Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/275

HISTORY.] ARABIA 255 a nest of robbers. This coast is very mountainous, and the inhabit ants, mostly Wahhabees, are savage in the extreme. Their number is said not to exceed 10,000; they speak a dialect of their own, almost unintelligible to the Arabs of the neighbourhood. talhat. Kalhat, the coast region east of Cape Mesandom. Its principal village is the small seaport of Leemah ; the other hamlets are about forty in number. The population, a rough seafaring set, is stated at 60,000. latiueh. Batiueh. This district includes the whole plain between the mountains of Oman and the sea-coast as far as Ras-Heyran, east of Mascat. It is the richest, best-watered, and most thickly populated in all Arabia, and contains several considerable towns, of which Mascat is the chief ; and where the sultan, or, as he is sometimes called, imam, of Oman resides. The other principal towns are Matrah, Barkah, Sohar, and Shcnaz, all seaports of some activity along the coast ; more than seventy other small towns and villages are reported to be scattered through the interior. The population, all Biadeeyah, and mortal enemies of the Arabs of Nejd, is said to be 700,000. )ahirah. Dahirah, the north-western province of Oman, having for its principal town that of Bereymah, besides several places of less im portance. It is the only district where the nomade population Dears any proportion to the settled : the total population is given at 80,000. The Wahhabees of Nejd have often occupied and still con tinue to harass this part of the country. ebel Jebel Akhdar. This province, including the great fertile and Akhdar. well-peopled chain of the " Green Mountains," is to the kingdom of Oman what the province of Ared is to that of Nejd, the back bone of the land. Here are the two towns of Nejwah and Bahhileh, formerly residences of the sultan ; besides Zekee, Minah, and about seventy villages. The inhabitants are warlike, the women stately and beautiful ; all belong to the sect of the Biadeeyah. The popula tion is stated at about 600,000. Mad Soor. Belad Soor, a coast district, said to be moderately fertile from Mascat to Ras-el-Hadd. The port of Soor is the only place of any note, but several small villages are said to exist near the coast. Population about 100,000 ; among them are the Benoo-Aboo-Alee Arabs, famous for their brave resistance to our own troops in 1819-20. aylan. Lastly, Jaylan, a wild region of which little is known, except that the inhabitants are uncivilised, and resemble in all respects those of Malirah, with which province theirs is conterminous. "opulation. The entire population of Arabia proper has been vari ously estimated; some authors make it reach 12,000,000, others reduce it to 7,000,000. Taking the approximate statistics above given, we find for the whole of central Arabia, including Jowf, Shomer, and Nejd, about 1,500,000 settled inhabitants, with 500,000 Bedouins or nomades ; thus 2,000,000 may perhaps fairly represent the com plete number. The east coast- -Hasa, Bahreyn, Oman, and their adjoining districts furnishes 2,500,000 more. Yemen is said to contain over 1,000,000 : Hadramaut and Mahrah cannot be very populous : the Hejaz cer tainly is not. 3,000,000 is the maximum estimate of both taken together, nomades or villagers. To these must be added the tribes of the Sinaitic peninsula, and of the northern frontier. These . may possibly bring the sum of the Arab population to 8,500,000, or even 9,000,000, with a quota of about one-fifth Bedouin to four-fifths of settled Arabs ; to such small numerical proportions has the nation shrunk that once ruled by land and sea from the Indus to the Atlantic, and that even now, by its religion and institutions, gives the law to one-eighth of the human race. listory. ^rchistonc nytus. The history of Arabia and its inhabitants naturally divides itself into two distinct and even dissimilar periods, that, namely, which preceded the era of Mahomet, and that M - hich followed it. Each of these two periods, though comprising in its extent several minor phases and fluctuations, now of advance, now of retro gression, bears, however, a well-marked general character of its own. The first of the two periods is distinguished as one of local monarchies and federal governments ; the latter commences with theocratic centralisation dissolving into general anarchy. The unrestrained imagination of Arab chroniclers has indeed added to their annals a third or pre-historic tract, peopled with heroes and giants, men of renown, sons of Anak, much resembling those who figure in early Jewish records, and, it may be not unfairly presumed, of analogous authenticity. To such belong the fabulous tribes of Ad in the south, of Thamood in the north, and of Tasm and Jadis in the oentre of the peninsula. Veiy gorgeous aro the descriptions given of " Irem," the " city of pillars," as the Koran styles it, supposed to have been erected by Shedad, the latest despot of Ad, in the regions of Hadramaut ; and which yet, after the annihilation of its tenants, remains entire, so Arabs say, invisible to ordinary eyes, but occasionally, and at rare intervals, revealed to some heaven-favoured traveller. Vague reports of the colossal ruins of Egyptian Thebes and Karnak probably originated the fancy. To Thamood are ascribed the more substantial traces of rock excavations in the north-western Hejaz ; while Tasm and Jadis are described as more scenite or Bedouin-like in their manners and mode of living. Mahometan tradition, a mere travestie of the Jewish, and mostly derived from rabbinical sources, has attempted to construct a pseudo-genealogy of a Noachian character for every one of these imaginary or vanished clans. Further yet, it has, in its eagerness to find a confirmation of its own central idea, every where ascribed their extinction to supernatural wrath, brought down on them, now by the rejection of some apocryphal prophet of the Divine Unity, now by atrocious misdeeds like those recorded of the inhabitants of Canaan or the Cities of the Plain. The sober historian, however, will, in the absence of any reliable evidence, documentary or monumental, abstain from pronouncing either on the character of these aboriginal tribes, or on the manner and causes of their disappearance. The first dawning gleams of anything that deserves to be called Old Arab history disclose Arabia wholly, or nearly so, under the rule of a race monarch- of southern origin ; the genuine, or, as they are sometimes termed ies. from a mythical ancestor Kalitan, the Kahtanee Arabs. These, again, we find subdivided into several aristocratic monarchical governments, arranged so as to form a broad framework or rim round the central wilds of the peninsula. Oldest and chiefest among the Arab monarchies was that of Kingdom o) Yemen ; its regal residence is said to have been in the now aban- Yemen, doned town of Mareb, in the extreme south. After a devastating inundation, referred with some probability to the first century of the Christian era, the seat of government was removed from the ruins of Mareb to Sanaa, a city which has continued the metropolis of Yemen to the present day. The Yemenite kings, descendants of Kahtan and Hirnyar "the dusky," a name denoting African origin, and each adorned with the reiterated surname of " Tobba," a word of African etymology, and signifying "powerful," are said to have reigned, with a few dynastic interruptions and palace revolutions, for about 2500 years ; during which long period they commanded the direct obedience of the entire southern half of the peninsula ; while, by their tribute-collectors, and by chiefs of kindred or dele gated authority, they indirectly governed the northern. One of these monarchs is asserted, though historical criticism will hardly admit the assertion for fact, to have subdued the whole of central Asia, and even to have reached the boundaries of China ; while another anticipated, so runs the story, the later and more authentic conquests of his race on the north African continent. In both these cases Arab chroniclers seem to have appropriated for their own rulers, not without some additional exaggerations, the glories and exploits of the Egyptian kings. But that theirs was a vigorous and in some respects a civilised government, is attested alike by the literary and architectural relics of their time. Their sovereignty was at last overthrown, 529 A.D., by an Abyssinian invasion, and was re-established 603 A.D. as a dependency of the Persian empire, till in the year 634 it was finally absorbed by Mahometan conquest Next in importance to the kingdom of Yemen came the subsidiary Kingdom ol monarchy of Hira, or, more correctly, Heerah, situated in the north- Hira. easterly province of Arabian Irak. Its kings, a collateral branch of the royal race of Sanaa, governed the western shore of the lower Euphrates, from the neighbourhood of Babylon down to the con fines of Nejd, and along the coast of the Persian Gulf. The duration of their empire, founded in the second century after Christ, was 424 years. This kingdom paid an uncertain allegiance to their more powerful neighbours, the Persian despots ; and from time to time exercised considerable influence over the turbulent tribes of Central Arabia, till, like Yemen, it sank before the rising fortunes of Mahomet and his followers. A third monarchy, that of Ghassan, lorded it on the north-west Kingdom of over lower Syria and the Hejaz : its independence was somewhat Ghassan. tempered by unequal alliances with the lloman, and subsequently the Byzantine empire. It was founded in the first century of the Christian era, shortly after the flood of Mareb ; and its duration, till subdued by the all-conquering prophet, exceeded 600 years. A fourth government, that of Kindeh, detached itself from Irak Kingdom of early in the fifth century, and united under its sceptre the tribes of Kindeh northerly Nejd and even those of Oman, for about 160 years. Its kings were, like those before mentioned, of Yemenite origin ; but their rule was weak and disturbed by frequent wars. Much has been written by Arab authors regarding the great mun- Flood of dation, as they term it, of Arem or Mareb, possibly a tropical cyclone Arem. of more than ordinary destructiveness, like that of 1S67 in the West Indies ; and this event they love to assign as the proximate cause which dispersed the families of Yemen over northern Arabia, and led to the foundation of the kingdoms of Irak and Ghassan. But

the reality of the events, physical or political, symbolised by the