As already mentioned, irreconcilable hostility had existed from time immemorial between the inhabitants of Northern and Southern Arabia. Due to a difference of origin, and probably based upon invasion and conquest in a prehistoric age, this race-prejudice had been aggravated by a feeling of mutual hatred and contempt, derived from the different avocations of the people of Yemen and those of the Hedjaz, the peaceful merchants and the lawless rovers of the Desert. The Maadites, to whom the Meccans belonged, were shepherds and brigands. They prided themselves upon being the aristocracy of Arabia; and the thrifty and industrious dwellers of the South, the Kahtanites, who saw nothing degrading in the tillage of their fields, in the care of their valuable date plantations, and in the profits of commerce, could, in the consciousness of superior wealth and culture, readily endure the scorn of their neighbors, whose gains were obtained by overreaching their guests, by extortions from pilgrims to the Kaaba, and by sharing in the plunder of caravans. The Medinese, whose origin was partly Jewish, whose pursuits were sedentary, and whose affiliations connected them with the trading communities of Yemen, were classed with the Kahtanites by the children of Maad. From this mutual antagonism the religion of Mohammed received its greatest impulse and the power which enabled it to overturn all its adversaries; and from it, also, are to be traced the misfortunes which befell the empire of Islam even before it was firmly established; which made every country and province in its wide dominions the scene of civil strife and bloodshed; which profaned with insult and violence the shrines of the most holy temples; which annihilated whole dynasties by the hand of the assassin; and which, far more potent than the iron hand of Charles Martel and the valor of the Franks, lost by a single stroke the sceptre of Europe. Hence arose the disputes which terminated in the murder of Othman and its terrible retribution, the sack of the Holy Cities; the intrigues and controversies which resulted from the election of Ali; the death of Hosein; the insurrections of the fanatical reformers of Persia; the proscription of the Ommeyades; the perpetual disorders which distracted the Emirate of Africa. In Spain also, whither had resorted so many of the fugitives of Medina and their Syrian conquerors, the smouldering embers of national prejudice and religious discord were rekindled. The most sacred ties of nationality, of religion, or of kindred were powerless to counteract this deep-rooted antipathy, which seems inherent in the two divisions of the Arab race. The most noble incentives to patriotism, the pride of victory, the alluring prospects of commercial greatness, of literary distinction, of boundless dominion, were ignored in the hope of humiliating a rival faction and of gratifying a ruthless spirit of revenge. At different times--such