n hills, at a distance from the sea; its provisions, its
very bread, have to be imported. But so many pilgrims needed lodgings:
and then all places of pilgrimage do, from the first, become places of
trade. The first day pilgrims meet, merchants have also met: where men
see themselves assembled for one object, they find that they can
accomplish other objects which depend on meeting together. Mecca became
the Fair of all Arabia. And thereby indeed the chief staple and
warehouse of whatever Commerce there was between the Indian and the
Western countries, Syria, Egypt, even Italy. It had at one time a
population of 100,000; buyers, forwarders of those Eastern and Western
products; importers for their own behoof of provisions and corn. The
government was a kind of irregular aristocratic republic, not without a
touch of theocracy. Ten Men of a chief tribe, chosen in some rough way,
were Governors of Mecca, and Keepers of the Caabah. The Koreish were the
chief tribe in Mohammed's time; his own family was of that tribe. The
rest of the Nation, fractioned and cut-asunder by deserts, lived under
similar rude patriarchal governments by one or several: herdsmen,
carriers, traders, generally robbers too; being oftenest at war one with
another, or with all: held together by no open bond, if it were not this
meeting at the Caabah, where all forms of Arab Idolatry assembled in
common adoration;--held mainly by the _inward_ indissoluble bond of a
common blood and language. In this way had the Arabs lived for long
ages, unnoticed by the world; a people of great qualities, unconsciously
waiting for the day when they should become notable to all the world.
Their Idolatries appear to have been in a tottering state; much was
getting into confusion and fermentation among them. Obscure tidings of
the most important Event ever transacted in this world, the Life and
Death of the Divine Man in Judea, at once the symptom and cause of
immeasurable change to all people in the world, had in the course of
centuries reached into Arabia too; and could not but, of itself, have
produced fermentation there.

It was among this Arab people, so circumstanced, in the year 570 of our
Era, that the man Mohammed was born. He was of the family of Hashem, of
the Koreish tribe as we said; though poor, connected with the chief
persons of his country. Almost at his birth he lost his Father; at the
age of six years his Mother too, a woman noted for her beauty, her worth