“Nothing is so easy to appreciate as true Christian commerce. It is a speaking argument, even to the lowest savage, for a gospel of truth and love, and yet more to the races sophisticated by a false civilization.”—_Principal Cairns._ The history of the Arabian Peninsula has never yet been written. Many books describe certain periods of its history from the time of the earlier Arabian rulers, but there is no volume that tells the story from the beginning in a way worthy of the subject. It would be interesting to search out the earliest records and trace the Himyarite dynasties to their origin; to learn the story of the Jewish immigrants who settled in Medina, Mecca and Yemen even before the Christian Era; to follow the Arabs in their conquests under the banner of the prophet; to watch the sudden rise of the Carmathians and follow them in their career of destruction; to search the old libraries and rediscover the romantic story of the Portuguese, the Dutch and the English in Arabian waters;—but our space limits us to the story of the past century.[63] To understand the present political conditions and recent history of Arabia, we must go back to the year 1765, which marks the rise of the remarkable Wahabi movement, which was at the bottom of all the political changes that the Peninsula has seen since that time. This movement was the renaissance of Islam, even though it ended in apparent disaster, and was politically a splendid fiasco. The Wahabi reform attracted the attention of Turkey to Arabia; its influence was felt in India to the extent of declaring a _jihad_ or religious war against the government, and compelled England to study the situation and send representatives to the very heart of Arabia. Beginning with the Wahabi dynasty, the history of the past century in Arabia centres in the rulers of Nejd and Oman, the Turkish conquests and the English influence and occupation. The strong independent government of Nejd under Ibn Rashid and his successor, Abd-ul-Aziz, would have been an impossibility except for the result of the Wahabi movement, in demonstrating the weakness of Turkish rule. And it was for fear of the Wahabi aggressions that Turkey strengthened her Arabian possessions and invaded Hassa.