the 7th century onwards (though no doubt Berber invasions of Negro Africa had occurred in previous times), and settled on or near the northern Niger and the northern Senegal coast. In fact from Sanhaga comes no doubt the Berber tribal name of “Zenaga” which the Portuguese corrupted into “Senegal.” In the 7th century, also, the negroid Garamantes, who shared Phazania with the incoming Berbers and were no doubt identical with the modern Tibu or Teda (whose language is utterly unlike Libyan, and belongs to an unclassified negro speech-group), carried on a good deal of trading intercourse south and eastward across the Libyan Desert with Kanem and Lake Chad, Darfur and Kordofan, and no doubt in this way facilitated the subsequent Arab penetration of the Sudan and the Tripolitaine. The domesticated camel had been introduced into North Africa before this period, and greatly facilitated these race movements across the Desert. In the year 623 A.C. an Arab of the Quraish Tribe of Western Arabia, probably born in Mecca (anciently known as Bakka and really called Makka at the present day), and named Muhammad or the Praiser, attracted attention by establishing himself at the Palm Oasis of Yathrib or Medina, not only as a bandit who led masterless men to the attack of trading caravans, but also as a mystic who was conceiving and promulgating a new form of religion, one which was largely based on Jewish teaching and the Jewish Scriptures and yet incorporated a few ideas from Christianity and perhaps even from the Zoroastrian faiths of Persia. Muhammad opposed the degraded beliefs in a variety of gods and goddesses which still lingered in Western Arabia and, above all, at Mecca itself, where a wonderful fetish stone—the remains of an immense meteorite—was exhibited for reverence, and where, together with the rude representations of old Semitic gods and a goddess named Allat[28], existed—as in Coelo-Syria and Ancient Phoenicia—the idea of the Mahrab or Sacred Shrine. This last was a sexual symbol and a relic of the nature-worship of Phoenicia. It has also been the parent of the horseshoe arch. The Sacred Shrine is an essential feature in all Muhammadan mosques, though its original purport has long since been forgotten.