brackish water, a stunted verdure, or a few | pass the straits of the Red Sea; which were palm trees, fix the principal settlement of a long considered by the nations of Europe to be tribe, and afford stages of refreshment in these the produce of Arabia itself. These articles, otherwise impassable deserts. Here, with a before the invention of shipping, or the estafew dates, the milk of his faithful camel, and blishment of a maritime intercourse, were conperhaps a little corn, brought by painful jour-veyed across the deserts by the Cushite, Ishneys from distant regions, or plundered from a maelite, and Midianite carriers. It was the passing caravan, the Arab supports a hard ex-produce partly of India, and partly of Arabia, istence, until the failure of his resources impels which the travelling merchants, to whom Johim to seek another oasis, or the scanty herb- seph was sold, were carrying into Egypt. The age furnished on a patch of soil by transient balm and myrrh were probably Arabian, as they rains; or else, which is frequently the case, to are still the produce of the same country; but resort, by more distant migration, to the banks the spicery was undoubtedly brought farther of the Euphrates; or, by hostile inroads on the from the east. These circumstances are adneighbouring countries, to supply those wants verted to, to show how extensive was the comwhich the recesses of the desert have denied. munication, in which the Arabians formed the The numbers leading this wandering and pre- principal link: and that in the earliest ages of carious mode of life are incredible. From these which we have any account, in those of Joseph, deserts Zerah drew his army of a million of of Moses, of Isaiah, and of Ezekiel, "the men; and the same deserts, fifteen hundred mingled people" inhabiting the vast Arabian years after, poured forth the countless swarms, deserts, the Cushites, Ishmaelites, and Midianintercourse which has, from the most remote which, under Mohammed and his successors, ites, were the chief agents in that commercial And although the curdevastated half of the then known world. period of antiquity, subsisted between the extreme east and west. rent of trade is now turned, caravans of merchants, the descendants of these people, may still be found traversing the same deserts, conveying the same articles, and in the same manner as described by Moses!

The third region, or Arabia Felix, so denominated from the happier condition of its soil and climate, occupies the southern part of the Arabian peninsula. It is bounded on the north by the two other divisions of the country; on the south and south-east by the Indian The singular and important fact that Arabia Ocean; on the east by part of the same ocean and the Persian Gulf; and on the west by the Red Sea. This division is subdivided into the has never been conquered, has already beer kingdoms or provinces of Yemen, at the south-cursorily adverted to. But Mr. Gibbon, un ern extremity of the peninsula; Hejaz, on the north of the former, and toward the Red Sea; Nejed, in the central region; and Hadramant and Oman, on the shores of the Indian Ocean. The four latter subdivisions partake of much of the character of the other greater divisions of the country, though of a more varied surface, and with a larger portion capable of cultivation. But Yemen seems to belong to another country and climate. It is very mountainous, is well watered with rains and springs, and is blessed with an abundant produce in corn and fruits, and especially in coffee, of which vast quantiIn this division were the ties are exported. ancient cities of Nysa, Musa or Moosa, and Aden. This is also supposed to have been the country of the queen of Sheba. In Hejaz are the celebrated cities of Mecca and Medina.

willing to pass by an opportunity of cavillin
at revelation, says, "The perpetual independ
ence of the Arabs has been the theme of prais
among strangers and natives; and the arts
controversy transform this singular event in
a prophecy and a miracle in favour of the po
terity of Ishmael. Some exceptions, that c
neither be dissembled nor eluded, render t
mode of reasoning as indiscreet as it is sup
fluous. The kingdom of Yemen has be
successively subdued by the Abyssinians,
Persians, the Sultans of Egypt, and the Tur
the holy cities of Mecca and Medina have
peatedly bowed under a Scythian tyrant;
the Roman province of Arabia embraced
peculiar wilderness in which Ishmael and
of their brethren." But this learned writer
sons must have pitched their tents in the
with a peculiar infelicity, annulled his ow
gument; and we have only to follow or
above passage, to obtain a complete refut
of the unworthy position with which it be
"Yet these exceptions," says Mr. Gibbon
temporary or local; the body of the natio
escaped the yoke of the most powerf
narchies: the arms of Sesostris and Cy
Pompey, and Trajan, could never achie
conquest of Arabia; the present sover
the Turks may exercise a shadow of j
tion, but his pride is reduced to soli
friendship of a people whom it is dange
provoke, and fruitless to attack. The
causes of their freedom are inscribed
character and country of the Arabs. Ma
before Mohammed, their intrepid val
been severely felt by their neighbours,

sive and defensive war. The patient and active virtues of a soldier are insensibly nursed in the habits and discipline of a pastoral life. The care of he sheep and camels is abandoned to the women of the tribe; but the martial youth, under the banner of the emir, is ever on horseback and in the field, to practise the exercise of the bow, the javelin, and the scimitar. The long memory of their independence is the firmest pledge of its perpetuity; and succeeding generations are animated to prove their descent, and to maintain their inheritance. Their domestic feuds are suspended on the approach of a common enemy; and in their last hostilities against the Turks, the caravan of Mecca was attacked and pillaged by four score thousand of the confederates. When they advance to battle, the hope of victory is in the front, in the rear the assurance of a retreat. Their horses and camels, who in eight or ten days can perform a march of four or five hundred miles, disappear before the conqueror; the secret waters of the desert elude his search; and his victorious troops are consumed with thirst, hunger, and fatigue, in the pursuit of an invisible foe, who scorns his efforts, and safely reposes in the heart of the burning solitude. The arms and deserts of the Bedouins are not only the safeguards of their own freedom, but the barriers also of the happy Arabia, whose inhabitants, remote from war, are enervated by the luxury of the soil and climate. The legions of Augustus melted away in disease and lassitude; and it is only by a naval power that the reduction of Yemen has been successfully attempted. When Mohammed erected his holy standard, that kingdom was a province of the Persian empire; yet seven princes of the Homerites still reigned in the mountains; and the vicegerent of Chosroes was tempted to forget his distant country and his unfortunate master."

moon, &c; variously transformed by the dif ferent tribes, and intermingled with some Jewish and Christian maxims and traditions. The tribes themselves were generally at variance, from some hereditary and implacable animosities; and their only warfare consisted in desultory skirmishes arising out of these feuds, and in their predatory excursions, where superiority of numbers rendered courage of less value than activity and vigilance. Yet of such materials Mohammed constructed a mighty empire; converted the relapsed Ishmaelites intỏ good Musselmen; united the jarring tribes under one banner; supplied what was wanting in personal courage by the ardour of religious zeal; and out of a banditti, little known and little feared beyond their own deserts, raised an armed multitude, which proved the scourge of the world.

Mohammed was born in the year 569, of the noble tribe of the Koreish, and descended, according to eastern historians, in a direct line from Ishmael. His person is represented as beautiful, his manners engaging, and his eloquence powerful; but he was illiterate, like the rest of his countrymen, and indebted to a Jewish or Christian scribe for penning his Koran. Whatever the views of Mohammed might have been in the earlier part of his life, it was not till the fortieth year of his age that he avowed his mission as the Apostle of God: when so little credit did he gain for his pretensions, that in the first three years he could only number fourteen converts; and even at the end of ten years his labours and his friends were alike confined within the walls of Mecca, when the designs of his enemies compelled him to fly to Medina, where he was favourably received by a party of the most considerable inhabitants, who had recently imbibed his doctrines at Mecca. This flight, or Hegira, was made the Mohammedan æra, from which time is computed, Yemen was the only Arabian province which and corresponds with the 16th of July, 622, of had the appearance of submitting to a foreign the Christian æra. Mohammed now found yoke; but even here, as Mr. Gibbon himself himself sufficiently powerful to throw aside all acknowledges, seven of the native princes re- reserve; declared that he was commanded to mained unsubdued: and even admitting its compel unbelievers by the sword to receive the subjugation to have been complete, the per- faith of one God, and his prophet Mohammed; petual independence of the Ishmaelites remains and confirming his credulous followers by the unimpeached. For this is not their country. threats of eternal pain on the one hand, and Petra, the capital of the Stony Arabia, and the the allurements of a sensual paradise on the principal settlement of the Nabathæi, it is true, other, he had, before his death, which happened was long in the hands of the Persians and Ro- in the year 632, gained over the whole of Ara. mans; but this never made them masters of bia to his imposture. His death threw a temthe country. Hovering troops of Arabs con-porary gloom over his cause, and the disunion fined the intruders within their walls, and cut off their supplies; and the possession of this fortress gave as little reason to the Romans to exult as the conquerors of Arabia Petræa, as that of Gibraltar does to us to boast of the conquest of Spain.

of his followers threatened its extinction. Any other empire placed in the same circum. stances would have crumbled to pieces; but the Arabs felt their power; they revered their founder as the chosen prophet of God; and their ardent temperament, animated by a reThe Arabian tribes were confounded by the ligious enthusiasm, gave an earnest of future Greeks and Romans under the indiscriminate success, and encouraged the zeal or the ambiappellation of Saracens; a name whose ety- tion of their leaders. The succession, after mology has been variously, but never satisfac-some bloodshed, was settled, and unnumbered torily, explained. This was their general name when Mohammed appeared in the beginning of the seventh century. Their religion at this time was Sabianisin, or the worship of the sun,

hordes of barbarians were ready to carry into execution the sanguinary dictates of their prophet; and, with "the Koran, tribute, or death," as their motto, to invade the countries of the

79

infidels. During the whole of the succeeding | into the Arabic language. Philosophy, astro-
century, their rapid career was unchecked; the nomy, geometry, and medicine, were thus in-
disciplined armies of the Greeks and Romans troduced and taught; public schools were
were unable to stand against them; the Chris- established; and learning, which had altogether
tian churches of Asia and Africa were annihi- fled from Europe, found an asylum on the
lated; and from India to the Atlantic, through banks of the Tigris. Nor was this spirit con-
Persia, Arabia, Syria, Palestine, Asia Minor, fined to the capital: native works began to
Egypt, with the whole of northern Africa, appear; and by the hands of copyists were mul
Spain, and part of France, the impostor was tiplied out of number, for the information of
acknowledged. Constantinople was besieged; the studious, or the pride of the wealthy. The
Rome itself was plundered; and nothing less rage for literature extended to Egypt and to
scripts, beautifully transcribed, and very ele-.
than the subjection of the whole Christian Spain. In the former country, the Fatimites
world was meditated on the one hand and collected a library of a hundred thousand manu-
tremblingly expected on the other.
gantly bound; and in the latter, the Ommiades
formed another of six hundred thousand vo-
lumes; forty-four of which were employed in
the catalogue. Their capital, Cordova, with
the towns of Malaga, Almeria, and Murcia,
produced three hundred writers; and seventy
public libraries were established in the cities of
Andalusia. What a change since the days of
Omar, when the splendid library of the Ptole-
mies was wantonly destroyed by the same peo-
many Grecian works, lost in the original, have
ple! A retribution, though a slight one, was
thus made for their former devastations; and
been recovered in their Arabic dress. Neither
was this learning confined to mere parade,
though much of it must undoubtedly have been
so. Their proficiency in astronomy and geo.
metry is attested by their astronomical tables,
and by the accuracy with which, in the plain
of Chaldea, a degree of the great circle of the
earth was measured. But it was in medicine
that, in this dark age, the Arabians shone most:
the works of Hippocrates and Galen had been
translated and commented on; their physicians
were sought after by the princes of Asia and
Europe; and the names of Rhazis, Albucasis,
and Avicenna are still revered by the members
of the healing art. So little, indeed, did the
physicians of Europe in that age know of the
history of their own science, that they were
astonished, on the revival of learning, to find
in the ancient Greek authors those systems for
which they thought themselves indebted to the
Arabians!

About a hundred and eighty years from the
foundation of Bagdad, during which period the
power of the Saracens had gradually declined,
a dreadful reaction took place in the conquered
countries. The Persians on the east, and the
Greeks on the west, were simultaneously roused
from their long thraldom, and, assisted by the
Turks, who, issuing from the plains of Tar-
tary, now for the first time made their appear-
ance in the east, extinguished the power of the
caliphate, and virtually put an end to the Ara-
bian monarchy in the year 936. A succession
of nominal caliphs continued to the year 1258:
but the provinces were lost; their power was
confined to the walls of their capital; and they
were in real subjection to the Turks and the
Persians until the above year, when Mostacem,
the last of the Abbassides, was dethroned and
murdered by Holagou, or Hulaku, the Tartar,
the grandson of Zingis. This event, although
it terminated the foreign dominion of the Ara-
bians, left their native independence untouched.
They were no longer, indeed, the masters of
the finest parts of the three great divisions of
the ancient world: their work was finished;
and returning to the state in which Moham-
med found them three centuries before, with
the exception of the change in their religion,
they remained, and still remain, the unconquer-
ed rovers of the desert.

It is not the least singular circumstance in
the history of this extraordinary people, that
those who, in the enthusiasm of their first suc-
cesses, were the sworn foes of literature, should
become for several ages its exclusive patrons.
Almansor, the founder of Bagdad, has the merit
of first exciting this spirit, which was encou-
raged in a still greater degree by his grandson
Almamon. This caliph employed his agents
in Armenia, Syria, Egypt, and at Constantin-
ople, in collecting the most celebrated works
on Grecian science, and had them translated

The last remnant of Arabian science was found in Spain; from whence it was expelled in the beginning of the seventeenth century, by the intemperate bigots of that country, who have never had any thing of their own with which to supply its place. The Arabians are their manners and customs, from the earliest the only people who have preserved their descent, their independence, their language, and ages to the present times; and it is among them that we are to look for examples of patriarchal life and manners. A very lively sketch of this mode of life is given by Sir R. K. Porter, in the person and tribe of an Arab sheik, whom he encountered in the neighbourhood of the Euphrates. "I had met this warrior," says Sir R. K. P., "at the house of the British resident at Bagdad; and came, according to his repeated wish, to see him in a place more consonant with his habits, the tented field; and, as he expressed it, at the head of his children.'

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manners of the Arabians have remained un altered through so many ages, and will proba. bly so continue, their religion, as we have seen, has sustained an important change; and must again, in the fulness of time, give place to a

St. Paul first preached the Gospel in Arabia, Gal. i, 17. Christian churches were subse quently founded, and many of their tribes em. braced Christianity prior to the fifth century; most of which appear to have been tinctured with the Nestorian heresy. At this time, how. ever, it does not appear that the Arabians had any version of the Scriptures in their own language, to which some writers attribute the ease with which they were drawn into the Mohammedan delusion; while the "Greeks, Sy. rians, Armenians, Abyssinians, Copts, and others," who enjoyed that privilege, were able to resist it.

ARAM, the fifth son of Shem, Gen. x, 22. He was the father of the Syrians, who from him were called Aramæans, or Aramites.

As soon as we arrived in sight of his camp, we
were met by crowds of its inhabitants, who,
with a wild and hurrying delight, led us toward
the tent of their chief. The venerable old
man came forth to the door, attended by his
subjects of all sizes and descriptions, and greet-faith more worthy of the people.
ed us with a countenance beaming kindness;
while his words, which our interpreter explain-
ed, were demonstrative of patriarchal welcome.
One of my Hindoo troopers spoke Arabic;
hence the substance of our succeeding discourse
was not lost on each other. Having entered,
I sat down by my host; and the whole of the
persons present, to far beyond the boundaries
of the tent, (the sides of which were open,) |
seated themselves also, without any regard to
those more civilized ceremonies of subjection,
the crouching of slaves, or the standing of
vassalage. These persons, in rows beyond
rows, appeared just as he had described, the
offspring of his house, the descendants of his
fathers, from age to age; and like brethren,
whether holding the highest or the lowest rank,
they seemed to gather round their common ARARAT, a mountain of Asia, in Armenia,
parent. But perhaps their sense of perfect on which the ark of Noah rested after the ces-
equality in the mind of their chief could not be sation of the deluge. Concerning the etymo-
more forcibly shown, than in the share they logy of the name, Dr. Bryant observes, that it
took in the objects which appeared to interest is a compound of Ar-Arat, and signifies "the
his feelings; and as I looked from the elders mountain of descent," being equivalent to
or leaders of the people, seated immediately, of the Hebrews. Of the precise situation
around him, to the circles beyond circles of of this mountain, different accounts have been
brilliant faces, bending eagerly toward him given. Some have supposed that it was one
and his guest, (all, from the most respectably of the mountains which divide Armenia on the
clad to those with hardly a garment covering south from Mesopotamia, and that part of As-
their active limbs, earnest to evince some at- syria inhabited by the Curds, from whom those
tention to the stranger he bade welcome,) I mountains took the name of Curdue, or Cardu;
thought I had never before seen so complete an by the Greeks denominated Gordyai. It is
assemblage of fine and animated countenances, called by the Arabs Al-Judi, and also Thama-
both old and young: nor could I suppose a nin. In confirmation of this opinion, it is
better specimen of the still existing state of alleged that the remains of the ark were to be
the true Arab; nor a more lively picture of the seen on these mountains; and it is said, that
scene which must have presented itself, ages Berosus and Abydenus both declare, that such
ago, in the fields of Haran, when Terah sat in a report existed in their time. Epiphanius
his tent door, surrounded by his sons, and his pretends, if we may credit his assertion, that
sons' sons, and the people born in his house. the relics of the ark were to be seen in his
The venerable Arabian sheik was also seated day; and we are farther told, that the emperor
on the ground with a piece of carpet spread Heraclius went from the town of Thamanin,
under him; and, like his ancient Chaldean an-up the mountain Al-Judi, and saw the place of
cestor, turned to the one side and the other, the ark. Others maintain, that mount Ararat
graciously answering or questioning the groups was situated toward the middle of Armenia,
around him, with an interest in them all which near the river Araxes, or Aras, about twelve
clearly showed the abiding simplicity of his miles from it, according to Tournefort, above
government, and their obedience. On the two hundred and eighty miles distant from
smallest computation, such must have been Al-Judi, to the north-east. Ararat seems to
the manners of these people for more than be a part of that vast chain of mountains call-
three thousand years; thus, in all things, veri-ed Caucasus and Taurus; and upon these
fying the prediction given of Ishmael at his
birth, that he, in his posterity, should be a wild
man,' and always continue to be so, though
'he shall dwell for ever in the presence of his
brethren.' And that an acute and active peo-
ple, surrounded for ages by polished and luxu-
rious nations, should from their earliest to their
latest times, be still found a wild people, dwell-
ing in the presence of all their brethren, (as we
may call these nations,) unsubdued and un-
changeable, is, indeed, a standing miracle:
one of those mysterious facts which establish
the truth of prophecy." But although the

mountains, and in the adjacent country, were preserved more authentic accounts of the ark than in almost any other part of the world. The region about Ararat, called Araratia, was es. teemed among the ancients as nearly a central part of the earth; and it is certainly as well calculated as any other for the accommodation of its first inhabitants, and for the migration of colonies, upon the increase of mankind. The soil of the country was very fruitful, and especially of that part where the patriarch made his first descent. The country also was very high, though it had fine plains and valleys