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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1861 edition. Excerpt:... CHAPTER FOURTH. The Forefathers of Mahomet, and History of Mecca, from the middle of the Fifth Century to the Birth of Mahomet, 570 A.D. Cossai, ruler In the fourth section of the foregoing chapter I have enmiddieoVsth deavoured to give a connected view of the progress of events at century. Mecca, from the most remote times to the middle of the fifth century. About that period we left Cossai in the possession of all the important dignities of the city, religious and political, cwn polity The social institutions of Mecca did not essentially differ from hXitsof the those of the wandering Bedouins. They were to some extent Bedoums. m0dified by the requirements of a settled habitation, and the peculiarities of the pilgrimage and local superstition. But the ultimate sanctions of society, and the springs of political movement, were in reality the same at Mecca then (so wonderfully have they survived the corroding effects of time) as exist in the desert at the present day, and have been so graphically pourtrayed by the pen of Burkhardt. General It must be borne in mind that at Mecca there was not, before Bedouin8 the establishment of Islam, any Government in the common sense Government. DEGREES DEGREESe term.* No supreme authority existed whose mandate must be put into execution. Each tribe formed a republic governed by opinion; and the opinion of the aggregate tribes, who chanced for the time to be acting together, was the sovereign law. There was no recognized exponent of the popular will; each tribe was free to hold back from that which was clearly decreed by the rest; and no individual was more bound than his collective tribe to a compulsory conformity with the even unanimous resolve of his fellow-citizens. Honour and revenge supplied the...