and the Damascene province of Batanaea was his property.” In like manner, in the Geography of Jâkût el-Hamawi,[1] under the art. Bethenîje, it is said: “and in this land lived Job (wakân Êjûb minhâ).”
Modern exegetes, as is known, do not take the plain of Hauran, but the mountain range of Hauran with its eastern slope, as the Provincia Batanaea. I have sought elsewhere[2] to show the error of this view, and may the more readily confine myself to merely referring to it, as one will be convinced of the correctness of my position in the course of this article. One thing, however, is to be observed here, that the supposition that Basan is so called as being the land of basalt rocks, is an untenable support of this error. The word basalt may be derived from βασάντις, or a secondary formation, βασάλτις, because Basan is exclusively volcanic;[3] but we have no more right to reverse the question, than to say that Damascus may have received its name from the manufacture of damask.[4],
- ↑ Orient. MSS in the Royal Library in Berlin, Sect. Sprenger, No. 7-10.
- ↑ Reisebericht, S. 83-87.
- ↑ Vid., p. 540, comp. p. 542, note 1, of the foregoing Commentary.
- ↑ In the fair at Muzêrîb we again saw the sheikh of the Wêsîje-Beduins, whose guest we had been a week before at the Springs of Joseph in western Gôlân, where he had pitched his tent on a wild spot of ground that had been traversed by lava-streams. In answer to our question whether he still sojourned in that district, he said: “No, indeed! Nâzilin el-jôm bi-ard bethêne shêle (we are not encamped in a district that is completely bethêne).” I had not heard this expression before, and inquired what it meant. The sheikh replied, bethêne (Arab. buṯaynat) is a stoneless plain covered with rich pasture. I often sought information respecting this word, since I was interested about it on account of the Hebrew word בּשׁן, and always obtained the same definition. It is a diminutive form, without having exactly a diminutive signification, for in the language of the nomads it is an acknowledged fact that such a form takes the place of the usual form. The usual form is either bathne or bathane. The Kâmûs gives the former signification, “a level country.” That the explanation of the Kamus is too restricted, and that of the Sheikh of Wêjîje the more complete, may be shown from the Kamus itself. In one place it says, The word moreover signifies (a) the thick of the milk (cream); (b) a tender maiden; (c) repeated acts of benevolence. These three significations given are, however, manifestly only figurative applications, not indeed of the signification which the Kamus places Primo loco, but of that which the Sheikh of the Wêjîje gave; for the likening of a “voluptuously formed maiden,” or of repeated acts of benevolence, to a luxurious meadow, is just as natural to a nomad, as it was to the shepherd Amos (Amo 4:1) to liken the licentious women of Samaria to well-nourished cows of the fat pastures of Basan. Then the Kamus brings forward a collective form buthun (Arab. butun, perhaps from the sing. bathan = בּשׁן, like Arab. usud from asad) in the signification pastures (Arab. ryâd); pastures, however, that are damp and low, with a rich vegetation. That the word is ancient, may be seen from the following expression of Châlid ibn el-Welîd, the victor on the Jarmûk: “'Omar made me governor of Damascus; and when I had made it into the buthêne, i.e., a stoneless fertile plain (easy to govern and profitable), he removed me.” Jâkût also mentions this expression under Bethenîje. Châlid also uses the diminutive as the nomads do (he was of the race of Machzûm); probably the whole word belongs only to the steppe, for all the women who were called buthêne, e.g., the beloved of the poet Gemîl, and others mentioned in the “Dîwân of Love” (Dı̂wân es-sabâbe)
