[7] The powerful Shammar of the present day, some who live in Nejd, the ancient home of the tribe, and some in the Mesopotamian desert, belong to the Tai.
[8] That whole peoples should be called after certain frontier tribes by neighbouring nations is not altogether an unusual phenomenon, as everybody knows.
[9] These forms have to a certain extent survived to our own day, as the name of an Iranian people in Transirania and elsewhere, who accepted the Arab religion earlier than their neighbours and were consequently called “Arabs.” In the same way later Syrians often call all Moslems “Taits.”
[10] Acta Martyr. ed. St. Ev. Assemani, 2, 345, 1.
[11] Migne, Patrol. græca, 79, LXXIX, 611 seqq.
[12] The proper translation of εὐδαὶμων in this connection. The usual felix or the Horatian beatus (Carm. 1, 29, 1) is like our “happy,” too strong.
[13] The name was extended to the whole peninsula, a country extremely poor as a whole. Ἀραβία ἔρημος, Arabia Deserta, stood only for the Syrian desert, and the Arab country to the southwest, with Petra as its capital, is Ἀραβία Πετραία, Arabia Petræa, as in Ptolemy, and elsewhere.
[14] Genesis xxxvii, 25.
[15] Reste arabischen Heidenthums, II, 93.
[16] For a lively description of it see Wellhausen, Reste, II, 89 seqq.