Note 1183 — Chapter XIV · —Plains, Steppes And Deserts

The desert everywhere, sooner or later, drives out its brood, ejects its people and their ideas, like those exploding seed-pods which at a touch cast their seed abroad. The religious fanaticism of the shepherd tribes gives that touch; herein lies its historical importance. Mohammedism, fierce and militant, conduced to those upheavals of migration and conquest which since the seventh century have so often transformed the political geography of the Old World. The vast empire of the Caliphate, from its starting point in Arabia, spread in eighty years from the Oxus River to the Atlantic Ocean.1183 The rapid rise and spread between 1745 and 1803 of the Wahaby clan and sect, the Puritans of Islam, which resulted for a time in their political and religious domination of much of Arabia from their home in the Nejd, recalls the stormy conquests of Mohammed's followers. Islam is to-day a persistent source of ferment in Algeria, the Sahara, and the Sudan, On the other hand. Buddhism serves to cement together the diverse nomadic tribes of the Central Asia plateaus, and keep them in spiritual subjection to the Grand Lama of Lhassa. The Chinese government makes political use of this fact by dominating the Lama and employing him as a tool to secure quiet on its long frontier of contact with its restless Mongol neighbors. Moreover the religion of Buddha has restrained the warlike spirit of the nomads, and by its institution of celibacy has helped keep down population below the boiling-point. [Compare maps pages 484 and 513.]