of pearls traced on a ground of gold.

"Harun-al-Rashid prided himself on a spacious Sasanian rug thickly studded with jewelry.

"Sasanian metal workers made ewers, jugs, bowls, and cups as if for a giant race, turned them on lathes, incised them with graver or chisel, or hammered out a desigh in repousse from the obverse side, and used gay animal forms, ranging from cock to lion, as handles and spous.

"The famous glass 'Cup of Khosru' in the Biblioteque Nationale at Paris has medallions of crystal glass inserted into a network of beaten gold. Tradition reckons this among the gifts sent by Harun to Charlemagne.

"Sasanian coins sometimes rivaled Rome's in beauty, as in the issues of Shapur I.

"Even Sasaniam books could be works of art. Tradition tells how gold and silver trickled from the bindings when Mani's books were publicly burned.

"Precious materials were also used in Sasanian furniture. Khosru I had a gold table inlaid with costly stones.

"It welcomed new ideas and styles and Khosru I had the good sense to import Greek artists and engineers while defeating Greek generals. Repaying its debt, Sasanian art exported its forms and motives eastward into India, Turkestan, and China, westward into Syria, Asia Minor, Constantinople, the Balkans, Egypt, and Spain.

"Probably its influence helped to change the emphasis in Greek art from classic representation to Byzantine ornament, and in Latin Christian art from wooden ceilings to brick or stone vaults and domes and buttressed walls. The great portals and cupolas of Sasanian architecture passed down into Moslem mosques and Mogul palaces and shrines.

"Heraclius reasonably rejoiced over so thorough a triumph. He did not observe that on the very day in 629 when he replaced the True Cross in its shrine a band of Arabs attcked a Greek garrison near the River Jordan.

"In that same year pestilence broke out in Persia. Thousands died of it, including the King. His son Ardashir III, aged seven, was proclaimed ruler. A general, Shahr-Baraz, killed the boy and usurped the throne. His own soldiers killed Shahr-Baraz, and dragged his corpse through the streets of Ctesiphon, shouting:-'Whoever, not being of royal blood, seats himself upon the throne of Persia, will share this fate.'

"The populace is always more royalist than the king. Anarchy now swept through a realm exhausted by twenty-six years of war. Social disintegration climaxed a moral decay that had come with the riches of victory.

"In four years nine rulers contested the throne and disappeared through assassination, or flight, or an abnormally natural death. Provinces, even cities, declared their independence of a central government no longer able to rule.

"Perhaps because of these imnpediments, Omar forbade Saad to advance farther east. He said:-'Iraq is enough.' Saad complied and spent the next three years establishing Arab rule throughout Mesopotamia.

"Meanwhile Yezdegird, in his northern provinces, raised another army, 150,000 strong. Omar sent against him 30,000 men.

"At Nahavand superior tactics won the 'Victory of Victories' for the Arabs. One hundred thousand Persians, caught in narrow defiles, were massacred (641).

"Soon all Persia was in Arab hands. Yezdegird fled to Balkh, begged aid of China and was refused. Begged aid of the Turks and was given a small force. As he started outon his new campaign, some Turkish soldiers murdered him for his jewelry (652).

"No one in those years would have dreamed that withn a century these nomads would conquer half of Byzantine Asia, all Persia and Egypt, most of North Africa, and be on their way to Spain.

"'Arab' means arid. Physically Arabia is a vast plateau, rising precipitously to 12,000 feet within thirty miles of the Red Sea, and sloping through mountainous wastelands eastward to the Persian Gulf.

"In the center are some grassy oases and palm-studded villages, where water can be reached by shallow wells. Around this nucleus the sands stretch in every direction for hundrreds of miles. Snow falls there once in forty years.

"The nights cool down to 38 degrees Fahrenheit. The daily sun burns the face and boils the blood. The sand-laden air necessitates long robes and head-bands to guard flesh and hair. The skies are almost always clear, the air 'like sparkling wine.'

"An inscription tentatively ascribed to 2300 B.C. mentions another Arabian kingdom, Saba, in Yemen. From Saha or its North Arabian colonies, it is now agreed, the Queen of Sheba 'went up' to Solomon about 950 B.C.

"The Sabaean kings made their capital at Marib, fought the usual wars of 'defense,' built great irrigation works like the Marib dams (whose ruins are still visible), raised gigantic castles and temples, subsidized religion handsomely, and used it as an instrument of rule. Their inscriptions -- probably not older than 900 B.C. -- are beautifully carved in an alphabetical script.

"The Sabaeans produced the frankincense and myrrh that played so prominent a role in Asiatic and Egyptian rituals. They controlled the sea trade between India and Egypt, and the south end of the caravan route that led through Mecca and Medina to Petra and Jerusalem.

"About 115 B.C. another petty kingdom of southwest Arabia, the Himyarite, conquered Saba, and thereafter controlled Arabian trade for several centuries.

"In 25 B.C. Augustus, irked by Arabian control of Egyptian-Indian commerce, sent an army under Aelius Gallus to capture Marib. The legions were misled by native guides, were decimated by heat and disease, and failed in their mission.

"The term Semitic is due to the Legendary derivation of the peoples so called from Shem, son of Noah (Gen. x.1)

"No clear definition of Semite can be given. In general the populations of Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Arabia, and the Arab populations of Africa may be called Semitic in the sense that they use semitic languages.

"The ancient peoples of Asia Minor, Armenia, and the Caucasus, and the peoples of Persia, North India, most of Europe, and all of the Europeanized Americas may be called 'Indo-European' as using Indo-Germanic tongues.

"The Abyssinians received Christianity, crafts, and arts from Egypt and Byzantium. Their merchant vessels sailed as far as India and Ceylon. Seven little kingdoms acknowledgd the Negus as their sovereign.

"Meanwhile in Arabia many Himyarites followed the lead of their king Dhu-Nuwas and accepted Judaism. With a convert's zeal Dhu-Nuwas persecuted the Christians of southwest Arabia. They called to their coreligionists to rescue them. The Abyssinians came, conquered the Himyarite kings (A.D. 522), and replaced them with an Abyssinian dynasty.

"Long before Mohammed the Arabs had expanded into Syria and Iraq.

"Aside from these petty kingdoms of south and north, and to a large extent within them, the political organization of pre-Islamic Arabia was a primitive kinship structure of families united in clans and tribes. Tribes were named from a supposed common ancestor. The bani-Ghassan thought themselves the 'children of Ghassan.'

"Arabia as a political unit, before Mohammed, existed only in the careless nomenclature of the Greeks, who called all the population of the peninsula Sarakenoi, Saracens, apparently from the Arabic sharqiyun, 'Easterners.'

"Diffculties of communication compelled local or tribal self-sufficiency and particularism. The Arab felt no duty or loyalty to any group larger than his tribe, but the intensity of his devotion varied inversely as its extent. For his tribe he would do with a clear conscience what civilized people do only for their country, religion, or 'race' -- i.e. lie, steal, kill, and die.

"Some nursed aromatic plants like frankincense, thyme, jasmine, and lavender. Some pressed itr or attar from highland roses. Some cupped trees to draw myrrh or balsam from the trunks.

"Possibly a twelfth of the population lived in cities on or near the west coast. Here was a succession of harbors and markers for Red Sea commerce, while further inland lay the great caravan routes to Syria.

"The Bedouin loved horses but in the desert the camel was the greatest friend. It pitched and rolled with undulent dignity, and made only eight miles an hour but it could go without water five days in summer and twenty-five in winter. Its udders gave milk, its urine provided hair tonic, its dung could be burned for fuel. When it died it made tender meat and its hair and hide made clothing and tents.

"With such varied sustenance the Bedouin could face the desert, as patient and enduring as his camel, as sensitive and spirited as his horse. Short and thin, well-knit and strong, he could live day after day on a few dates and a little milk. From dates he made the wine that raised him out of the dust into romance. He varied the routine of his life with love and feud, and was as quick as a Spaniard (who inherited his blood) to avenge insult and injury, not only for himself but for his clan.

"A good part of his life was spent in tribal war. When he conquered Syria, Persia, Egypt, and Spain, it was but an exuberant expansion of his plundering razzias or raids.

"Certain periods in the year he conceded to the 'holy truce' for religious pilgrimage or for trade. Otherwise, he felt, the desert was his. Whoever crossed it, except in that time, or without paying him tribute, was an interloper. To rob such trespassers was an unusually straighforward form of taxation.

"Before Mohammed -- and after him, only slightly less so -- the career of the Arab woman passed from a moment's idolatry to a lifetime of drudgery. She might be buried at birth if the father so willed. At best he mourned her coming and hid his face from his fellows. Somehow his best efforts had failed.

"Her winsome childhood earned a few years of love but at seven or eight she was married off to any youth of the clan whose father would offer the purchase price for the bride. Her lover and husband would fight the world to defend her person or honor. Some of the seeds and fustian of chivalry went with these passionate lovers to Spain.

"But the goddess was also a chattel. She formed part of the estate of her father, her husband, or her son and was bequeathed with it. She was always the servant, rarely the comrade, of the man. He demanded many children of her, or rather many sons. Her duty was to produce warriors.

"His language was closely kin to the Hebrew -- complex in inflections -- rich in vocabulary -- precise in differentiations -- expressing now every manner of poetry, later every subtlety of philosophy. The Arabs took pride in the antiquity and fullness of their language -- loved to roll its mellifluous syllables in oratorical flourishes on tongue or pen -- and listened with tense ecstasy to the poets who, in villages and cities, in desert camps or at the fairs, recalled to them, in running meters and endless rhymes, the loves and wars of their heroes, tribes, or kings.

"The poet was to the Arabs their historian, genealogist, satirist, moralist, newspaper, oracle, call to battle. When a poet won a prize at one of the many poetry contests, his whole tribe felt honored, and rejoiced.

"Every year at the Ukaz fair, the greatest of these contests was held. Almost daily for a month the clans competed through their poets. There were no judges but the eagerly or scornfully listening multitudes. The winning poems were written down in brilliantly illuminated characters, were therefore called the Golden Songs, and were preserved like heirlooms in the treasuries of princes and kings.

"Singing girls were often invited to amuse male banqueteers. Taverns were equipped with them. The Ghassanid kings kept a troupe of them to ease the cares of royalty. When the Meccans marched against Mohammed in 624 they took with them a bevy of singing girls to warm their campfires and prod them on to war.

music and poetry a powerful combination, to say nothing of adding art. Of course this is modern but serves to illustrate the point. http://www.geocities.com/artetal/memories.html

"We may judge the antiquity of this Arab pantheon from the mention of Al-il-Lat (al-Lat) by Herodotus as a major Arbian deity. The Quraish paved the way for monotheism by worshiping Allah as chief god. He was presented to the Meccans as the Lord of their soil, to Whom they must pay a tithe of their crops and the first-born of their herds. The Quraish, as alleged descendants of Abraham and Ishmael, appointed the priests and guardians of the shrine, and managed its revenues.

"An aristocratic minority of the tribe, as descendants of Qusay, controlled the civil government of Mecca.

"At the beginning of the sixth century, the Quraish were divided into two factions -- one led by the rich merchant and philanthropist, Hashim -- the other by Hashim's jealous nephew, Ummayya. This bitter rivalry would determine much history.

"When Hashim died he was succeeded as one of Mecca's chiefs by his son or younger brother, Abd al-Muttalib. In 568 the latter's son Abdallah married Amina, also a descendant of Qusay. Abdallah remained with his bride three days, set out on a mercantile expedition, and died at Medina on the way back.

"His mother died when he was six. He was taken over by his grandfather, then seventy-six, and later by his uncle Abu Talib. They gave him affection and care but no one seems to have bothered to teach him how to read or write.

"This feeble accomplishment was held in low repute by the Arabs of the time. Only seventeen men of the Quraish tribe condescended to it.

"Then suddenly we find him, aged twenty-five, marrying her, aged forty and the mother of several children. Until her death twenty-six years later Mohammed lived with Khadija in a monogamous condition highly unusual for a Moslem of means, but perhaps natural in their recipient.

"She bore him some daughters, of whom the most famous was Fatima, and two sons who died in infancy. He consoled his grief by adopting Ali, the orphan son of Abu Talib.

"Khadija was a good woman, a good wife, a good merchant. She remained loyal to Mohammed through all his spiritual vicissitudes and amid all his wives he remembered her as the best.

Ali, who married Fatima, fondly describes his adoptive father at forty-five as

'of middle stature, neither tall nor short. His complexion was rosy white, his eyes black. His hair, thick, brilliant, and beautiful, fell to his shoulders. His profuse beard fell to his breast. There was such sweetness in his visage that no one, once in his presence, could leave him. If I hungered, a single look at the Prophet's face dispelled the hunger. Before him all forgot their griefs and pains.'

"He was a man of dignity and seldom laughed. He kept his keen sense of humor under control, knowing its hazards for public men. Of a delicate constitution, he was nervous, impressionable, given to melancholy pensiveness.

"Many a page of the Koran proves that he learned to admire the morals of the Christians, the monotheism of the Jews, and the strong support given to Christianity and Judaism by the possession of Scriptures believed to be a revelation from God.

"Compared with these faiths the polytheistic idolatry, loose morality, trial warfare, and political disunity of Arabia may have seemed to him shamefully primitive. He felt the need of a new religion -- perhaps of one that would unify all these factious groups into a virile and healthy nation -- a religion that would give them a morality not earth-bound to the Bedouin law of violence and revenge, but based upon commandments of divine origin and therefore of indisputable force.

"Others may have had similar thoughts. We hear of several 'prophets' arising in Arabia about the beginning of the seventh century. Many Arabs had been influenced by the Messianic expectations of the Jews. They, too, eagerly awaited a messenger from God. One Arab sect, the Hanifs, already rejected the healthen idolatry of the Kaaba, and preached a universal God, of whom all mankind should be willing slaves.

'Whilst I was asleep, with a coverlet of silk brocade whereon was some writing, the angel Gabriel appeared to me and said, 'Read!' I said: 'I do not read.' He pressed me with the coverlets so tightly that methought 'twas death. Then he let me go, and said: 'Read!' So I read aloud and he departed from me at last.

'And I awoke from my sleep and it was as though these words were written on my heart. I went forth until, when I was midway on the mountain, I heard a voice from heaven saying:: 'O Mohammed! thou art the messenger of Allah, and I am Gabriel.' I raised my head toward heaven to see and lo - Gabriel in the form of a man, with feet set evenly on the rim of the sky, saying: 'O Mohammed! thou art the messenger of Allah, and I am Gabriel.'

"Mohammed later attributed his gray hairs to those experiences. When pressed to describe the process of revelation, he answered that the entire text of the Koran existed in heaven and that one fragment at a time was communicated to him, usually by Gabriel. Asked how he could remember these divine discourses, he explained that the achangel made him repeat every word.

"Others who were near the Prophet at the time neither saw nor heard the angel. Possibly his convulsions were epileptic seizures. They were sometimes accompanied by a sound reported by him as like the ringing of a bell -- a frequent occurrence in epileptic fits. But we hear of no tongue-biting, no loss of prehensile strength, such as usually occurs in epilepsy nor does Mohammed's history show that degeneration of brain power which epilepsy generally brings. On the contrary, he advanced in clarity of thought and in confident leadership and power until his sixtieth year.

"Difficulties were many. New ideas are welcomed only if promising early material advantage. Mohammed lived in a mercantile, skeptical community which derived some of its revenues from pilgrims coming to worship the Kaaba's many gods. Against this handicap he made some progress by offering to believers an escape from a threatened hell into a joyous and tangible paradise.

"He opened his house to all who would hear him -- rich and poor and slaves, Arabs and Christians and Jews. His impassioned eloquence moved a few to belief. His first convert was his aging wife -- the second his cousin Ali -- the third his servant Zaid, whom he had bought as a slave and had immediately freed -- the fourth was his kinsman, Abu Bekr, a man of high standing among the Quraish.

"Abu Bekr brought to his new faith five other Meccan leaders. He and these became the Prophet's six 'Companions" whose memories of him would later constitute the most revered traditions of Islam. Mohammed went often to the Kaaba, accosted pilgrims, and preached the one god.

"The Quraish heard him at first with smiling patience, called him a half wit, and proposed to send him, at their own expense, to a physician who might cure him of his madness. But when he attacked the Kaaba worship as idolatry, they rose to the protection of their income and would have done him injury had not his uncle Abu Talib shielded him.

"Abu Talib would have none of the new faith but his very fidelity to old ways required him to defend any member of his clan.

"Fear of a blood feud deterred the Quraish from using violence upon Mohammed or his freemen followers. Upon converted slaves, however, they might employ dissuasive measures without offending tribal law. Several of these were jailed. Some were exposed for hours, without head covering or drink, to the glare of the sun.

"Abu Bekr had by years of commerce saved 40,000 pieces of silver. Now he used 35,000 to buy the freedom of as many converted slaves as he could. Mohammed eased the situation by ruling that recantation under duress was forgivable.

"The Quraish were more disturbed by Mohammed's welcome to slaves than by his religious creed. Persecution of the poorer converts continued and with such severity that the Prophet permitted or advised their emigration to Abyssinia.

"He was a man of great physical strength, social power, and moral courage. His allegiance brought timely confidence to the harassed believers and new adherents to the cause. Instead of hiding their worship in private homes they now preached it boldly in the streets.

"The defenders of the Kaaba gods formed a league pledged to renounce all intercourse with members of the Hashimite clan who still felt obligated to shield Mohammed. To avert conflict, many Hashimites, including Mohammed and his family, withdrew to a secluded quarter of Mecca, where Abu Talib could provide protection (615).

"For over two years this separation of the clans continued,until some members of the Quraish, relenting, invited the Hashimites to return to their deserted homes and pledged them peace.

"The little group of converts rejoiced but the year 619 brought triple misfortune to Mohammed. Khadija, his most loyal supporter, and Abu Talib, his protector, died. Feeling insecure in Mecca and discouraged by the slow increase of his followers there, Mohammed moved to Taif (620), a pleasant town sixty miles east.

"But Taif rejected him. Its leaders did not care to offend the merchant aristocrcy of Mecca. Its populace, horrified by any religious innovation, hooted him through the streets and pelted him with stones until blood flowed from his legs.

"The legend of this flight made Jerusalem a third holy city for Islam.

"In the year 620 Mohammed preached to merchants who had come from Medina on pilgrimage to the Kaaba. They heard him with some acceptance for the doctrine of monotheism, a divine messenger, and the Last Judgment were familiar to them from the creed of the Medina Jews.

"Returning to their city, some of them expounded the new gospel to their friends. Several Jews, seeing little difference between Mohammed's teaching and their own, gave it a tentative welcome. In 622 some seventy-three ciizens of Medina came privately to Mohammed and invited him to make Medina his home. He asked would they protect him as faithfully as their own families. They vowed they would but asked what reward they would receive should they be killed in the process.

"Possibly he had heard that the Prophet was meditating flight and feared that Mohammed, once established in Medina, might stir it to war against Mecca and the Kaaba cult. At his urging, the Quraish commissioned some of their number to apprehend Mohammed, perhaps to kill him.

"Appraised of the plot, Mohammed fled with Abu Bekr to the cave of Thaur, a league distant. The Quraish emissaries sought them for three days, but failed to find them.

"The children of Abu Bekr brought camels and the two men rode northward through the night and through many days for 200 miles until, on September 24, 622, they arrived at Medina. Two hundred Meccan adherents had preceded them in the guise of departing pilgrims and stood at the city's gates with the Medina converts to welcome the Prophet.

"As Mohammed rode into the town one group after another called to him:-'Alight here, O Prophet! Abide with us!' -- and with Arab persistence some caught the halter of his camel to detain him. His answer was perfect diplomacy:-'The choice lies with the camel. Let him advance freely.' The advice quieted jealousy and hallowed his new residence as chosen by God.

"Where his camel stopped, Mohammed built a mosque and two adjoining homes -- one for Sauda, one for Aisha. Later he added new apartments as he took new wives.

"In leaving Mecca he had snapped many kinship ties. Now he tried to replace bonds of blood with those of religious brotherhood in a theocratic state. To mitigate the jealousy already rampant between the Refugees (Muhajirin) from Mecca and the Helpers (Ansar) or converts in Medina, he coupled each member of the one group with a member of the other in adoptive brotherhood and called both groups to worship in sacred union in the mosque.

"In the first ceremony held there he mounted the pulpit and cried in a loud voice:-'Allah is most great!' The assembly burst forth in the same proclamation. Then, still standing with his back to the congregation, he bowed in prayer. He descended the pulpit backward and at hts foot he prostrated himself thrice while continuing to pray.

"In these prostrations were symbolized that submission of the soul to Allah which gave to the new faith its name Islam -- 'to surrender,' 'to make peace' -- and to its adherents the kindred name of Muslimin or Moslems -- 'the surrendering ones,' 'those who have made their peace with God.' Turning then to the assembly, Mohammed bade it observe this ritual to the end of time. To this day it is the form of prayer that Moslems follow, whether at the mosque, or traveling in the desert, or mosqueless in alien lands.

"As in Judaism, no distinction was made betwen secular and religious affairs. All alike came under religious jurisdiction. He was both Caesar and Christ.

"But not all Medinites accepted his authority. A majority of the Arabs stood aside as 'the Disaffected,' viewed the new creed and its ritual skeptically, and wondered whether Mohammed was destroying their traditions and liberties, and involving them in war. Most of the Medina Jews clung to their own faith and continued to trade with the Meccan Quraish.

"Mohammed drew up with these Jews a subtle concordat:-

'The Jews who attach themselves to our commonwealth shall be protected from all insults and vexations. They shall have an equal right with our own peole to our assistance and good offices. They shall form with the Moslems one composite nation. They shall practice their religion as freely as the Moslems. They shall join the Moslems in defending Yathrib against all enemies. All future disputes between those who accept this charter shall be referred, under God, to the Prophet.'

"He retaliated with revelation in which Allah charged the Jews with corrupting the Scriptures, killing the prophets, and rejecting the Messiah. Originally he had made Jerusalem the qibla -- the point toward which Moslems should turn to prayer. In 624 he changed this to Mecca and the Kaaba. The Jews accused him of returning to idolatry.

"About this time a Moslem girl visited the market of the Bani-Kainuka Jews in Medina. As she sat in a goldsmith's shop a mischievous Jew pinned her skirt behind her to her upper dress. When she arose she cried out in shame at her exposure. A Moslem slew the offending Jew whose brothers then slew the Moslem.

"Mohammed marshaled his followers, blockaded the Banu-Kainuka Jews in their quarter for fifteen days, accepted their surrender and bade them, 700 in number, depart from Medina and leave all their possessions behind.

"We must admire the restraint of Abu Sufyan who, after his unnatural vow, waited a year before going forth to battle Mohammed again. Early in 625 he led an army of 3000 men to the hill of Ohod, three miles north of Medina. Fifteen women, including Abu Sufyan's wives, accompanied the army and stirred it to fervor with wild songs of sorrow and revenge.

"Mohammed could muster only a thousand warriors. The Moslems were routed. Mohammed fought bravely, received many wounds, and was carried half unconscious from the field. Abu Sufyan's chief wife Hind, whose father, uncle, and brother had been slain at Bedr, chewed the liver of the fallen Hamza -- who had slain her father -- and made anklets and bracelets for herself from Hamza's skin and nails.

"Thinking Mohammed safely dead, Abu Sufyan returned in triumph to Mecca. Six months later the Prophet was sufficiently recovered to attack the Bani-Nadhir Jews, charging them with helping the Quraish and plotting against his life. After three weeks' siege they were allowed to emigrate, each family taking with it as much as a camel could carry. Mohammed appropriated some of their rich date orchards for the support of his household and distributed the remainder among the refugees.

"But he was also a diplomat and knew when war should be continued by means of peace. He shared the longings of the Refugees to see their Meccan homes and families and of both Refugees and Helpers to visit again the Kaaba that had in their youth been the hearth of their piety. As the first apostles thought of Christianity as a form and reform of Judaism, so the Moslems thought of Mohammedanism as a change and development of the ancient Meccan ritual.

"In 628 Mohammed sent the Quraish an offer of peace, pledging the safety of their caravans in return for permission to fulfill the rites of the annual pilgrimage. The Quraish replied that a year of peace must precede this consent.

"Mohammed shocked his followers by agreeing. A ten years' truce was signed. The Prophet consoled his raiders by attacking and plundering the Khaibar Jews in their settlemen six days' journey northeast of Medina. The Jews defended themselves as well as they could. Ninety three of them died in the attempt. The rest at last surrendered.

"They were allowed to remain and cultivate the soil but on condition of yielding all their property and half their future produce to the conqueror. All the survivors were spared except Kinana, their chieftain and his cousin who were beheaded for hiding some of their wealth.

'There is no god but Allah alone!'

"Meccans were impressed by the orderly behavior and patriotic piety of the exiles. Several influential Quraish, including the future generals Khalid and Amr, adopted the new faith. Some tribes in the neighboring desert offered Mohammed the pledge of their belief for the support of his arms.

"When he returned to Medina he calculated that he was now strong enough to take Mecca by force.

"The ten years' truce had eight years to run but Mohammed alleged that a tribe allied with the Quraish had attacked a Moslem tribe and thereby voided the truce (630). He gathered 10,000 men and marched to Mecca. Abu Sufyan, perceiving the strength of Mohammed's forces, allowed him to enter unopposed.

"Mohammed responded handsomely by declaring a general amnesty for all but two or three of his enemies. He destroyed the idols in and around the Kaaba but spared the Black Stone and sanctioned the kissing of it.

"He proclaimed Mecca the Holy City of Islam and decreed that no unbeliever should ever be allowed to set foot on its sacred soil. The Quraish abandoned direct opposition.

"The most famous Arabian poet of the time, Kab ibn Zuhair, who had written a diatribe against him, came in person to Medina, surrendered himself to Mohammed, proclaimed himself a convert, received pardon, and composed so eloquent a poem in honor of the Prophet that Mohammed bestowed his mantle upon him.

"In return for a moderate tribute the Christians of Arabia were taken under Mohammed's protection and enjoyed full liberty of worship but they were forbidden to charge interest on loans.

"We are told that he sent envoys to the Greek emperor, the Persian king, and the rulers of Hira and Ghassan, inviting them to accept the new faith. Apparently there was no reply.

"One of his least inspired acts was his regulation of the calendar. This had consisted among the Arabs, as among the Jews, of twelve lunar months, with an intercalary month every three years to renew concord with the sun. Mohammed ruled that the Moslem year whould always consist of twelve lunar months, of alternately thirty and twenty-nine days. As a result the Moslem calendar lost all harmony with the seasons and gained a year upon the Gregorian calendar every thirty-two and a half years.

"The Prophet was not a scientific legislator. He drew up no code or digest, had no system. He issued edicts according to the occasion. If contradictions developed he smoothed them with new revelations that sternly superseded the old.

"Even his most prosaic directives might be presented as revelations from Allah. Harassed by the necessity of adopting this lofty method to mundane affairs, his style lost something of its former eloquence and poetry. But perhaps he felt that this was amall price to pay for having all his legislation bear the awesome stamp of deity.

"As the same time he could be charmingly modest. More than once he admitted his ignorance. He protested against being taken for more than a fallible and mortal man. He claimed no power to predict the future or to perform miracles.

"However, he was not above using the method of revelation for very human and personal ends, as when a special message from Allah sanctioned his desire to marry the pretty wife of Zaid, his adopted son."

How does that expression go? -- "My mind is made up; don't confuse me with facts."

"Mohammed took polygamy for granted and indulged himself in marriage with a clear conscience and no morbid sensuality. Aisha, in a tradition of uncertain authority, quoted him as saying that the three most predcious things in this world are women, fragrant odors, and prayers.

"Some of his marriages were acts of kindness to the destitute widows of followers or friends, as in the case of Omar's daughter Hafsa. Some were diplomatic marriages, as in the case of Hafsa - to bind Omar to him -- and the daughter of Abu Sufyan -- to win an enemy. Some may have been due to a perpetually frustrated hope for a son.

"All his wives after Khadija were barren which subjected the Prophet to much raillery. Of the children borne to hinm by Khadija only one survived him -- Fatima. Mary, a Coptic slave presented to him by the Negus of Abyssinia, rejoiced him, in the last year of his life, with a son but Ibrahim died after fifteen months.

"His crowded harem troubled him with quarrels, jealousies, and demands for pin money. He refused to indulge the extravagance of his wives but he promised them paradise and for a time he dutifully spent a night with each of themn in rotation. The master of Arabia had no apartment of his own.

"The alluring and vivacious Aisha, however, won so many attentions out of her turn that the other wives rebelled until the matter was settled by a special revelation:-

'Thou canst defer whom thou wilt of them and receive of them whom thou wilt. Whomsoever thou desirest of those whom thou has set aside, it is no sin for thee. That is better that they may be comforted and not grieve and may all be pleased with what thou givest them.'"

Apparently Allah paid attention to the most minute detail and revealed His decisions usually to Mohammed's benefit.

"His voice was hypnotically musical. His senses were painfully keen. He could not bear evil odors, jangling bells, or loud talk. He taught:-'Be modest in thy bearing and subdue thy voice. Lo, the harshest of all voices is that of the ass.' He was nervous and restless, subject to occasional melancholy, then suddenly talkative and gay.

"He had a sly humor. To Abu Horairah, who visited him with consuming freuency, he suggested:-'Oh Abu Horairah! Let me alone every other day that so affection may increase.'

"He was an unscrupulous warrior and a just judge. He could be cruel and treacherous but his acts of mercy were numberless. He stopped many barbarous superstitions such as blinding part of a hered to propitiate the evil eye, or tying a dead man's camel to his grave. His friends loved him to idolatry.

"Now in his sixty third year, these fevers became more exhausting. One night Aisha complained of a headache. He complained of one also, and asked playfully would she not prefer to die first, and have the advantage of being buried by the Prophet of Allah -- to which she replied, with her customary tartness, that he would doubtless, on returning from her grave, install a fresh bride in her place.

"For fourteen days thereafter the fever came and went. Three days before his death he rose from his sickbed, walked into the mosque, saw Abu Bekr leading the prayers in his stead, and humbly sat beside him during the ceremony.

"On June 7, 632, after a long agony, he passed away, his head on Aisha's breast.

"If we judge greatness by influence, he was one of the giants of history.

"He undertook to raise the spiritual and moral level of a people harassed into barbarism by heat and foodless wastes, and he succeeded more completely than any other reformer. Seldom has any man so fully realized his dream. He accomplished his purpose through religion not only because he himself was religious but because no other medium could have moved the Arabs of his time. He appealed to their imagination, their fears and hopes, and spoke in terms that they could understand.

"When he began, Arabia was a desert flotsam of idolatrous tribes. When he died it was a nation. He restrained fanaticism and superstition but he used them.

"But we are not sure that Mohammed wanted all these fragments gathered into one book. Many of them were arguments to the man or the moment. They can hardly be understood without the commentary of history and tradition. None but the Faithful need expect to enjoy them all.

"The 114 chapters ('suras') are arranged not in the order of their composition, which is unknown, but in the order of their decreasing length. Since the earlier revelations were generally shorter than the later ones, the Koran is history in reverse. The Medina suras, prosaic and practical, appear first. The Mecca suras, poetic and spiritual, appear last.

"Mohammed felt that no moral code would win obedience adequate to the order and vigor of a society unless men believed the code to have come from God. The method lent itself well to a style of impassioned grandeur and eloquence, at times rivaling Isaiah.

Mohammed used a mode of utterance half poetry, half prose. Rhythm and rhyme are pervasive in it, but irregular. In the early Meccan suras there is a sonorous cadence and bold sweep of style that are completely felt only by those familiar with the language and sympathetic with the creed. The book is in the purest Arabic, rich in vivid similes, and too florid for the Occidental taste.

"Rather he inquires what social and psychological factors combined to produce the religion -- how well it accomplished the purpose of turning beasts into men -- savages into citizens and empty hearts into hopeful courage and minds at peace -- how much freedom it still left to the mental development of mankind.