ANCIENT KINGS OF ARABIA. 



99 



appear that among the Arabs in the Times of Igno- 

 rance any particular era was generally adopted. In 

 Yemen, where a regular sovereignty was so long 

 maintained, it is somewhat remarkable that a more 

 exact chronolog\^ should not have been observed. 

 Several Usts of these ancient kings have been pre- 

 served. We are told that they assumed the general 

 name of Tobbaa, a title equivalent to Caesar or Pha- 

 raoh among the Romans and Egji^tians ; but we 

 know little about the nature of their power or their 

 system of administration. This monarchy, accord- 

 iiig to Jamiabi, extended to 3000 years, while Abul- 

 feda restricts it to 2020. But how twenty-six or 

 thirty kings could occupy even the shortest of these 

 periods it'^is difficult to conjecture. The Moham- 

 medan historians solve the perplexity by making 

 some of them reign three or four hundred years, and 

 live to nearly twice that age. " God only knows 

 the truth !^' is the constant exclamation of the pious 

 Nuvairi, on finding it impossible to reconcile these 

 computations with the ordinary limits of mortality. 

 We rather agree with Pococke and M. de Brequigny,* 

 that it was only those princes who swayed the undi- 

 vided sceptre of Yemen, or were conspicuous as 

 tyrants or conquerors, whose names have been pre- 

 served ; and that the intervals, being filled up with 

 usurpations, or not marked by any memorable 

 events, have been nassed over in studied silence. 

 Hamza says expressly, that the twenty-six kings 

 who flourished for so long a period were only those 

 descended from the family of Hamyar. 



Besides that of Yemen, there were two other 

 principal dynasties in Arabia, of which we shall give 

 some account in the following order : — 



I. The kingdom of the Homerites or Hamyarites, 

 so called from the fifth monarch of that name, who 



* Mem. de I'Academ. des Inscript. torn. xxii. Spec. Hist. 

 Arab. p. 55. 



