Identifier: arabiacradleofis00zwem (find matches)
Title: Arabia: the cradle of Islam : studies in the geography, people and politics of the peninsula, with an account of Islam and mission work
Year: 1900 (1900s)
Authors: Zwemer, Samuel Marinus, 1867-1952
Subjects: Missions -- Arabian Peninsula Islam Islam Arabian Peninsula Arabian Peninsula -- Description and travel Arabian Peninsula -- Missions
Publisher: New York Toronto : F. H. Revell
Contributing Library: Princeton Theological Seminary Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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sandy desertfor five days marches to Riad and the old Wahabi country.The region thus bounded is really the whole of Hassa, althoughon maps that name is given to the whole coast as far as Busrah.But neither the authority of the Turkish government nor thesignificance of the word Hassa (low, moist ground) can besaid to extend outside of the triangle. The peninsula of El Katar, about loo miles long and fiftybroad, is unattractive in every way and barren enough to becalled a desert. Palgraves pen-picture cannot be improvedupon : To have an idea of Katar my readers must figure tothemselves miles on miles of low barren hills, bleak and sun-scorched, with hardly a single tree to vary the dry monoto-nous outline ; below these a muddy beach extends for a quarterof a mile seaward in slimy quicksands, bordered by a rim ofsludge and seaweed. If we look landwards beyond the hillswe see what by extreme courtesy may be called pasture land,dreary downs with twenty pebbles for every blade of grass; 110
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WB EASTERN THRESHOLD OF ARABIA 111 and over this melancholy ground scene, but few and far be-tween, little clusters of wretched, most wretched earth cot-tages and palm-leaf huts, narrow, ugly and low; these are thevillages, or <towns (for so the inhabitants style them) ofKatar. Yet poor and naked as is the land it has evidentlysomething still poorer and nakeder behind it, something inshort even more devoid of resources than the coast itself, andthe inhabitants of which seek here by violence what they can-not find at home. For the villages of Katar are each and allcarefully walled in, while the downs beyond are lined withtowers and here and there a castle, huge and square with itslittle windows and narrow portals. The population of Katar is not large; its principal town isBedaa. All the inhabitants live from the sea by pearl-divingand fishing, and in the season send out two hundred boats.The whole peninsula with its wild Bedouin population isclaimed by Turkey and is the dread of the

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