ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]

LIBRARY

OF THE

ITY OF MICRO

NORTH BRITISH REVIEW.

MARCH AND JUNE, 1866.

VOLUME XLIV. Li Li - S

AMERICAN EDITION.

NEW YORK:

PUBLISHED BY THE LEONARD SCOTT PUBLISHING COMPANY,

38 WALKER STREET, WEST OF BROADWAY.

1866.

THE

NORTH BRITISH REVIEW.

NO. LXXXVII.

FOR MARCH, 1866.

ART. I.-Narrative of a Year's Journey freely indulges. For everything relating to through Central and Eastern Arabia, 1862-3.

Mohammedan theology, the origin and conBY WILLIAM GIFFORD PAL-nexion of Arab races, and such grave mat

GRAVE. 2 vols. 8vo. Lond., 1865.

MR. PALGRAVE's Central Arabia is, we think, upon the whole, the most provoking book that we can remember to have read. It is not only a very clever and amusing. book, but it is evidently the work of a clever man. Having told us that he is to "fill up a blank in the map of Asia," by giving us a description of a country of which we know little or nothing,-" its plains and mountains, its tribes and cities," he proceeds to describe a country which has been as well known for nearly half a century as it is now. He leads us to expect from him a full, accurate, and faithful account of its inhabitants, their "governments and institutions," their "ways and customs," and their social condition;" but, instead of fulfilling these expectations, which he was quite capable of fulfilling, he gives us an account which is not only defective in many essential particulars, but which contains such in accuracies and fictions, that we know not what to accept as true, and what to reject as erroneous or fabulous. That the book, at the same time, has great merits, which have obtained for it extensive popularity and much praise, we readily acknowledge. This indeed is the reason why we have considered it our duty, even at this late hour, to state freely some at least of the grounds on which we consider it calculated to mislead the numerous readers who may have been induced to rely upon it.

have said that the book has great but they do not consist in the more ous discussions in which the author VOL. XLIV. N-1

ters, there are other authorities on which, for sufficient reasons, we should be more disposed to rely. We cannot say that he has added anything appreciable to our knowledge of the geography of Central Arabia, or of any branch of physical science in connexion with it; indeed, he tells us that "the men of the land, rather than the land of the men, were my main object of research and principal study." Of much that relates to the men of the land, however, and both influences and illustrates their life and character; of the municipal organization prevailing in the numerous towns and villages scattered over the country, and in which there must be, to a great extent, local self-government, as in all the countries of Asia; of the means of education which the Mohammedans have never neglected, where there was a settled population to take advantage of them; of the tenure of land, so important an element in the social condition of every Asiatic people; of the nature and extent of the agriculture of the country, its condition, or its produce; of the commerce carried on by the numerous traders of Central Arabia who frequent Egypt, Damascus, Aleppo, Bagdad, and other places; in short, of anything material or tangible he tells us little or nothing. Neither does he tell us much about the condition-the comparative comfort or misery

of the great mass of the settled popula tion; but of some of the higher, and a portion of the middle classes of Central Arabia, he gives such an account as we have not from any one else, and as no one who had not lived amongst them on the familiar

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »