Yemen; but the Koreish Arabs, having once obtained them, held them fast forever after, and successfully repelled every effort, both of their own pagan competitors and of the invading Christian Abyssinians (570 A.D.), to recapture or to seize them. Their possession of the temple keys not only gave the tribe of Koreish a semi-religious pre-eminence over all the other clans of Arabia, but also placed at their disposal the treasures of gold, silver, jewels, and other offerings accumulated by the pagan piety of ages in the temple of Mecca. [Sidenote: [500-600 A.D.]] A more important, as also a more creditable, source of wealth to the Koreish clan was their Red Sea coast traffic, particularly with the ports of Yemen and Abyssinia. Jiddah has been always the chief westerly seaport, and Mecca, which is only a few leagues distant, the principal inland emporium, of Arab trade; and under the dominating influence of the clever and active merchants of Koreish, both places acquired special prosperity and importance. Lastly, only a day’s journey distant from Mecca, was held, in the pre-Islamitic times, the great yearly fair and gathering of Okad, so called from the name of the plain where it used to assemble--a national meeting, frequented by men of all conditions, from all quarters of the Arab peninsula, and lasting through the entire month of Dhul-kaadeh, which in pagan, as subsequently in Mohammedan reckoning, immediately preceded the ceremonies of the annual pilgrimage. Here horse races, athletic games, poetical recitals, and every kind of public amusement, diversified the more serious commercial transactions of an open fair, that, in its comprehensiveness, almost assumed the proportions of a national exhibition. Here, too, matters of the highest import, questions of peace and war, of treaty and alliance, of justice and revenge, were habitually treated by the chiefs of the northern Arabs; the “children of Mezar,” to give them their favourite Mustareb patronymic, assembled in a sort of amphictyonic council, not less ancient, but while it lasted much more influential throughout Arabia, than that of Thebes ever had been in classic Greece. In this assembly the immediate local proximity of the Koreish chiefs, joined to their personal wealth, courage, and address, assigned them a predominant position.