OF THE ANCIENT ARABS. 185 



Other hardware, fabricated at Moosa ; and he men- 

 Sons certain stuffs of a tartan or striped texture 

 manufaSured in Yemen, but not remarkable either 

 for the quality of the wool or the workmanship 

 The r common military weapons were the bow and 

 the scimTtLr, in the handling of which they were 

 unrivaUed. The other arms which they used were 

 Ztror iavehns. Herodotus speaks of their arrows 

 Sed with a kind of stone ; and Strabo mentions 

 noles of wood, with their extreme points shod with 

 Fron or hardened in the fire. These they employed m 

 their wars and predatory excursions Two aicners 

 frequently on these occasions sat back to back on 

 Ihe same camel, that in case of surprise they rnight 

 be prepared to attack the enemy in front and leai 



ChrSnometry, or the division of time, among he 

 Arabs was ve^ry imperfect They reckoned en 

 principal epochs between the arrival of l^^mael at 

 Secca and' the flight of Mohammed al founded on 

 some historical event, such ^^^the building of the 

 Kaaba the Flood of El Arem, the War of the Ele- 

 phant\c. Different tribes adopted different eras, 

 which tended to darken and perplex their computa- 

 tions Like most other ancient nations, they divided 

 the year into twelve months, and reckoned by weeks 

 of seven days. They used the lunar ^a cuMion ; 

 intercalating certain months— one every thud > ear 

 -SmTe fhe course of the moon agree with that 

 of the sun, and prevent the seasons from changing 

 their natural order. This arrangement was co„ 

 demned in the Koran as a remnant of idolatry , 

 and the Arabs now begin their months with the ap- 

 pearance of the new moon, without any intercalation 

 to fix the commencement of the year to the same 

 point : so that the seasons gradually vary their posi- 

 tion, and in course of sixteen yearswinter shifts "i? 

 the place of summer. As each mon h begins with 

 the new moon, a cloudy sky will sometimes make the 

 difference of a day's reckoning in two parts of the 



