Page 456 - Neglected Arabia Vol 2

10 XiiCUiCTIil) ARABIA

Company to establish lit teen radio centers in bis kingdom. The wireless
is sure soon to play a great part in the peace and prosperity of Arabia.
(ireater in effect lias been the advent ul the automobile Nowadays,
instead of caravans and camels taking nearly a month to travel between
Syria and Mesopotamia, the trip is made in two or three days. We were
amused one day when some Arabs overcrowded their Ford car and left
Kuwait to drive the hundred miles across the desert to Basrah, the port
from which Sinbad the Sailor sailed. On camels it takes over two days.
They made the trip in less than three hours and sent back a telegram,
“Li yahya al-Ford/* which means, “Long live the Ford!”
Moreover, the motor car is helping to change one immemorial method
of livelihood of the Arabs. You remember in Abraham’s time. Lot had
large flocks of sheep. Some tribal kings made a raid and hurried off with
Lot’s property. . Abraham and his allies followed light and fast and over­
took the raiders, who could travel only as fast as the sheep they had stolen,
a little over two miles an hour, and Abraham recovered the booty. Two
years ago a party of Bedouins stole the flock of sheep and camels be­
longing to other Arabs. Word was sent to the local Ruler. He im­
mediately sent out soldiers in his own cars and all the taxis in the town.
They pursued the raiders, overtook them in half a day and alter a light
in which some on both sides were killed and wounded, they recovered
most of the stolen property. The wounded were treated in the American
Mission Hospital at Kuwait. Motor cars with machine guns mounted on
them are patrolling all parts of Arabia under government control. They
make it possible for peaceable people to expect to keep the results of
their enterprise in raising flocks of sheep, goats and camels.
Another western invention that is changing conditions in Arabia is
the aeroplane. You can now see the Pyramids near Cairo in the morning
and reach Baghdad and Babylon the same day. That is something the
Caliph I larun al-Kashid wilh his love of adventure would certainly have
enjoyed. The Magic Carpel lias materialized into a live day airplane
service between London and India, across Arabia, with a time-schedule
and security that make commonplace the marvels of the Thousand and
One Nights, fascinating as those stories always will he. The translation 1
and notes of the Arabian Nights made by Edward W. Lane can be
I
cordially recommended for any home. Arabia's great king has secured
several aeroplanes with English aviators to help him govern his widely
scattered tribes and towns.
When Muhammadanism spread all over Arabia in (lie seventh century,
it expelled the jews that were there and uprooted the Christian govern­
ments and churches. All Arabia belonged to one religion, but the j)eople
soon divided into sects, and the tribes and provinces never lost their dynastic
and patriarchal forms of life and government. Ccorge Sale s I rans-
lation of the Koran” and that by Rodwell in the Everyman Library give
good accounts of the religion of Muhammad.
In the eighteenth century a religious reformer named Muhammad bin
Abdulwahhab started a movement back to original Muhammadanism. He
made a political and religious alliance with an amir of Central Arabia
named Muhammad bin Snotid. As in early Islam, ihr enl uim.imu am