388 NATURAL HISTORY OP 



At present there remain the Arab-el- Arabah, form- 

 ing two stems, claiming Kahtan for common parent. 

 They are perhaps the Hadoram and Tarah of Moses ; 

 but it is not to them that Arabia is indebted for cele- 

 brity. Affiliated races produced it. The Mostarabi, 

 or Ishmaelites of the Hejas, claim the honour, and 

 assume a superior nobility of blood, as descendants 

 from Abraham. They are the fabricators of the 

 Kaba, and the distorted legends concerning the pa- 

 triarchs. In that vocation it seems the Koreish have . 

 been chiefly engaged, although the affinity they have 

 with the descendants of Ishmael is doubtful ; it being 

 believed, that they were originally Edomites, that is, 

 a red haired people. In this vicinity, among the 

 Edomite cities, there was Erech, Raphia, or Rekem, 

 near Mons Casius and Larissa, Larsh near Gaza, both 

 bearing evidently names connected with a Scythic 

 dialect, and repeated wherever Pelasgian nations were 

 spread, from Asia Minor to the Danube; equally 

 common to Celto- Scythic possessions, as the names of 

 Lorch, Lorach, Lorca, Lara, and Larch, abound in 

 Spain and Southern Germany.* Towards the mouth 

 of the Euphrates, however, in the vicinity of Scrip- 

 tural Bosra, the Arabian Zobeir was inhabited by the 

 Orchaeni, a colony, it appears, of Indo-Ethiopians, 

 who, Pliny says, promulgated " a tertia Chaldseorum 

 doctrina." They had acquirements in astronomy and 



* Even Nineveh is termed Larissa by Xenophon, and as 

 the easternmost of the thirteen places so named by the 

 ancients. Most of these were of Pelasgian origin. 



