L.

mountains: the soil is a rock; the water even CHAP. of the holy well of Zemzem is bitter or brackish; the pastures are remote from the city; and grapes are transported above seventy miles from the gardens of Tayef. The fame and spirit of the Koreishites, who reigned in Mecca, were conspicuous among the Arabian tribes; but their ungrateful soil refused the labours of agriculture, and their position was favourable to the enterprises of trade. By the sea-port of her trade. Gedda, at the distance only of forty-miles, they maintained an easy correspondence with Abyssinia; and that Christian kingdom afforded the first refuge to the disciples of Mahomet. The treasures of Africa were conveyed over the peninsula to Gerrha or Katiff, in the province of Bahrein, a city built, as it is said, of rock-salt, by the Chaldean exiles and from thence, with the native pearls of the Persian Gulf, they were floated on the rafts to the mouth of the Euphrates. Mecca is placed almost at an equal distance, a month's journey, between Yemen on the right, and Syria on the left hand. The former was the winter, and the latter the summer, station of her caravans; and their seasonable arrival relieved the ships of India from the tedious and troublesome navigation of the Red Sea. In the markets of Saana and Merab, in the harbours Oman and Aden, the camels of the Koreishites were laden with a precious cargo of aromatics: a supply of corn and manufactures was purchased in the fairs of Bostra

t

* Strabo, 1. xvi, p. 1110. See one of these salt houses near Bassora, in d'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. G.

1

L.

CHAP. and Damascus; the lucrative exchange diffused plenty and riches in the streets of Mecca; and the noblest of her sons united the love of arms with the profession of merchandize."

National independ

Arabs.

The perpetual independence of the Arabs has ence of the been the theme of praise among strangers and natives; and the arts of controversy transform this singular event into a prophecy and a miracle, in favour of the posterity of Ismael. Some exceptions that can neither be dissembled nor eluded, render this mode of reasoning as indiscreet as it is superfluous: the kingdom of Yemen has been successively subdued by the Abyssinians, the Persians, the sultans of Egypt,' and the Turks: the holy cities of Mecca and Medina have repeatedly bowed under a Scythian tyrant; and the Roman province of Arabia* embraced the peculiar wilderness in which

" Mirum dictû ex innumeris populis pars æqua in commerciis aut in latrociniis degit, (Plin. Hist. Nat. vi, 32). See Hale's Koran, Sural cvi, p. 503; Pocock, Specimen, p. 2; d'Herbelot, Bibliot. Orent. p. 361; Prideaux's Life of Mahomet, p. 5; Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. i, p. 72, 120, 126, &c.

* A nameless doctor (Universal Hist. vol. xx, octavo edition) has formally demonstrated the truth of Christianity by the independence of the Arabs. A critic, besides the exceptions of fact, might dispute the meaning of the text, (Genes. xvi, 12), the extent of the application, and the foundation of the pedigree.

" It was subdued, A. D. 1173, by a brother of the great Saladin, who founded a dynasty of Curds or Ayoubites, (Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. i, p. 425. D'Herbelot, p. 477.)

1

By the lieutenant of Soliman. (A. D. 1538) and Selim II, (1568). See Cantemir's Hist. of the Othman empire, p. 201, 221. The Pasha, who resided at Saana, commanded twenty-one beys, but no revenue was ever remitted to the Porte, (Marsigli, Stato Militare dell' Imperio Ottomanno, p. 121), and the Turks were expelled about th year 1630 (Niebuhr, p. 167, 168).

* Of the Roman province, under the name of Arabia and the third Palestine, the principal cities were Bostra and Petra, which dated their

era

L.

Ismael and his sons must have pitched their CHAP. tents in the face of their brethren. Yet these exceptions are temporary or local; the body of the nation has escaped the yoke of the most powerful monarchies: the arms of Sesostris and Cyrus, of Pompey and Trajan, could never achieve the conquest of Arabia; the present sovereign of the Turks may exercise a shadow of jurisdiction, but his pride is reduced to solicit the friendship of a people, whom it is dangerous to provoke and fruitless to attack. The obvious causes of their freedom are inscribed on the character and country of the Arabs. Many ages before Mahomet,' their intrepid valour had been severely felt by their neighbours in offensive 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 the sheep and camels is abandoned to the women of the tribe; but the

era from the year 105, when they were subdued by Palma, a lieutenant of Trajan, (Dion. Cassius, 1. lxviii). Petra was the capital of the Nabathæans; whose name is derived from the eldest of the sons of Ismael, (Genes, xxv, 12, &c. with the Commentaries of Jerom, Le Clerc, and Calmet Justinian relinquished a palm country of ten days journey to the south of Ælah, (Procop. de Bell. Persic. 1. i, c. 19), and the Romans maintained a centurion and a custom-house, (Arrian in Periplo Maris Erythræri, p. 11, in Hudson, tom. i), at a place (λivиn næμn, Pagus Albus Hawara) in the territory of Medina, (d'Auville Memoire sur l'Egypte, p. 213). These real possessions, and some naval inroads of Trajan, Peripl. p. 14, 15), are magnified by history and medals into the Roman conquest of Arabia.

Niebuhr (Description de l'Arabie, p. 302, 303, 329-331) affords the most recent and authentic intelligence of the Turkish empire in Arabia.

Diodorus Siculus (tom. ii, 1. xix, p. 390-393, edit Wesseling) has clearly exposed the freedom of the Nabathan Arabs, who resisted the arms of Antigonus and his son.

L.

CHAP. 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 simitar. 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 fourscore 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 Bedoweens 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

ત Strabo, 1. xvi, p. 1127-1129. Plin. Hist. Natur. vi, 32. Ælius Gal lus landed near Medina, and marched near a thousand miles into the part of Yemen between Mareb and the ocean. The non ante devictis Sabeæ regibus, (Od. i, p. 29), and the intacti Arabum thesauri, (Od. iii, 24), of Horace attest the virgin purity of Arabia.

e

L.

power that the reduction of Yemen has been CHAP. successfully attempted. When Mahomet 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 his vicegerent of Chroroes was tempted to forget his distant country and his unfortunate master. The historians of the age of Justinian represent the state of the independent Arabs, who were divided by interest or affection in the long quarrel of the East: the tribe of Gassan was allowed to encamp on the Syrian territory; the princes of Hira were permitted to form a city about forty miles to the southward of the ruins of Babylon. Their service in the field was speedy and vigorous; but their friendship was venal, their faith inconstant, their enmity capricious: it was an easier task to excite than to disarm these roving barbarians; and, in the familiar intercourse of war, they learned, to see, and to despise, the splendid weakness both of Rome and Persia. From Mecca to the Euphrates, the Arabian tribes were confounded by the Greeks and Latins, under the general appellation of the SARACENS, a name which

See the imperfect history of Yenien in Pocock, Specimen, p. 55-66; of Hira, p. 66-74; of Gassan, p. 75-78, as far as it could be known or preserved in the time of ignorance.

f The Σαρακηνικα φυλα, μυριάδες ταυτα και το πλείςον αυτών ερημονομοί, και adiσTOTO, are described by Menander, (Excerpt. Legation, p. 149); Procopius, (de Bell. Persic. 1. i, c. 17, 19; 1. ii, c. 10); and, in the most lively colours, by Ammianus Marcellinus, (1. xiv, c. 4), who had spoken of them as early as the reign of Marcus.

The name which, used by Ptolemy and Pliny in a more confined, by Ammianus and Procopius in a larger, sense, has been derived, ridiculously, from Sarah, the wife of Abraham, obscurely from the village

of