"Images are very important to a civilization, culture and religion because as humans people wish to have a good image. There is nothing essentially good or bad in images themselves, but only in what they portray, evoke, or justify (Siddiqi 1)." It comes as no surprise, then, that people today doubt the fact that the Arab Empire was once amongst the world's greatest civilizations. To reduce the average Arab to the images that define him today would be to dismiss the existence of an entire historical era. Like members of any living society, Arabs have adopted, amended, coveted, and rejected traditions throughout the ages. The rich history that encompasses their development began several centuries before the invention of the solar calendar, bending and shifting until it arrives at today, in which the misunderstood concept of Arab consciousness defines the tumultuous present.
             Early historical records date the existence of Arabs back to 854 B.C, during the Neolithic period (Bowersock 19). It wasn't until the third millennium, however, that the first urban Arab settlements are acknowledged. During this period, the discovery of irrigation as a means of desert farming proved to be one of the greatest triumphs of early Arab civilization, facilitating an agricultural lifestyle that made communal settlements possible (Bowersock 20). Several centuries later, the definition of a traditional Arab livelihood was expanded to include traders and Bedouins (Rammuny). While the lack of a standard written language among tribal Arabs cause many to write off the pre-Islamic period as one of "Jahiliyya," or ignorance, Bedouins actually possessed, as demonstrated in the oral transmission of their stories and poetry, a remarkable artistic flair for eloquence and enunciation (Green 24).
             The rise of Islam and the subsequent recognition of Arabs as major world actors occurred in the seventh century A.D. At that time, Arabs p...