The trade of Egypt and Babylonia with the south of Arabia, through the medium of the Arab tribes, certainly goes back to the year 2000 B.C., if the attempt was made in Egypt about the year 1600 B.C. to reduce Southern Arabia. Not long after his campaigns in Syria and Mesopotamia, Tuthmosis III. imposed on the Syrians a tribute of 828 minæ, and on the Naharina a tribute of 81 minæ of spices;[447] hence such spices must not only have found their way into these districts at this time, but must have been already known as ordinary articles of trade. How strongly Egypt felt her need of the products of South Arabia is most strikingly shown by the fact that the Egyptians were very anxious to obtain these products by the direct route over the Arabian Gulf; the canal which Ramses II. began to make towards the gulf ([p. 146]) could have no other object in view than to facilitate the communication between the Nile and the coast of South Arabia and East Africa, by the Red Sea. Under Ramses III. (1269-1244 B.C.) a great fleet is said to have sailed for a second time to To-Neter, and to have returned to Coptus with the tribute of these lands and a rich freight.[448] The need of incense was not less in Babylon than in Egypt. We saw that the preparation of ointments was a main branch of Babylonian industry, and Herodotus tells us that at the feast of Belus, at Babylon, a thousand talents of incense, which according to the light Babylonian weight is more than 60,000 pounds, was burnt on the altar of the great temple. As the Temanites, Kedarites, Nebajoth, and Midianites formed the medium of trade between South Arabia and Egypt, so were the Rhegmæans and Dedanites the communicating link between South Arabia and Babylonia. Among the Sabæans the Babylonian talent was current.[449]
This carrying trade between South Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia must have increased when the cities of the Phenicians on the Syrian coast became centres of trade which carried the manufactures of Babylonia, as well as the products of their own industry, over the sea to the West, and when the tribes of Greece and Italy began to desire the incense and spices of Arabia. And it was not only the products of South Arabia which the Arabs brought to Syria, Egypt, and Babylonia, but also those of the south coast of Africa, and even of India. Artemidorus told us that the Sabæans crossed the Arabian Gulf on boats of skins in order to bring back the products of Ethiopia. Though it was possible to cross the narrow basin by these means of transit, the mouths of the Indus and the coasts of Malabar were beyond the reach of such skiffs. If in the course of time Indian wares reached Syria through the Sabæans, they must have been brought by the Indians themselves to the coasts of the Sabæans. At the beginning of the second century B.C. the island Dioscoridis, off the coast of Somali, which was known to the West as the Land of Cinnamon, formed the centre of the trade between Egypt, South Arabia, and India. To this island the ships of the Indians brought the products of their land.
In the first instance the Arabs transported the goods from South Arabia to the Euphrates and the Nile on their camels, and afterwards it lay with them to permit or refuse a passage for the caravans of the Babylonians and Phenicians. First one tribe and then another lay in wait for the caravans, plundered them, or allowed them to buy a passage, convoy, or guide.[450] Eratosthenes has already told us that the merchants took seventy days in going from the Minæans to Aela, i. e. to Elath, on the north-east point of the Arabian Gulf, and Pliny fixes the distance from Gaza to Thamna, the chief city of the Cattabani, at seventy-five days' journey. Of the caravan road which led from the Sabæans, i. e. in all probability from Maryab to Elath, we only know that it ran along the coast, then passed from Elath by Sela and Bosra into the mountains of the Edomites, then divided the land of the Moabites and Ammonites, passed by Kir Moab (Charak Moab) and Rabbat Ammon, Edrei and Ashtaroth Karnaim, through the land of the Jeturites, to Damascus, and finally, from this place reached the cities of the Phenicians. A second road led apparently past the Oasis of Duma (Dumætha of Ptolemy, Dumat-el-Dshandal) straight to Damascus. In the east the Dedanites brought the products of South Arabia through the desert, by the land of the Temanites and Kedarites, to the Lower Euphrates.[451] The goods not required for Babylonia then passed up the Euphrates to Harran (Charræ). From this point the caravans turned to the west, and in twenty days arrived through the desert at the coasts of the Phenicians.[452]
How active the trade with the land of frankincense was is shown by the words of the Hebrew prophet, who proclaims to the new Jerusalem: "A multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah (see below); all they from Shebah shall come; they shall bring gold and incense. All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together unto thee; the rams of Nebajoth shall minister unto thee."[453] The Arabs, when conquered by the Persians, were compelled to pay a yearly tribute of 1,000 talents of incense,[454] i. e. at least 60,000 pounds. This they could only obtain from South Arabia, and to Western nations the connection between Damascus and South Arabia appeared so close, that they represented the Sabæans as colonists of the Egyptians, Ninus and Semiramis having sent colonies from Damascus to Arabia Felix.
Though the Phenicians could receive the products of South Arabia and the Somali coast by the high road of Elath, and from the Euphrates by Harran, they were nevertheless eager to have a connection by sea with these regions. They availed themselves of the relations in which they stood to Solomon, king of Israel, in order to send ships from Eziongeber down the Arabian Gulf, to Ophir, as far as the mouth of the Indus. These ships brought back sandalwood, apes, peacocks, and gold. This trade fell with the decline of the kingdom of Judah, after the time of Jehoshaphat. But when Amaziah of Judah again subjugated the Edomites, about the year 790 B.C., and after him his son Uzziah again advanced the borders of Judah to the Red Sea, the Phenicians also resumed their connection with the kings of Judah and the trade to Ophir.[455] Afterwards Pharaoh Necho gave them an opportunity for a short time to set out upon their voyages in the Arabian Gulf, not, indeed, from the north-east, but from the north-west corner of the Red Sea. But immediately afterwards Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, by subduing the Dedanites and planting Babylonian centres of trade on the coast of Dedan and at the mouth of the Euphrates, succeeded in transplanting the marine trade with South Arabia to the Persian Gulf, while the conquest of the Kedarites also put him in a position to strike a road across the desert from Babylon to Sela (in the land of the Edomites, see below). Darius or the Ptolemies were the first to succeed in the attempt made by Rameses II. and Necho, and concentrated in the Bay of Heroonpolis the trade of Egypt and Syria with South Arabia.
Soon after the year 2000 B.C.—so we must conclude—the tribes of South Arabia delivered their spices to the Egyptians, Syrians, and Babylonians, and their incense, which Eastern nations, and in time Western nations also, burned upon the altars of their gods. Then they imported the products of the opposite shore of Africa, a region no less fruitful than South Arabia, and at length the ships of the Indians brought to them the products of the Indus and the Ganges. Thus South Arabia not only exported her own fruits, she became the central mart of East African and Indian products, the point of connection between Eastern and Western Asia. Owing to the fertility of their valleys and terraces, and their old and extensive trade, the tribes of the South soon acquired a more fixed form of constitution and a more advanced civilisation. Numerous remains of magnificent stone structures, ruins of aqueducts, canals, basins, and dams, built with the object of preserving and collecting the water which streamed down the terraces of the mountains and in the valleys, still excite the astonishment of our travellers for the excellence of the plan as well as for the strength of the masonry. The ruins of Nedshran, Sirwah, Ghorab, Nakb-el-Hadshar, and Misenat, and those of Maryab, the old metropolis of the Sabæans, confirm what Western writers and Arab tradition tell us of the glorious palaces of the ancient time and the mighty dams built in the valley of Maryab.[456] The remains of the dams prove that South Arabia, like Egypt and Babylonia, was far better cultivated in those distant times than now; that there also the greatest importance was attached to irrigation, and the inhabitants understood how to preserve and use the water from the mountain-streams on the terraces. The natural assumption that at one time the cultivation of valuable fruits was far more extensive in South Arabia than at present can hardly be incorrect. The inscriptions found in those ruins and elsewhere in the south-west of Yemen, though they do not, so far as is at present ascertained, go back beyond the year 120 B.C.,[457] give us some insight into the nature of the civilisation of these tribes and the ancient form of the South Arabian language and alphabet, which must have grown out of the Phenician at an early date, and then have developed independently beside it.[458] Of a still more recent date, from the first century A.D., we find in the opposite north-west corner of Arabia numerous inscriptions on the rocks in the region of Sinai, written in the North Arabian language and alphabet.[459]
The Hebrew Scriptures divide the tribes of the Arabs into four groups—the Joktanites, among whom tribes of the south and east take the lead; the Keturites, among whom are tribes of Western and Eastern Arabia; the Ishmaelites, including tribes of the table-land of the interior and North Arabia; and finally, the group of tribes who settled and wandered on the eastern borders of Canaan—the Amalekites, Moabites, Ammonites, and Edomites. The Hebrews derive the origin of the Arabs from the progenitors from whom they were themselves sprung. To Shem, the son of Noha, so Genesis tells us, Arphaxad was born, and "Arphaxad begat Salah, and Salah begat Eber, and Eber begat Peleg and Joktan. And Joktan begat Almodad, and Sheleph, and Hazarmaveth (the Chatramites, in Hadramaut, [p. 314]), and Jerah, and Hadoram, and Uzal (Sanaa), and Diklah, and Obal, and Abimael, and Sheba (the Sabæans), and Ophir and Havilah (the Chaulotæans), and Jobab (the Jobarites of Ptolemy, on the south coast), and their dwelling was from Mesha (Maishan, Mesene on the Euphrates) towards Sephar (Dshafar, to the south of Sanaa and Maryab), a mount of the East." Peleg, the elder brother of Joktan, was the father of Reu, Reu, of Serug; then followed Nahor and Terah. Terah's sons were Abraham, Nahor, and Haran. To Abraham Hagar, his Egyptian bond-servant, bore Ishmael. Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael into the deserts of Beersheba, but "God was with the lad, and he grew and dwelt in the wilderness of Paran, and was an archer, and his mother took him a wife from the land of Egypt, and his first-born was Nebajoth (the Nabatæans, [p. 314]), and his sons were Kedar (the Kedarites) and Adbeel, and Mibsam, and Mishma, and Dumah ([p. 320]), and Massa (the Masanians of Ptolemy), and Hadar, and Thema (the Themanites, [p. 314]), and Jetur (the Jeturites, near Damascus, [p. 320]), and Naphish, and Kedemiah, twelve princes; and the descendants of Ishmael dwelt from Shur, which is before Egypt, and from Havilah ([p. 314]) to Asshur." "And again Abraham took a wife, whose name was Keturah, and she bare him Zimran, and Jokshan, and Medan, and Midian (the Midianites) and Ishbak, and Shuah. And Joksham begat Dedan, and the sons of Midian were Ephah and Epher ([p. 320]). And Abraham gave them gifts and sent them away into the east country."[460] Abraham's son was Isaac, Isaac's oldest son was Esau, the father of the Edomites, and Esau's grandson, Amalek, was the progenitor of the Amalekites.[461] Haran, the brother of Abraham, begat Lot, and Lot's sons were Moab and Ammon (the Moabites and Ammonites). From these genealogies it is clear that the Hebrews looked on the Arabs almost without exception as kinsmen of their own,[462] and as kinsmen of a more ancient branch, for the Hebrews were descended from the second son of Isaac. The place nearest to themselves they give to the Ishmaelites, who were divided into twelve tribes, the descendants of the twelve princes, the sons of Ishmael—and next in order came the Edomites, Ammonites, and Moabites.
The native tradition of the Arabs is without historical value. Their recollections hardly go back as far as the beginning of the Christian era, and all that their historians who began to write after Mohammed knew of the older fortunes of their race is either borrowed from the Hebrews or mere imagination. The Amalekites, whom they found in the Hebrew Scriptures, they took for their original stock, and represented them as dwelling in Canaan and Damascus, as well as in the land of Mecca and Oman, and even as ruling over Egypt. These Amalekites—the Tasmites and Dshadi, the A'adites and Dshorhomites—they consider as the genuine Arabs; to whom God had taught Arabic after the confusion of speech. But the Tasmites and Dshadi are as little historic as Amalek in the Arabian tradition; their names signify "the extinct" and "the lost;" the A'adites are a purely fabulous nation, and the Dshorhomites (near Mecca) are a tribe of no great antiquity.[463] The progenitor of the southern tribes of Yemen is, in the Arabian tradition, Kachtan, the son of Eber, and great-grandson of Noah. This is the Joktan of Genesis. Kachtan's son, J'arab, founded the monarchy of the Kachtanids, in South Arabia; Abd-Shams-Sabah, the grandson of J'arab, built the city of Mareb, the chief city of the Sabæans, according to the Greeks. This founder of the monarchy of the Sabæans left two sons, Himyar and Kachlan. The first was the progenitor of the Himyarites, who are mentioned even by Western writers, but not till the first century A.D., and then on the south coast between Mareb and Hadramaut. The name Himyarites includes the tribes of the Chatramites, the Codaa, the Kinana, the Dshoheina, &c. Kachlan founded Dshafar ([p. 324]), and was the progenitor of the Kachlanids, i. e. the Hamdanids, the Badshila, the Odthan, the Chozaa, and other tribes. To the kingdom of Mareb, founded by Abd-Shams-Sabah, the Arab tradition ascribes a long list of princes. But even if we ascribe a period of more than thirty years to every name in this series, the date of Kachtan is not carried back beyond 700 B.C.[464] Abd-Shams-Sabah is said to have built not only Mareb, but also a great dam for the irrigation of the country. The excellent dams, canals, and sluices at Sanaa (the Uzal of the Hebrews, westward of Mareb) are said to have been built by Asad.[465] The castles of Sahlin and Bainun (at Sanaa) are said to have been built by demons at the bidding of Solomon for Belkis, queen of Shebah. Besides these the Arabs talk of numerous castles and fortresses in the south. Towards the year 100 B.C. Harith, a descendant of Himyar, obtained the throne of the Sabæans; and the place of the Sabæans is taken by the Himyarites, the Homerites of Western nations, who henceforth are the ruling nation in Yemen, a change for which Arab tradition prepares the way by making Himyar the son and successor of Abd-Shams-Sabah. Harith's successors fixed their residence first at Dshafar (Dhu Raidan), then at Mareb, and finally at Sanaa.[466]
The tribes of the high land of the interior, whom the Arabs call Neshd, i. e. "the high people," and certain tribes of Hidyaz, are derived by tradition from Adnan, a grandson of Ishmael. When Ibrahim (Abraham) had sent away Hagar and her son, and Hagar was about to perish in the desert, the child Ishmael struck the earth with his foot, and from it sprang the fountain of Zamzam, close to Mecca. Amalekites, in search of their lost camels, found the spring, settled down beside it, and worshipped Ishmael as the lord of the spring. Then came tribes from the South, the Dshorhomites and Katura, to the fountain; and Ishmael married the daughter of the chief of the Dshorhomites and begot Nabit (the Nebajoth) and Kaidar (the Kedarites). The Amalekites and Katura were then driven away, and the Dshorhomites remained alone in possession of the fountain of Zamzam. Kaidar's son was Adnan. From Adnan sprang the Benu Bekr, the Taghlib, the Temim, the Takif, the Gatafan, &c. If we ascend the genealogies which Arab tradition gives to the princes of the tribes sprung from Ishmael, in twenty generations, ending with Adnan, the grandson of Ishmael, we only arrive at the end of the second century B.C., even if we allow thirty years for each generation.[467]
The few facts which we can make out about the religious worship of the southern Arabs (they belong almost exclusively to the period in which the Himyarites obtained the supremacy in South Arabia) exhibit a certain connection with the worship of the Babylonians; but we cannot ascertain whether this coincidence, like the close relationship of the South Arabian and Babylonian languages ([p. 256]), is due to original unity or later intercourse. The Byzantines tell us that the Himyarites worshipped the sun, the moon, and certain demons of the land. The tradition of the Arabs mentions Abd-Shams-Sabah as the founder of the kingdom of the Sabæans, and the name Abd-Shams signifies the servant of the sun-god, and hence in the eyes of the Arabs the worship of the sun-god must have occupied a very prominent place in the religion of the Sabæans—a fact which is confirmed by the inscriptions. They mention the sun-god (Shams, Shamas), the moon-god Al-makak, and the gods Aththor, Haubas, and Dhu Samavi.[468] The Himyarites are said to have worshipped the sun under the form of an eagle (Nasr), and the Hamdanids (who dwelt to the north of Sanaa and Mareb) under the form of a horse; a third tribe in Yemen are said to have worshipped him in the form of a lion.[469]