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The original arab the bedouin history essay

The Arabs: A short History

Arabs, Moslems, and Semites

One hundred years passed by the death of the prophet Muhammad, yet his followers were the leaders of a great empire. This period has seen exceptional expansion. The Arabs stood in the past in a tactical geographic location. According to Philip K. Hitti, no less than four hundred and fifty million people, coming almost from all races, are obedient to Islam. p 4. The Arabs hadn’t built only an empire but also a culture. Arabs have greatly contributed to human progress. Philip K. Hitti says that the Arabic language is used on a daily basis by around one hundred million people, and this is not surprising considering the overpopulation of our planet. P 6. The Arabic language has been the language of leaning, culture, and thinking for several years. At this time many works on medical, religious, philosophical, and historical was made. This shows how dominant Arabic was. The two representatives of the Semitic people who survived were the Arabs and the Jews. However, Arabs constituted the majority who conserved body aspects and intellectual characters of the family. Philip K. Hitti states that Islam, as well, is the logical perfection of Semitic religion. P6.

The Original Arab, the Bedouin

When talking about Arabic-speaking people, one should not think that they were located only in Arabia, but rather in many lands, such as Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, North Africa, and many others. As mentioned in this chapter, the Bedouin were the original the original Arab. Philip K. Hitti says that the Bedouin represents the best adaptation of human life to desert conditions. P9. Arabia is practically fully desert, with only few habitable lands. According to Geologists, that land once formed the natural prolongation of the Sahara. Philip K. Hitti believes that this is one of the factors that provided a favorite subject for Arabian poets. The two animals mostly used in Arabia were the camel and the horse. Those animals would allow them to travel long distances in places such as the Sahara. The camel industry was considered to be one of Arabia’s greatest sources of income. Philip K. Hitti reports that the Arabic language is said to include around a thousand names for the camel conditions, stages of growth, etc. On one hand the camel was mostly used to travel in the Sahara and on the other hand the horse was used as an animal of luxury.

On the Eve of the Rise of Islam

The Arabian Peninsula started to grab the attention of the outside world. The term Arabian Peninsula was assigned to all inhabitants of the peninsula, despite the difference in their geographical location. There was the Arabians of the South and the North. The North included the Najdis of Central Arabia. Before the coming of Islam the Arabians were not a military people but rather traders.

Muhammad, the Prophet of Allah

The prophet Muhammad was born in Quraysh. He was called al-Amin, the faithful, by his tribe. His father passed away before his was born, and his mother died when he was around 6 years old. Muhammad is little known to us in his early life. He struggled for a livelihood; he made efforts to become self-fulfilled, and became aware of the task awaiting him.

Social and Cultural Life Makes a Start

After the end of the march of Islam it was time for the march of ideas to start. Philip K. Hitti in this book tells us about the development of culture within the Muslim empire, mainly the rise of literature, science, art, medicine, and architecture. The way people would dress in Damascus of the eight century is close enough to the way people dress today. The Arabians lived in distinct accommodations of their own according to their tribal belonging. There were four social classes: the ruling Moslems, the Neo-Moslems, members of tolerated sects, and the slaves. Though the Arab being strong warriors and strategic ones they eventually became ready to learn the arts of peace. The first followers of the Arabian prophet only showed interest in military exploits and desire for power, which were not favorable to the learning and discovery of science and literature. The prophet Mohammed was unable to raise his countrymen, and thus his man were nothing but barbarians. The Greeks showed great appreciation and achievements when it came to literature and science. The Greeks’ philosophy was borrowed from the Persian magi and the Egyptian priests. However, Greeks greatly improved philosophy. Philip K. Hitti believes that the prophet Mohammed felt the importance of literary distinction. As previously mentioned his first followers, lived only with the ideas of invasion and conversion, neglecting the religion and learning of the nations they invaded. Almansor reigned for twenty-one years and was one of the first Arab princes to adopt learning and the arts. Astronomy was one of his principal subjects of his study. All the mosques in his territories had a school attached to it. Therefore, knowledge spread from the capital to the distant edges of the empire. In a nutshell, this book speaks about a civilization of people whose rulers studied ancient Greek philosophy. As mentioned earlier the Arabs enhanced and took over the arts and philosophy from ancient Greece and ancient Persia. They also developed standards in Medicine, architecture, philosophy, agriculture. According to Philip K. Hitti such achievements spreaded into Europe. In fact, they were considered to be the major factor in glowing the European renaissance. Philip K. Hitti also described the circumstances of non slave and non Moslems as being equal sometimes, yet depending on the level of tolerance of the ruling Caliph. Back at that time Christians and Jews were obliged to wear special clothing. They were forbidden to testify against other Moslems in court. As far as the Jewish community in Baghdad was concerned, they were very active. Eventually this civilization came to an end. One of the main reasons was the unequal distribution of wealth, epidemics, emergence of new competitors, as far as trade goes, ethnic conflicts. At the end of his book, the author wrote that the Arab people took their rightful place among the democratic nations of the world. One of the sentences I find most interesting in this book is ” The achievement of the past is the promise of the present for the future.”

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