DESCRIPTION OF ARABIA. 37 



retains the precise appellation which it bore within 

 a few centuries of the deluge. 



Tliisvast tract hes between latitude 12° 45'— 34i° 

 north, and longitude 31°-60^ east from GreeuAvich. 

 Its form is tliat of an irregular triangle, surrounded on 

 three sides by water. Eastward, its limit is the Per- 

 sian Gulf and the Euphrates ; on the south Ues the 

 Indian Ocean ; on the west the Red Sea divides it 

 from Egypt, Nubia, and Abyssinia. The northern 

 frontier is not so well defined, and has been subject 

 to considerable variations. The ancients restricted 

 it to an imaginary line, stretching between the ex- 

 treme points of the Arabian and Persian Gulfs. 

 The rest they attached partly to Egypt and partly 

 to Syria. But the conquests and settlements of the 

 Arabs have long extended their territory beyond 

 this ideal boundary. On the authority of Burck- 

 hardt, the northern frontier may be taken as a line 

 running from Suez across the isthmns of that name 

 to the Mediterranean, near El Arish, passing along 

 the borders of Palestine and the Dead Sea, and 

 thence winding through the Syrian desert by Pal- 

 mjrra until it reaches the Euphrates above Anah, 

 the course of which river it follows till joined by 

 the Tigris ; at which point their united streams take 

 the name of Shut el Arab, or boundary of Arabia. 

 Part of the northern frontier lies now within the 

 pashalic of Damascus, which extends as far south 

 as Tor Hesma, a high mountain, one day's journey 

 from Akaba. 



The Greek and Roman geographers prescribed a 

 limit somewhat different. Xenophon carries it be- 

 yond the Euphrates, including the greater part of 

 Mesopotamia, or the Arabian Irak ; Ptolemy bounds 

 it by the Chaldean mountains on this side the river, 

 and northward by the city of Thapsacus, near 

 Racca. The same is adopted with little variation 

 by Diodorus and Strabo. Abulfeda, an Arabian geog- 

 rapher who Avrote about the beginnmg of the four- 

 VoL.l— D 



