CHAPTER L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants .-- Part I.
Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants .-- Birth, Character, And Doctrine Of Mahomet .-- He Preaches At Mecca .-- Flies To Medina .-- Propagates His Religion By The Sword .-- Voluntary Or Reluctant Submission Of The Arabs .-- His Death And Successors .-- The Claims And Fortunes Of All And His Descendants.
After pursuing above six hundred years the fleeting Caesars of Constantinople and Germany, I now descend, in the reign of Heraclius, on the eastern borders of the Greek monarchy.

While the state was exhausted by the Persian war, and the church was distracted by the Nestorian and Monophysite sects, Mahomet, with the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, erected his throne on the ruins of Christianity and of Rome.
The genius of the Arabian prophet, the manners of his nation, and the spirit of his religion, involve the causes of the decline and fall of the Eastern empire; and our eyes are curiously intent on one of the most memorable revolutions, which have impressed a new and lasting character on the nations of the globe.

[1] [Footnote 1: As in this and the following chapter I shall display much Arabic learning, I must profess my total ignorance of the Oriental tongues, and my gratitude to the learned interpreters, who have transfused their science into the Latin, French, and English languages.
Their collections, versions, and histories, I shall occasionally notice.] In the vacant space between Persia, Syria, Egypt, and Aethiopia, the Arabian peninsula [2] may be conceived as a triangle of spacious but irregular dimensions.

From the northern point of Beles [3] on the Euphrates, a line of fifteen hundred miles is terminated by the Straits of Bebelmandel and the land of frankincense.

About half this length may be allowed for the middle breadth, from east to west, from Bassora to Suez, from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea.