but
his pride is reduced to solicit the friendship of a people, whom it is
dangerous to provoke, and fruitless to attack. The obvious causes of
their freedom are inscribed on the character and country of the Arabs.
Many ages before Mahomet, [26] their intrepid valor had been severely
felt by their neighbors in offensive and defensive war. The patient
and active virtues of a soldier are insensibly nursed in the habits
and discipline of a pastoral life. The care of the sheep and camels is
abandoned to the women of the tribe; but the martial youth, under the
banner of the emir, is ever on horseback, and in the field, to practise
the exercise of the bow, the javelin, and the cimeter. The long memory
of their independence is the firmest pledge of its perpetuity and
succeeding generations are animated to prove their descent, and to
maintain their inheritance. Their domestic feuds are suspended on the
approach of a common enemy; and in their last hostilities against the
Turks, the caravan of Mecca was attacked and pillaged by fourscore
thousand of the confederates. When they advance to battle, the hope of
victory is in the front; in the rear, the assurance of a retreat. Their
horses and camels, who, in eight or ten days, can perform a march of
four or five hundred miles, disappear before the conqueror; the secret
waters of the desert elude his search, and his victorious troops
are consumed with thirst, hunger, and fatigue, in the pursuit of an
invisible foe, who scorns his efforts, and safely reposes in the heart
of the burning solitude. The arms and deserts of the Bedoweens are not
only the safeguards of their own freedom, but the barriers also of the
happy Arabia, whose inhabitants, remote from war, are enervated by the
luxury of the soil and climate. The legions of Augustus melted away in
disease and lassitude; [27] and it is only by a naval power that the
reduction of Yemen has been successfully attempted. When Mahomet erected
his holy standard, [28] that kingdom was a province of the Persian
empire; yet seven princes of the Homerites still reigned in the
mountains; and the vicegerent of Chosroes was tempted to forget his
distant country and his unfortunate master. The historians of the age of
Justinian represent the state of the independent Arabs, who were divided
by interest or affection in the long quarrel of the East: the tribe of
Gassan was allowed to encamp on the Syrian territory: the princes of
Hira were permitted