36 DESCRIPTION OF ARABIA. 



ancient Idumaea still retains the original appellation ; 

 and as these territories belonged to the wandernig 

 Ishmaelites, the name would gradually be extended 

 as they spread their conquests over the rest of the 

 country. By this name it is recorded in the writings 

 of the Jewish historians and the later prophets, who 

 speak of the kings of Arabaji, of its traffic, and the 

 different tribes by which it was inhabited. (Josh. 

 XV. 52, 61 ; 1 Kings x. 15 ; Jer. xxv. 24.) 



At this remote period were these western regions 

 distinguished from the more fertile and populous 

 plains towards Chaldea, which went by the name of 

 Kedem or the East,— a distinction as old as the days 

 of Abraham and Job. This simple practice of de- 

 riving names from territorial residence is entu-ely in 

 accordance with the notions that regulated the primi- 

 tive divisions of the earth, when mankind had no 

 other geography than such as respected their own 

 local situation, or the relative position of the hea- 

 vens. The ancient Greeks called Italy Hesperia, or 

 the Land of the West ; the Italians bestowed the 

 same epithet on Spain ; and the name was at length 

 transferred to those fabulous gardens, which grad- 

 ually retired before the dawn of knowledge into the 

 Elysian sohtudes of the Atlantic Ocean. Similar 

 ideas prevail in the East at the present day. Syria 

 is uniformly called Sham,— the country to the left, 

 or the north; while the south is termed Yemen, or 

 the country to the right. The Turks and Persians 

 call the whole peninsula Arabistan ; the natives them- 

 selves call it Jezirat el Arab (the peninsula of the 

 Arabs) ; and it is remarkable as one of the few coun- 

 tries among the kingdoms of antiquity which, amid 

 the changes and revolutions of 3000 years, still 



Apollinis et Babyloniae filio, et Latinorum plerique asserunt, sed 

 ab Araba, plaga non longe a Medina sita, nomen sortita est."— 

 Gab. Sionita, de Mor. et Nat. Orient, p. 7. Univ. Hist. vol. xviu. 

 chap. 21. Gagnic-r, ad Abulfed, Geog. Diatnb. de Arab. nom. 

 sect. 1. 



