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National Geographic : 1919 Nov
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THE RISE OF THE NEW ARAB NATION Photograph from Frederick Simpich FISH CAUGHT IN MASKAT HARBOR: NOTE THE METHOD OF PACKING HAMPERS ON THE DONKEY This picture belongs under the head of food-supply rather than fisherman's luck, for it is only in countries where tired business men outnumber hungry stomachs that fishing becomes a recreation rather than a business. So plentiful are fish around Maskat that in times of drought dried fish are fed to cattle. masons, and there is nothing in the mud walled architecture and ugly brick houses of Arab towns to show any national standard of architecture. The Koran also forbids an Arab to paint, hew, or carve anything representa tive of the human body or of any other living creature; so in all their crude paint ing and sculpture they limit their designs to figures of flowers, trees, vegetables, the heavenly bodies, or to fantastic patterns and color combinations. ROMANCE AND WEALTH OF ARABIA'S PEARL FISHERIES Bahrein, the remote Arab isle in the Persian Gulf, which is the reputed birth place of the Phoenicians, has played an important part in the eventful history of the Middle East. Tradition says the lus trous pearls that gleamed on the breast of the Queen of Sheba were fished up from the hot, dangerous depths of these wa ters. And long before the flood, says Babylonian mythology, a great creature, half man and half fish, called "Oannes," came up from the waters of Bahrein, strode ashore, and went north to teach culture to the Chaldeans! Here, too, are strange, mysterious ruins awaiting the pick and spade of exploring antiquarians. But it is the big, high-priced pearls rather than ruined cities that make mod ern Bahrein a coveted prize in the break up of the Turkish Empire. For centuries fortunes have been fished up from these seas each year. On the adjacent Arab coast are certain sheiks in whose tribes pearls of -great price have been handed down for generations, and Ishtar, the dis solute Babylonian princess, is said to have worn a necklace of Bahrein pearls which 385
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