of the West. There is a rigidity in the Eastern mind that does not allow
of much change or seeking after new things. Wild and beautiful as this
poetry of Arabia is, its themes and their manner of treatment seldom
vary; as the desert is changeless in contour, filled with a brilliant
sameness, whirling at times into sombre fury and as suddenly subsiding,
so is the literature which it fostered. The monotony is expressed in a
reiteration of subject, barbarous to the intellect of the West; endurance
is born of that monotony, and strength, and the acquiescence in things as
they are, but not the discovery and development of ideas. Arabia does not
flash forth a new presentment of beauty, following the vivid apprehension
of some lovely form, but broods over it in a kind of slumbering
enthusiasm that mounts at last into a glory of metaphor, drowning the
subject in intensest light. The rival poets assembled to discover who
could turn the deftest phrases in satire of the opposing tribe, or extol
most eloquently the bravery and skill of his own people, the beauty and
modesty of their women, and from these wild outpourings Mahomet learnt to
clothe his thoughts in that splendid garment whose jewels illumine the
earlier part of the Kuran.

Perhaps more important than the poetical contests was the religious
aspect of the fair at Ocatz. Here were gathered Jew, Christian, and
Arabian worshipper of many gods, in a vast hostile confusion. Mahomet was
familiar with Jewish cosmogony from his knowledge of their faith within
his own land, and he had heard dimly of the Christian principles during
his Syrian journey. But here, though both Jews and Christians claimed to
be worshippers of a single God, and although the Jews took for their
protector Abraham, the mighty founder of Mahomet's own city, yet there
was nothing between all the sects but fruitless strife. He saw the Jews
looking disdainfully upon the Christian dogs, and the Christians firmly
convinced that an irrevocable doom would shortly descend upon every Jew.