[54] Bruce, iii. 649. 169. In 1715 the Muscat fleet consisted of one ship of seventy-four guns, two of sixty, one of fifty, and eighteen from thirty-two to twelve guns; besides smaller, &c. Captain Hamilton, East Indies, i. p. 76. Modern Universal History vi. 46.
[55] The first mention of the Wahabees, is in Niebuhr, Description de l’Arabie, p. 17, p. 296-302: and Gibbon first noticed the singular co-incidence, that they sprung from the same province, Nedsjed, in which Moseilama the great contemporary adversary of Mahomed, had propagated his faith, vol. v. p. 277. It may be added, that the Carmathians, who triumphed over the Mahomedans, like the Wahabees of the present day, and like them took Mecca, (and plundered it indeed much more effectually than their successors are said to have done) in the same manner took possession first of the provinces on the Persian Gulph. See Gibbon, v. 449. Sale’s Koran, p. 184. D’Ohsson, Tableau de l’Empire Ottoman, tom. i. p. 105.
[56] It is not clear that Egmaun is rightly placed in the text, p. 44. Our late expedition has furnished us with a knowledge of the Persian Gulph, which will rectify many important errors. The coast from Khor Hassan is said to have been laid down forty-eight miles too much to the south.
[57] Faria y Sousa, Asia Portuguesa, by Stevens, vol. i. p. 135.
[58] See Renaudot’s “Anciens Relations.”
[59] Bruce’s Annals of the East India Company, vol. iii. p. 649.
[60] Ebn Haukal, p. 82.
[61] Ebn Haukal, p. 89. The Sabûra of Golius ad Alfraganium, quoted by Vincent; Nearchus, 2d edition, p. 329.
[62] Strabo, lib. xv. p. 708. In De Sacy, “Memoires sur diverses Antiquités de la Perse,” 1793, p. 34.
[63] Anct. Univ. Hist. xi. 66. Artaxerxes demanded from the Romans the cession of all the provinces which Cyrus had possessed; but Sapor II. his descendant and successor, advanced still higher pretensions, and claimed all the country to the river Strymon, in Macedonia, the original boundary of Darius Hystaspes.