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[ Michaud ("Hist. des Croisades," ii. 27) says: "Une fois qu'il (Saladin) fût maitre de la capitale (Damascus); son armée victorieuse et l'or pur appelé Obreysum (Ubraysun ou Hubraysum) qu'il tirait de l'E'gypte, lui soumirent les autres cités de la Syrie." The question is whether this gold was not from Midian: my friend Yacoub Artin Bey, who supplied me with the quotation, thinks that it was.]
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[ The most curious form, perhaps, which the ancient Midianitic tradition has assumed, was in the thirteenth century, when the Russians believed that the Tartars, "with their four-cornered faces," were the ancient Midianites coming in the latter days to conquer the world. Lieutenant C. R. Conder, R.E. ("Tentwork in Palestine," Bentley, 1878), has done his best to rival this style of ethnology by declaring that "the hosts of Midian" were, no doubt, the ancestors of the modern Bedawin.]
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[ Alluding to the legend that the shepherds, after watering their flocks, rolled a great stone over the mouth of the well, so that the contents might not be used by Jethro's daughters. Musá waxed wroth, and, weak as he was with travel, gave the stone such a kick that it went flying full forty cubits from the spot. See "Desert of the Exodus," Appendix, p. 539.]
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[ A name now unknown to the Bedawin of Madyan. The culminating peak is now supposed to be either the Shárr, the Jebel el-Lauz, or the Jebel Zánah.]
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[ The Badais of Ptolemy, which we shall presently visit.]