'CO Hf\v F*m\V* THE HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF ARABIA; OK, THE PATRIARCHAL EVIDENCES OF REVEALED RELIGION : A MEMOIR, WITH ILLUSTRATIVE MAPS; AND AN APPENDIX, CONTAINING TRANSLATIONS, WITH AN ALPHABET AND GLOSSARY, OV THE HAMYARITIC INSCRIPTIONS RECENTLY DISCOVERED IN HADRAMAUT. THE REV. CHARLES FORSTER, B.D. ONE OF THE SIX PREACHERS IN THE CATHEDRAL OF CHRIST, CANTERBURY' '. AND RECTOR OF STISTED, ESSEX : AUTHOR OF " MAHOMETANISM UNVEILED." They call their lands after their own names. Psalm xlix. 11. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL ' L LONDON: DUNCAN AND MALCOLM, 37. PATERNOSTER-ROW. MDCCCXL1V. HI \W* HPiHI-SfflAI IAIN Over us presided kings far removed from baseness, And stern chastisers of reprobate and wicked men : written And they noted down for us, according to the doctrine of Hebcr, good judgments, in a book, to be kept ; And we believed in miracles, in the resurrection, in the return into the nostrils of the breath of life. Adite inscription, engraven on the rock at Hisn Gnanib. ! were in a book 1 Oh that my words were now written oh that they printed in the rock for ever '. That they were graven with an iron pen, and lead, liveth and that He shall at the latter For I know that my Redeemer ; stand, day, upon shall I see God : And though, after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet, in my flesh, not another. Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and JOB. LONDON : Printed by A. SPOTTISWOODE, New-Street-Square. TO HIS GRACE THE ARCHBISHOP OE CANTERBURY. MY LORD, IN submitting the following pages to Your Grace's censure and indulgence (and to whom can the fruits of Oriental studies be inscribed more appropriately, than to the venerated successor of their first and most illustrious patron in this country ?) I would avail myself of the privilege of again publicly addressing you, to say a few words upon the origin and design of the work itself, as well as upon some results most unex- pectedly arrived at, during its progress through the press. The present work, like that on the authority of the Epistle to the Hebrews, was commenced under the of Jebb like it auspices Bishop ; and, also, has been brought to its close, arid before A 2 IV HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF ARABIA. the public, under Your Grace's countenance and protection. It was with feelings which they alone are competent to understand, who have " known what it is to possess a friend closer than a brother," that, within the last two years, I resumed the prosecution of researches, which (under Providence) had contributed to preserve the elasticity of the mind during the last years of that friend's long and great affliction, and which had been interrupted only by his last ill- ness and death. The interest and importance of the subject became first known to myself, from lights ob- tained in the prosecution of a more limited in- quiry, essential to the argument of a former publication. The idea and plan of the present work originated in the favourable reception ex- perienced from those to whose judgment it was my duty to defer, as well as from the public at large, by the proofs of the descent of the Arabs " from Ishmael, in the Appendix to Mahome- tanism Unveiled." For, if infidelity could be silenced, and revealed truth vindicated, by exact scrutiny, at a single point, into the Mosaic ac- counts of the origin of the Arab tribes, ... it was clear that the most valuable results might justly be anticipated from exact scrutiny into DEDICATION. V those accounts on an extended scale, and as com- prizing the patriarchal origin of all the primitive tribes of Arabia. How far the anticipation is realized in these volumes, it will be for others to determine. For the present, I shall venture only to observe to Your Grace, that, whatever weight may have been allowed to my former argument on that head, in the following Memoir, and its illustra- tive maps, the proof of the descent of the Arabs \ is from Ishmael further certified and enlarged by ; the recovery of all the chief Ishmaelitish tribes, both in the classical and in the modern geo- graphy of the Arabian peninsula, upon the same ground which they occupied in the days of Moses, and which they continue to occupy in our own : while the application of the same pro- cess of investigation to the four great patriarchal stocks, who, according to Moses, together with Ishmael peopled the peninsula, has conducted us to similar results the families of Gush precisely ; and Joktan, who preceded, and those of Keturah and Esau, who followed, the son of Hagar, prov- ing all to be extant, in the ancient and modern geography of the country, in the very localities, and along the very lines, where they are placed by " Moses and the Prophets." A 3 VI HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF ARABIA. If the first part of the work, which is confined exclusively to the elucidation of Scripture his- the tory, may seem more peculiarly within pro- vince of the historian or the divine, the second part, which is devoted wholly to the classical geography of Arabia, cannot be without interest for the man of science. In this portion of the Memoir, indeed, (far more, I will freely confess, from regard to its collateral bearings on the Scripture evidences, than for the sake of mere science,) no labour has been spared, and no re- search omitted, which promised either to cor- rect our old lights, or to furnish new. In both cases, many of the results arrived at rest on proofs, for which it would be false humility to ask indulgence, since they amount to physical demonstration. In the necessary attention, in a work like that now laid before Your Grace, to the demands of theology and science, I have endeavoured, at least, constantly to bear in mind those of the more general reader. The just interpretation of " the Scriptures of truth" is alike important and interesting to all; and no opportunity (and they have been good and many) has been consciously allowed to escape of throwing light upon the sacred Volume. In this aim I was peculiarly DEDICATION. Vll aided by the nature of my subject: the fresh lights constantly springing up in the course of which set many clear places of Scripture in yet clearer day; while they reflected, now on one obscure passage, now on another, a brightness, otherwise unattainable, and before unknown. This remark peculiarly applies to some of the most interesting episodes of the Old and New Testaments, . the stories of Job, of Jethro, of the Queen of Sheba, . the site of Ophir, . the country and Abrahamic origin of the Gospel Magi : points, most of which have long and largely engaged the attention, and divided the opinions, of the commentators, without their col- lective labours conducting the general reader to any satisfactory conclusion. That all or any of these most interesting topics are now brought to such a conclusion, it would be presumptuous in me to affirm. But thus much, I trust, I may un- presumptuously venture to say, that, by the lights called into play in the progress of this in- in a quiry, they are, one and all, set clearer view than any they have known before. When I first commenced investigations, under- taken with the sole object of illustrating, and bringing home to the minds of others and to my own, by proofs actually existing in Arabia, the A 4 Vill HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF ARABIA. truth of the Mosaic accounts of the first peopling of Arabia, and consequently that of the Mosaic accounts of the first peopling of the world, ... I little could have anticipated that the inquiry would issue in the decypherment of an unknown alphabet, and the recovery of a lost language : that alphabet, the celebrated Musnad, which was known to Pocock himself only by the vague and erroneous report of Mahometan wri- ters, and whose total disappearance was deplored, by Sir William Jones, as the great gap between us and the earliest records of mankind; this lan- " guage, the once famous, and long-lost tongue of Hanjyar." What, from' circumstances, is comparatively new to me, has been 'doubtless long familiar to Your Grace, that, within the last ten years, when all hope of such discoveries seemed utterly at an the medium of our ( end, through surveying expe- the jditions along the Arabian coasts, and by enterprize and intelligence of officers of our In- dian navy, inscriptions in unknown characters were discovered on the southern coast, both carved upon the stones of ancient buildings, and engraven in the native rocks. From the ruins of Nsikiib el Hajar, and from the rock of Hisn Ghorab, (localities of Hadramdut, situated, the DEDICATION. IX former about 2 40', the latter about 3, north- east of Aden,) copies of these monuments were transcribed with extraordinary care, and trans- mitted for examination both to India and Europe. Immediately on their reaching England, the in- scriptions, it appears, were forwarded to Ger- many, there to be submitted to the inspection of its two most eminent Orientalists, Professors Gesenius and Roediger. Both have since written upon the subject, (the latter elaborately, first, in " a learned paper in the Zeitschrift fur die Kunde des Morgenlandes, Gottingen, 1837," and, sub- " sequently, in his Versuch iiber die Himjariti- schen Schriftmonumente, Halle, 1841,") an4 have favoured the world with the results of their respective examinations. So for "as regards the long, or ten-line inscription at Hisn Ghorab (on the face of it by far the most important of the monuments yet recovered), the joint amount of these results, on their own showing, would seem to be, that the late Professor Gesenius con- ceived that he found in it the words "King of the Himyarites," and that Professor Roediger has published, what he thinks a translation of the first lines and the last, fairly giving up the mid- dle, as wrapt in impenetrable darkness.