nificent building, covered with a cupola, and adjoining to the east side of the great temple, which is built in the midst of the city. The province of Tehâma was so named from the vehement heat of its sandy soil, and is also called Gaur from its low situation; it is bounded on the west by the Red Sea, and on the other sides by Hejâz and Yaman, extending almost from Mecca to Aden.5 The province of Najd, which word signifies a rising country, lies between those of Yamâma, Yaman, and Hejâz, and is bounded on the east by Irak. The province of Yamâma, also called Arûd from its oblique situation, in respect of Yaman, is surrounded by the provinces of Najd, Tehâma, Bahrein, Omân, Shihr, Hadramaut, and Saba. The chief city is Yamâma, which gives name to the province: it was anciently called Jaw, and is particularly famous for being the residence of Mohammed's competitor, the false prophet, Moseilama." The Arabians, the inhabitants of this spacious country, which they have possessed from the most remote antiquity, are distinguished by their own writers into two classes, viz. the old lost Arabians, and the present. The former were very numerous, and divided into several tribes, which are now all destroyed, or else lost and swallowed up among the other tribes, nor are any certain memoirs or records extant concerning them ; though the memory of some very remarkable events and the catastrophe of some tribes have been preserved by tradition, and since confirmed by the authority of the Korân. The most famous tribes amongst these ancient Arabians were Ad, Thamûd, Tasm, Jadîs, the former Jorham, and Amalek. The tribe of Ad were descended from Ad, the son of Aws, the son of Aram, the son of Sem, the son of Noah, who after the confusion of tongues settled in al Ahkâf, or the winding sands, in the province of Hadramaut, where his posterity greatly multiplied. Their first king was Shedâd the son of Ad, of whom the eastern writers deliver many fabulous things, particularly that he finished the magnificent city his father had begun, wherein he built a fine palace, adorned with delicious gardens, to embellish which he spared neither cost nor labour, purposing thereby to create in his subjects a superstitious veneration of himself as a God. This garden or paradise was called the garden of Irem, and is mentioned in the Korân, and often alluded to by the oriental writers. The city, they tell yet several modern writers, whether through ignorance or negligence I will not determine, have fallen into it. I shall here take notice only of two; one is Dr. Smith, who having lived some time in Turkey, seems to be inexcusable: that gentleman in his Epistles de moribus ac institutis Turcarum, no less than thrice mentions the Mohammedans visiting the tomb of their prophet at Mecca, and once his being born at Medina, the reverse of which is true (see Ep. 1. p. 22. Ep. 2. p. 63 and 64). The other is the publisher of the last edition of Sir J. Mandevile's travels, who, on his author's saying very truly (p. 50) that the said tomb was at Methone (i. e. Medina), undertakes to correct the name of the town, which is something corrupted, by putting at the bottom of the page, Mecca. The Abbot de Vertot in his history of the order of Malta (vol. i. p. 410, ed. 8vo.) seems also to have confounded these two cities together, though he had before mentioned Mohammed's sepulchre at Medina. However, he is certainly mistaken, when he says that one point of the religion, both of the Christians and Mohammedans, was to visit, at least once in their lives, the tomb of the author of their respective faith. Whatever may be the opinion of some Christians, I am well assured the Mohammedans think themselves under no manner of obligation in this respect. • Gol. Gol. ubi sup. 95. • Vido Gol. ad Alfrag. 97. Abulfeda Descr. Arab. p. 40. ubi sup. 94. Ib. 95. Abulfarag. p. 159. Kor. c. 89. Some make Ad the son of Amalek, the son of Ham; but the other is the received opinion. See D'Herbel. 51. Vide Eund. 498. Cap. 89. us, is still standing in the deserts of Aden, being preserved by providence as a monument of divine justice, though it be invisible, unless very rarely, when God permits it to be seen; a favour one Colabah pretended to have received in the reign of the Khalif Moâwiyah, who sending for him. to know the truth of the matter, Colabah related his whole adventure; that as he was seeking a camel he had lost, he found himself on a sudden at the gates of this city, and entering it saw not one inhabitant, at which being terrified, he stayed no longer than to take with him some fine stones which he showed the Khalîf. The descendants of Ad in process of time falling from the worship of the true God into idolatry, God sent the prophet Hûd (who is generally agreed to be Heber') to preach to and reclaim them. But they refusing to acknowledge his mission, or to obey him, God sent a hot and suffocating wind, which blew seven nights and eight days together, and entering at their nostrils passed through their bodies, and destroyed them all, a very few only excepted, who had believed in Hûd, and retired with him to another place. That prophet afterwards returned into Hadramaut, and was buried near Hasec, where there is a small town now standing called Kabr Hûd, or the sepulchre of Hûd. Before the Adites were thus severely punished, God, to humble them, and incline them to hearken to the preaching of his prophet, afflicted them with drought for four years, so that all their cattle perished, and themselves were very near it; upon which they sent Lokmân (different from one of the same name who lived in David's time) with sixty others to Mecca to beg rain, which they not obtaining, Lokmân with some of his company staid at Mecca, and thereby escaped destruction, giving rise to a tribe called the latter Ad, who were afterwards changed into monkeys. Some commentators on the Korân9 tell us these old Adites were of prodigious stature, the largest being a hundred cubits high, and the least sixty; which extraordinary size they pretend to prove by the testimony of the Korân.' The tribe of Thamûd were the posterity of Thamûd the son of Gather the son of Aram, who falling into idolatry, the prophet Sâleh was sent to bring them back to the worship of the true God. This prophet lived between the time of Hûd and of Abraham, and therefore cannot be the same with the patriarch Selah, as M. D'Herbelot imagines. The learned Bochart with more probability takes him to be Phaleg. A small number of the people of Thamûd hearkened to the remonstrances of Sâleh, but the rest requiring, as a proof of his mission, that he should cause a she-camel big with young to come out of a rock in their presence, he accordingly obtained it of God, and the camel was immediately delivered of a young one ready weaned; but they, instead of believing, cut the hamstrings of the camel and killed her; at which act of impiety God being highly dis pleased, three days after struck them dead in their houses by an earthquake and a terrible noise from heaven, which, some say, was the voice of Gabriel the archangel crying aloud, Die all of you. Sâleh, with those who were reformed by him, were saved from this destruction; the prophet going into Palestine, and from thence to Mecca, where he ended his days. This tribe first dwelt in Yaman, but being expelled thence by Hamyar ⚫D'Herbel. 51. The Jews acknowledge Heber to have been a great prophet. Seder Olam. p. 2. • Al Beidâwi. Poc. Spec. 35, &c. • Ibid. 36. et Zamakhshari. Bibl. Orient. 740. Shohnah. 9 • Jallalo'ddin 1 Kor. c. 7. 2 Or Gether. Vide. Gen. x. 23. " D'Herbel. Bochart. Geogr. Sac. • See D'Herbel. 366. Ebr he son of Saba," they settled in the territory of Hejr in the province of Hejâz, where their habitations cut out of the rocks, mentioned in the Korân, are still to be seen, and also the crack of the rock whence the camel issued, which, as an eye witness hath declared, is sixty cubits wide. These houses of the Thamudites being of the ordinary proportion, are used as an argument to convince those of a mistake, who make this people to have been of a gigantic stature.' The tragical destructions of these two potent tribes are often insisted on in the Koran, as instances of God's judgment on obstinate unbelievers. The tribe of Tasm were the posterity of Lûd the son of Sem, and Jadîs of the descendants of Jether. These two tribes dwelt promiscuously together under the government of Tasm, till a certain tyrant made a law, that no maid of the tribe of Jadîs should marry, unless first defloured by him ; which the Jadisians not enduring, formed a conspiracy, and inviting the king and chiefs of Tasm to an entertainment, privately hid their swords in the sand, and in the midst of their, mirth fell on them and slew them all, and extirpated the greatest part of that tribe; however, the few who escaped obtaining aid of the king of Yaman, then (as is said) Dhu Habshân Ebn Akrân, assaulted the Jadîs and utterly destroyed them, there being scarce any mention made from that time of either of those tribes." The former tribe of Jorham (whose ancestor some pretend was one of the eighty persons saved in the ark with Noah, according to a Mohammedan tradition) was contemporary with Ad, and utterly perished. The tribe of Amalek were descended from Amalek the son of Eliphaz the son of Esau, though some of the oriental authors say Amalek was the son of Ham the son of Noah,' and others the son of Azd the son of Sem.' The posterity of this person rendered themselves very powerful, and before the time of Joseph, conquered the lower Egypt under their king Walid, the first who took the name of Pharaoh, as the eastern writers tell us ; seeming by these Amalekites to mean the same people which the Egyptian histories call Phoenician shepherds. But after they had possessed the throne of Egypt for some descents, they were expelled by the natives, and at length totally destroyed by the Israelites." The present Arabians, according to their own historians, are sprung from two stocks, Kahtân, the same with Joctan the son of Eber, and Adnân descended in a direct line from Ismael the son of Abraham and Hagar; the posterity of the former they call al Arab al Ariba, i. e. the genuine or pure Arabs, and those of the latter al Arab al mostáreba, i. e. naturalized or insititious Arabs, though some reckon the ancient lost tribes to have been the only pure Arabians, and therefore call the posterity of Kahtân also Mótareba, which word likewise signifies insititious Arabs, though in a nearer degree than Mostáreba: the descendants of Ismael being the more distant graff. The posterity of Ismael have no claim to be admitted as pure Arabs; Kor. cap. xv. 'Poc. Spec. 57. Abu Musa al Ashari. 1 Vide Poc Spec. 37. Abulfeda. A like custom is said to have been in some manors in England, and also in Scotland, where it was called Culliage, or Cul'age, having been established by K. Ewen, and abolished by Malcolm III. See Bayle's Dict. Art. Sixte IV. Rem. H. Poc. Spec. 60. Ibid. 37, &c. Ibid. 38. Ebn Shohnah. Gen. xxvi. 12. Vide D'Herbelot, p. 110. bn Shohnah. "Vide Numb. xxiv. 20. Mirât. Caïnat. Vide Joseph. cont. Apion. lib. i. Vide Exod. xvii. 18, &c. 1 Sam. xv. 2, &c. Ib. xxvii. 8, 9. 1 Chron. iv. 43. R. Saad. in vers. Arab. Pentat. Gen. x. 25. Some writers make Kahtân a descendant of Ismael, but against the current of oriental historians. See Poc. Spec. 39. An expression something like that of St. Paul, who calls himself the Hebrew of the Hebrews. Phil. iii. 5. their ancestor being by origin and language an Hebrew, but having made an alliance with the Jorhamites, by marrying a daughter of Modad, and accustomed himself to their manner of living and language, his descendants became blended with them into one nation. The uncertainty of the descents between Ismael and Adnân, is the reason why they seldom trace their genealogies higher than the latter, whom they acknowledge as father of their tribes; the descents from him downwards being pretty certain and uncontroverted.s The genealogy of these tribes being of great use to illustrate the Arabian history, I have taken the pains to form a genealogical table from their most approved authors; to which I refer the curious. Besides these tribes of Arabs, mentioned by their own authors, who were all descended from the race of Sem, others of them were the posterity of Ham by his son Cush, which name is in scripture constantly given to the Arabs and their country, though our version renders it Ethiopia; but strictly speaking, the Cushites did not inhabit Arabia properly so called, but the banks of the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf, whither they came from Chuzestan or Susiana, the original settlement of their father. They might probably mix themselves in process of time with the Arabs of the other race, but the eastern writers take little or no notice of them. The Arabians were for some centuries under the government of the descendants of Kâhtan; Yárab, one of his sons, founding the kingdom of Yaman, and Jorham, another of them, that of Hejâz. The province of Yaman, or the better part of it, particularly the provinces of Saba and Hadramaut, was governed by princes of the tribe of Hamyar, though at length the kingdom was translated to the descendants of Cahlân his brother, who yet retained the title of king of Hamyar, and had all of them the general title of Tobba, which signifies successor, and was affected to this race of princes, as that of Cæsar was to the Roman emperors, and Khalif to the successors of Mohammed. There were several lesser princes who reigned in other parts of Yaman, and were mostly, if not altogether, subject to the king of Hamyar, whom they called the great king, but of these history has recorded nothing remarkable or that may be depended upon.' The first great calamity that befell the tribes settled in Yaman was the inundation of Aram, which happened soon after the time of Alexander the Great, and is famous in the Arabian history. No less than eight tribes were forced to abandon their dwellings upon this occasion, some of which gave rise to the two kingdoms of Ghassan and Hira. And this was probably the time of the migration of those tribes or colonies which were led into Mesopotamia by three chiefs, Becr, Modar, and Rabîa, from whom the three provinces of that country are still named Diyar Becr, Diyar Modar, and Diyar Rabia. Abdshems, surnamed Saba, having built the city from him called Saba, and afterwards Mareb, made a vast mound or dam3 to serve as a basin or reservoir to receive the water which came down from the mountains, not only for the use of the inhabitants, and watering their lands, but also to keep the country they had subjected in greater awe by being masters of the water. This building stood like a mountain above their city, and was by them esteemed so strong, that they were in no apprehension of its ever failing. The water rose to the height of almost twenty fathoms, and was kept in on every side by a work so solid, that many of the inhabitants had their houses built upon it. Every family had a certain portion of this Poc. Spec. p. 40. Spec. p. 65, 66. Vide Hyde Hist. Rel. veter. Persar. p. 37, &c. 1 Poc. water distributed by aqueducts. But at length God being highly displeased at their great pride and insolence, and resolving to humble and disperse them, sent a mighty flood, which broke down the mound at night while the inhabitants were asleep, and carried away the whole city with the neighbouring towns and people. The tribes which remained in Yaman after this terrible devastation still continued under the obedience of the former princes, till about 70 years before Mohammed, when the king of Ethiopia sent over forces to assist the Christians of Yaman against the cruel persecution of their king Dhu Nowâs, a bigoted Jew, whom they drove to that extremity, that he forced his horse into the sea, and so lost his life and crown; after which the country was governed by four Ethiopian princes successively, till Seif the son of Dhu Yazan of the tribe of Hamyar, obtaining succours from Khosrû Anushirwân king of Persia, which had been denied him by the emperor Heraclius, recovered the throne and drove out the Ethiopians, but was himself slain by some of them who were left behind. The Persians appointed the succeeding princes till Yamah fell into the hands of Mohammed, to whom Bazan, or rather Badhân, the last of them, submitted, and embraced his new religion. This kingdom of the Hamyarites is said to have lasted 2020 years,7 or as others say above 3000; the length of the reign of each prince being very uncertain. . It has been already observed that two kingdoms were founded by those who left their country on occasion of the inundation of Aram; they were both out of the proper limits of Arabia. One of them was the kingdom of Ghassan. The founders of this kingdom were of the tribe of Azd, who settling in Syria Damascena near a water called Ghassân, thence took their name, and drove out the Dejaamian Arabs of the tribe of Salih, who before possessed the country; where they maintained their kingdom 400 years, as others say 600, or as Abulfeda more exactly computes 616. Five of these princes were named Hâreth, which the Greeks write Aretas: and one of them it was whose governor ordered the gates of Damascus to be watched to take St. Paul. This tribe were Christians, their last king being Jabalah the son of al Ayham, who on the Arabs' successes in Syria professed Mohammedism under the Khalif Omar; but receiving a disgust from him, returned to his former faith, and retired to Constantinople. The other kingdom was that of Hira, which was founded by Malec of the descendants of Cahlân3 in Chaldea or Irâk; but after three descents the throne came by marriage to the Lakhmians, called also the Mondars (the general name of those princes), who preserved their dominion, notwithstanding some small interruption by the Persians, till the Khalifat of Abubeer, when al Mondar al Maghrûr, the last of them, lost his life and crown by the arms of Khaled Ebn al Walîd. This kingdom lasted 622 years eight months. Its princes were under the protection of the kings of Persia, whose lieutenants they were over the Arabs of Irak, as the kings of Ghassân were for the Roman emperors over those of Syria.5 Jorham the son of Kahtân reigned in Hejâz, where his posterity kept the throne till the time of Ismael, but on his marrying the daughter of Modad, by whom he had twelve sons, Kidar, one of them, had the crown Geogr. Nubiens. p. 52. p. 63, 64. Abulfeda. 12 Cor. xi. 32. Acts ix. 24. Poc. Spec. p. 66. • Ib. p. Al Jannâbi and Ahmed Ebn Yusef 74. See Prideaux's life of Moham. p. 61. • Poc. Spec. 9 Poc. Spec. p. 76. 2 Vide Ockley's History of the Saracens, vol i. p. 174. Ib. and Procop. in Pers. apud. Photium. p. 71, &c. |