Statement

Genealogies of the Ancient Arabs

A refutation of those who assert mother-right and totemism among the Arabs of the Jāhilīyah

Statement

Our friend Professor Margoliouth, the great English Orientalist, wrote to us, in the course of his rendering our book The History of Islamic Civilisation into the English language, a letter of which this is the text:

«Between what you have said concerning the genealogies of the Arabs and the views of the Orientalists in this regard there is a vast gulf. Had you looked into Professor Robertson Smith's book on the genealogies and marriage of the Arabs of the Jāhilīyah (Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia), you would have seen a wide difference between what is well known among us and what is set down in your book. The question of mother-right, for example, has had many volumes written upon it, most of whose authors have held that the ancient family had in it no known father, but was headed by a mother of many men; that father-right is a thing newly brought in, whose introduction among the Arabs did not much precede the age of the Prophet; and that the genealogies of the Arabs are one and all falsehoods, since the names of the tribes are not the names of men who lived, as they allege, but most of them resemble what is called a totem (Totem) among the savage nations — I mean an animal to which they trace their descent out of their ignorance of the order of nature, so that from their tracing of themselves to it there issue usages and laws, the traces of some of which are not hidden among the Arabs of the Jāhilīyah.»

This is the text of the Professor's letter. We looked into it with the consideration it deserved, out of reverence for the standing of its writer, and betook ourselves at once to the book of Robertson Smith to which he pointed; and behold, it runs to some three hundred pages and more. We perused it at leisure, out of a desire to acquaint ourselves with that view and to weigh it, for its author is among the great ones of the Orientalists, and he has researches and works of consequence upon the East and its letters, such as his book on the religions of the Semites and other of his engaging essays. We read the book in all sincerity and with close attention, that we might perhaps be convinced of the soundness of this view and so come round to it; for we have no purpose in what we write save the establishing of the truth, which is the stray we are in quest of: if we light upon it, we halt before it in submission, and it is no concern of ours at whose hands that should be. From our reading of the book we ascertained the man's learning and merit, and the breadth of his acquaintance with the letters, the languages and the religions of the Semitic peoples, and we discerned, through his proofs and the casting of his phrase, an argumentative force and a power of persuasion the like of which is rare among the masters of