Another people who were associated with Sinai were the Rephaim who are mentioned in the Bible among the people who were raided by the Babylonian kings about b.c. 2100. “They smote the Rephaims in Ashteroth Karnaim” (Gen. xiv. 5). The word Rephaim is related to Raphaka or Raphia of the annals of Sargon II (b.c. 722-50).[67] It lies on the high road from Syria to Egypt on the Mediterranean. Its modern name is Rafa.
The Rephaim of the Bible were accounted giants. In Arabian tradition we also hear of giants or tyrants, the Jababera. They were accounted descendants of the Aulad bin Nuh (children of Noah), or Amalikah, from their ancestor Amlah bin Arfexad bin Sam (Shem) bin Nuh. Masudi spoke of the giants of the race of Amalekites who ruled in Syria at the time of Moses.[68]
According to Arab belief the Amalekites were inspired with a knowledge of the Arabic tongue, and settled at Medina, and were the first to cultivate the ground and plant the date palm. In the course of time they extended over the whole tract towards the Red Sea (El Hedjaz), and the north-western part of the Indian Ocean (El Omar), and became the progenitors not only of the Jababera, but also of the Faraineh (i.e. the Pharaohs) of Egypt.
In the Biblical genealogy Amalek appears as a descendant of Esau, his mother, Adah, being a Hittite (Gen. xxxvi. 2, 12). But scholars generally are agreed in assigning a high antiquity to the Amalekites. The prophet Balaam, inspired by Jehovah, uttered the words, “Amalek was the first of the nations” (Num. xxiv. 20).
Whatever their origin, the Amalekites were in the possession of Sinai when the Israelites came there, since they opposed their entrance and harried them on their way to the holy mount, and later attacked them in Rephidim, where the Israelites carried the day (Deut. xxv. 17; Exod. xvii. 8-16). Later, acting in concert with the Canaanites, they smote the Israelites on their way to Hormah (Num. xiv. 25-45), and in the time of Saul they still occupied the land “from Havilah unto Shur” (from Arabia to the Wall of Egypt), which, according to another account, was allotted to the sons of Ishmael (Gen. xxv. 18). Saul waged a fierce war against them.
The connection of the Amalekites with Sinai continued in the mind of the Arab, for Makrizi († 1441) speaking of Pharan, the city of Sinai, described it as a city of the Amalekites.[69]
The Amalekites of the Bible and of Arab tradition are probably the Milukhkha of the ancient annals. As mentioned above, they appear on the statue of Gudea of about the year b.c. 2500, and in the Assyrian fragment of geography of about b.c. 600.
Pharan, which the Arab writers described as a city of the Amalekites, was from early times a place-name in Sinai. According to the Bible, the Babylonian kings (c. b.c. 2100) pressed the Horites as far as “El Paran, which is by the wilderness,” a phrase which the Septuagint rendered as “the terebinth of Pharan,” as though it were a site marked by a tree. Pharan, to all appearance, was a general name given to the peninsula of Sinai. It is like the name Pharaoh, and this is apparently the reason why the name “Bath of Pharaoh,” Gebel Hammam Faraun, is given to a hill near the west coast, and the name Giziret el Faraun to the island near Akaba, the idea of the Pharaoh leading to various localised legends.
In the Bible we read that the Israelites, after leaving the Holy Mount, passed through “the wilderness of Paran” on their way to Edom, which would locate it to the Badiet Tîh. Again, King Hadad (c. b.c. 1156), on his way from Midian to Egypt, passed through Paran (1 Kings xi. 17).