Hitherto we have been looking at but one side of Arab life. The Bedawees were indeed the bulk of the race, and furnished the swords of the Muslim conquests; but there was also a vigorous town-life in Arabia, and the citizens waxed rich with the gains of their trafficking. For through Arabia ran the trade-route between East and West: it was the Arab traders who carried the produce of the Yemen to the markets of Syria; and how ancient was their commerce one may divine from the words of a poet of Judæa spoken more than a thousand years before the coming of Moḥammad. Wedan and Javan from San´a paid for thy produce: sword-blades, cassia, and calamus were in thy trafficking. Dedan was thy merchant in saddle-cloths for riding; Arabia and all the merchants of Kedar, they were the merchants of thy hand: in lambs and rams and goats, in these were they thy merchants. The merchants of Sheba and Raamah, they were thy merchants, with the chief of all spices, and with every precious stone, and gold, they paid for thy produce. Haran, Aden, and Canneh, the merchants of Sheba, Asshur and Chilmad were thy merchants; They were thy merchants in excellent wares, in cloth of blue and broidered work, in chests of cloth of divers colours, bound with cords and made fast among thy merchandize.[10] Mekka was the centre of this trading life, the typical Arab city of old times—a stirring little town, with its caravans bringing the silks and woven stuffs of Syria and the far-famed damask, and carrying away the sweet-smelling produce of Arabia, frankincense, cinnamon, sandal-wood, aloe, and myrrh, and the dates and leather and metals of the south, and the goods that come to the Yemen from Africa and even India; its assemblies of merchant-princes in the Council Hall near the Kaạbeh; and again its young poets running over with love and gallantry; its Greek and Persian slave-girls brightening the luxurious banquet with their native songs, when as yet there was no Arab school of music, and the monotonous but not unmelodious chant of the camel-driver was the national song of Arabia; and its club, where busy men spent their idle hours in playing chess and draughts, or in gossiping with their acquaintance. It was a little republic of commerce, too much infected with the luxuries and refinements of the states it traded with, yet retaining enough of the free Arab nature to redeem it from the charge of effeminacy.