to yield sufficient harvests to satisfy the wants of its members; but among these inhabitants, paralysed by anarchy, chronic famine prevails.  Foreigners wisely avoid this miserable country, and if they did visit it, would not be hospitably received.  Hunger forces many Hadramites to emigrate; throughout the centuries we find them in all the countries of Islam, in the sacred cities of Western-Arabia, in Syria, Egypt, India, Indonesia, where they often occupy important positions.

In the Dutch Indies, for instance, they live in the most important commercial towns, and though the Government has never favoured them, and though they have had to compete with Chinese and with Europeans, they have succeeded in making their position sufficiently strong.  Before European influence prevailed, they even founded states in some of the larger islands or they obtained political influence in existing native states.  Under a strong European government they are among the quietest, most industrious subjects, all earning their own living and saving something for their poor relations at home.  They come penniless, and without any of that theoretical knowledge or practical skill which we are apt to consider as indispensable for a man who wishes to try his fortune in a complicated modern colonial world.  Yet I have known some who in twenty years’ time have become commercial potentates, and even millionaires.

The strange spectacle of these latent talents and of the suppressed energy of the people of Hadramaut that seem to be waiting only for transplantation into a more favourable soil to develop with amazing rapidity, helps us to understand the enormous consequences of the Arabian migration in the seventh century.

The spiritual goods, with which Islam set out into the world, were far from imposing.  It preached a most simple monotheism:  Allah, the Almighty Creator and Ruler of heaven and earth, entirely self-sufficient, so that it were ridiculous to suppose Him to have partners or sons and daughters to support Him; who has created the angels that they might form His retinue, and men and genii (jinn) that they might obediently serve Him; who decides everything according to His incalculable will and is responsible to nobody, as the Universe is His; of whom His creatures, if their minds be not led astray, must therefore stand in respectful fear and awe.  He has made His will known to mankind, beginning at Adam, but the spreading of mankind over the surface of the earth, its seduction by Satan and his emissaries have caused most nations to become totally estranged from Him and His service.  Now and then, when He considered that the time was come, He caused a prophet to arise from among a nation to be His messenger to summon people to conversion, and to tell them what blessedness awaited them as a reward of obedience, what punishments would be inflicted if they did not believe his message.