[340]. Sapor the Second (A.D. 310–330) was compelled to attack the powerful Arab hordes of Oman, most of whom, like the Tayy, Aus and Khazraj, the Banu Nabhán and the Hináwi left Al-Yaman A.D. 100–170, and settled in the north and north-east of Al-Najd. This great exodus and dispersion of the tribes was caused, as has been said, by the bursting of the Dam of Márib originally built by Abd al-Shams Sabá, father of Himyar. These Yamanian races were plunged into poverty and roamed northwards, planting themselves amongst the Arabs of Ma’add son of Adnán. Hence the kingdom of Ghassan in Syria whose phylarchs under the Romans (i.e. Greek Emperors of Constantinople) controlled Palestine Tertia, the Arabs of Syria and Palestine; and the kingdom of Hírah, whose Lakhmite Princes, dependent upon Persia, managed the Arabs of the Euphrates, Oman and Al-Bahrayn. The Ma’addites still continued to occupy the central plateau of Arabia, a feature analogous with India “above the Ghauts.”
[341]. I have described (Pilgrimage i. 370) the grisly spot which a Badawi will dignify by the name of Wady al-Ward = Vale of Roses.
[342]. Koran xiii. 3, “Of every fruit two different kinds,” i.e. large and small, black and white, sweet and sour.
[343]. A graft upon an almond-tree, which makes its kernel sweet and gives it an especial delicacy of flavour. See Russell’s (excellent) Natural History of Aleppo, p. 21.
[344]. So called from the flavour of the kernel: it is well-known at Damascus where a favourite fruit is the dried apricot with an almond by way of kernel. There are many preparations of apricots, especially the “Mare’s skin” (Jild al-faras or Kamar al-din) a paste folded into sheets and exactly resembling the article from which it takes a name. When wanted it is dissolved in water and eaten as a relish with bread or biscuit (Pilgrimage i. 289).
[345]. “Anta Kamá takúl” = the vulgarest Cairene.
[346]. This may be Ctesiphon, the ancient capital of the Chosroës, on the Tigris below Baghdad; and spoken of elsewhere in The Nights; especially as, in Night dclxvii., it is called Isbanir Al-Madáin; Madáin Kisrá (the cities of Chosroes) being the Arabic name of the old dual city.
[347]. Koran vi. 103. The translation is Sale’s which I have generally preferred, despite many imperfections: Lane renders this sentence, “The eyes see not Him, but He seeth the eyes;” and Mr. Rodwell, “No vision taketh in Him (?), but He taketh in all vision;” and (better) “No eyesight reacheth to Him.”
[348]. Sale (sect. 1.) tells us all that was then known of these three which with Yá’úk and Nasr and the three “daughters of God,” Goddesses or Energies (the Hindu Saktis) Allát, Al-Uzzá and Manát mentioned in the Koran were the chiefs of the pre-Islamitic Pantheon. I cannot but suspect that all will be connected with old Babylonian worship. Al-Baydáwi (on Kor. lxxi. 22) says of Wadd, Suwá’a, Yaghus, Ya’úk and Nasr that they were names of pious men between Adam and Noah, afterwards deified: Yaghús was the giant idol of the Mazhaj tribe at Akamah of Al-Yaman and afterwards at Najrán Al-Uzzá was widely worshipped: her idol (of the tree Semurat) belonging to Ghatafán was destroyed after the Prophet’s order by Khálid bin Walíd. Allát or Al-Lát is written by Pocock (spec. 110) “Ilahat” i.e. deities in general. But Herodotus evidently refers to one god when he makes the Arabs worship Dionysus as Ὀροτὰλ and Urania as Ἀλιλάτ and the “tashdid” in Allát would, to a Greek ear, introduce another syllable (Alilat). This was the goddess of the Kuraysh and Thakíf whose temple at Táif was circuited like the Ka’abah before Mohammed destroyed it.
[349]. Shays (Shayth) is Ab Seth (Father Seth) of the Hebrews, a name containing the initial and terminal letters of the Egypto-Phœnico-Hebrew Alphabet and the “Abjad” of the Arabs. Those curious about its connection with the name of Allah (El), the Zodiacal signs and with the constellations, visions but not wholly uninteresting, will consult “Unexplored Syria” (vol. i. 33).