Strangers to the luxuries of the table, the Arabians are equally unacquainted with the comfort and conve nience of a goon habitation. Their buildings display no exterior magnificence, nor their apartments splendour or elegance. The common people are miserably lodged Houses made of mud, th,.tched with grass, without windows, and with a straw mat for the door, loran many of the streets in the chief cities of Arabia. The houses of the rich, however, are sometimes built of stone or burnt brick, with terrace roofs ; but few of them have glass windows. As it is considered very unpolite to salute a woman in Arabia, the women generally occupy separate apartments, which are in the back part of the house, where strangers are never introduced. Those who have no such apartments, are careful when they carry a stranger to the house, to enter first, and cry, tank, "retire," upon which the women instantly disap pear, and are invisible to their best friends.
The arts and sciences, which, during the dark ages, were protected and successfully cultivated in Arabia, are now neglected and almost unknown. That spirit of enterprise, both in science and in war, which actuated its inhabitants while under the dominion of the Caliphs, whose arms were attended with victory, learning, and civilization, is now sunk into indolence and superstition. Their love of literature has been exchanged for petty quarrels and superstitious quackeries. The pillaging of a caravan, or the humiliation of a refractory chief, is now deemed more honourable warfare than foreign con quest ; and fortune-telling, or juggling, is preferred to sound philosophy and the liberal arts. Indeed there is scarcely a country in the world where the people are so universally ignorant ; and this nation, once so famous for their learning, instead of keeping pace with the rapid improvements which have lately been made in Europe, seem now to be fast declining and hastening towards a second barbarism. To trace this defection in science to its source would be difficult and almost impossible. Arabia having long since ceased to be the channel of commerce between India and the continent, all communication with the kingdoms of Europe have been interrupted. Attached to their native country and their particular customs, and surrounded with a people who are groaning under all the horrors of tyranny and oppression, they seek no intercourse with nations who might rob them of that independence, which it is their chief study to preserve. Immediately after the rain of the power of the Caliphate by the Tartars, the Arabs shook off MO5r subjection, and resumed their ancient government of independent chiefs. Ever since that pe riod they have been continually distracted with internal war and family feuds, and have thus lost all relish for the arts of peace. Their nobility, their horses, and their
arms, are the chief objects of their attention ; and all their civilization consists in their skill in horsemanship and their experience in war. The little encouragement, the•eiore, which learning and the arts have met with in this country, cannot but have palsied every exertion in their behalf. The intricacy of their alphabet has also tended greatly to cramp the general diflusion of know ledge. They have a great dislike to printed characters, which they say cannot be made legible ; their books, therefore, being all written with the hand, are so scarce that very few are able to procure them.
Except among the Hamyarites, a people of Yemen, and some Jews and Christians, who were called the people of the book, the art of writing was unknown in Arabia Lill the 6th century. The Hamyaritic charac ter, supposed by some to be the most ancient in the worio, was rude, intricate, and confused ; and from the mutual connexion and dependence of its letters, was denominated " Al Mosnad." It was never publicly taught, nor was it even allowed to be used without permission. This was succeeded by the Cufic, so called from Cura, a city in Irak, which was invented by Mora atter Ebn Morra, a native of that country, who flourish ed not many years before Mahomet. This alphabet was introduced among the Koreishites at Mecca by Basher the Ktndian, and was the first character in which the Koran was written. It is very different from the Hamy aritic, but scarcely superior to it either in beauty or convenience. The Hamyaritic, however, still prevailed among the inhabitants of Yemen, and they were unable to read the Cufic, when the Koran was first published after the death of Mahomet. The Cufic is now almost entirely lost, and the Arabic character at present in use, to which it has given place, is of a more modern origin. Though formed from the Cufic it is very different from it, being both more elegant and expeditious. Its in vention is ascribed to the Vizier Ebn Moklah, who flou rished in the beginning of the tenth century ; but it was only completed and reduced to its present beautiful form about the year 1240, by Yakut at Mostasemi, secretary to Al ilfostasein, the last Caliph of the family of Al Ab bas. Though the Arabs pride themselves greatly upon the elegance or their hand-writing, which they have un doubtedly brought to great perfection, yet, in common business, it is almost illegible. Its greatest beauty, they say, consists in the manner of joining its letters, the want of which is the cause of their dislike to the style of Arabic books printed in Europe.