every individual of note among the contemporaries of Mahomet and their
followers to its family in some one of the Arab tribes, but they affiliated
every tribe to its proper stem, and gave the name of every progenitor through
whom step by step each tribe was connected with one or other of the great
races which peopled the Peninsula. This vast genealogical web was woven tip to
the earliest epoch: but it is only the lower threads of it that we can count
upon with certainty. The warp and woof of the ancient portion is almost
entirely pure invention. Certain great ancestral names were current in Arabia
as the patriarchs of the various affiliations of tribes, and constituted, we
might say, the ethnological symbols of the nation. These were laid down as the
ruling pattern. Upon it again was delineated the position of every tribe, in
accordance with the popular tradition of descent, the received symbols of
ancient ethnological division, or the mere fancy of the genealogist. The
outline was enriched with sketches of battles, inter-tribal rivalries, or
personal incident, grounded no doubt for the most part on legends current
among the Arabs; some of them, perhaps, like the episode of Antar, adopted
from the recitations of Bedouin rhapsodists, or based on the remains of
ancient poets; but excepting for recent periods, all equally fabulous. The
details are given with the greater freshness and confidence the farther the
scene is shifted back into the depths of the past; for there imagination had
the freest scope.1
