I likewise flatter myself that they, and all considerate persons, will excuse the delay which has happened in the publication of this work; when they are informed, that it was carried on at leisure times only, and amidst the necessary avocations of a troublesome profession. CONTENTS. Α Of the Arabs before Mohammed; or, as they ex- press it, In the Time of Ignorance; their His- tory, Religion, Learning, and Customs 2. Of the state of Christianity, particularly of the Eastern Churches, and of Judaism, at the Time of Mohammed's Appearance: and of the Methods taken by him for the establishing his Religion, and the Circumstances which con- curred thereto 8. Of the principal Sects among the Mohammedans ; and of those who have pretended to prophesy THE PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. SECTION I. Of the Arabs before Mohammed; or, as they express it, in the Time of Ignorance: their History, Religion, Learning, and Customs. THE Arabs, and the country they inhabit, which themselves call Jezîrat al Arab, or the Peninsula of the Arabians, but we Arabia, were so named from Araba, a small territory in the province of Tehâma, to which Yarab, the son of Kahtân, the father of the ancient Arabs, gave his name, and where, some ages after, dwelt Ismael, the son of Abraham by Hagar. The Christian writers for several centuries speak of them under the appellation of Saracens the most certain derivation of which word is from Shark, the East, where the descendants of Joctan, the Kahtân of the Arabs, are placed by Moses, and in which quarter they dwelt in respect to the Jews. The name of Arabia (used in a more extensive sense) sometimes comprehends all that large tract of land bounded by the river Euphrates, the Persian Gulph, the Sindian, Indian, and Red Seas, and part a Pocock. Specim. Hist. Arab. 33. Specim. 33, 34 b Genes. x. 30. c See Pocock. VOL. I b of the Mediterranean: above two thirds of which country, that is, Arabia properly so called, the Arabs have possessed almost from the flood; and have made themselves masters of the rest, either by settlements, or continual incursions; for which reason the Turks and Persians at this day call the whole Arabistan, or The Country of the Arabs, But the limits of Arabia, in its more usual and proper sense, are much narrower, as reaching no farther northward than the Isthmus, which runs from Aila to the head of the Persian Gulph, and the borders of the territory of Cûfa: which tract of land the Greeks nearly comprehended under the name of Arabia the Happy. The eastern geographers make Arabia Petræa to belong partly to Egypt, and partly to Shâm or Syria, and the desart Arabia they call the desarts of Syria. Proper Arabia is by the oriental writers generally divided into five provinces, viz. Yaman, Hejâz, Tehâma, Najd, and Yamâma; to which some add Bahrein, as a sixth; but this province the more exact make part of Irâk: others reduce them all to two, Yaman and Hejâz, the last including the three other provinces of Tehâma, Najd, and Yamâma. The province of Yaman, so called either from its situation to the right hand, or south of the temple of Mecca, or else from the happiness and verdure of its soil, extends itself along the Indian Ocean from Aden to Cape Rasalgat; part of the Red Sea bounds it on the west and south sides, and the province of Hejâz on the north. It is subdivided into several lesser provinces, as Hadramaut, Shihr, Omân, Najrân, &c. of which Shihr alone produces the frankincense. The metropolis of Yaman is Sanaa, a very ancient city, in former times called Ozal, and much celebrated for its delightful situation; but the prince at present resides about five leagues northward from thence, at ȧ d Golius ad Alfragan. 78, 79. e Strabo says, Arabia Felix was, in his time, divided into five kingdoms, 1. 16. p. 1129. f Gol ad Alfragan. 79. La Roque, Voyage de l'Arab. heur. 121. h Gol. ad Alfragan. 79, 87. |