576 COSMOS 



supposed by the philologist Quatremere, to have been situ- 

 ated among the Gerrhcean mountains, on the Lower Euphrates. 

 This northern portion of Arabia maintained an active con- 

 nection with other civilised states, from its vicinity to Egypt, 

 the diffusion of Arabian tribes over the Syro-Palestinian. 

 boundaries and the districts around the Euphrates, as well as by 

 means of the celebrated caravan track from Damascus through 

 Emesa and Tadmor (Palmyra) to Babylon. Mohammed him- 

 self, who had sprung from a noble but impoverished family 

 of the Koreischite tribe, in his mercantile occupation, visited, 

 before he appeared as an inspired prophet and reformer, the 

 fair at Bosra on the Syrian frontier, that at Hadramaut the 

 land of incense, and more particularly that held at Okadh, 

 near Mecca, which continued during twenty days, and whither 

 poets, mostly Bedouins, assembled annually, to take part in 

 the lyric competitions. I mention these individual facts 

 referring to international relations of commerce, and the 

 causes from which they emanated, in order to give a more ani- 

 mated picture of the circumstances which conduced to prepare 

 the way for a universal change. 



The spread of Arabian population towards the north, 

 reminds us most especially of two events, which, notwith- 

 standing the obscurity in which their more immediate rela- 

 tions are shrouded, testify that even thousands of years before 

 Mohammed, the inhabitants of the peninsula had occasionally 

 taken part in the great universal traffic, both towards the 

 west and east, in the direction of Egypt and of the Euphrates. 

 The Semitic or Aramseic origin of the Hyksos, who put an 

 end to the old kingdom under the twelfth dynasty, two thou- 

 sand two hundred years before our era, is now almost univer- 

 sally admitted by all historians. Even Manetho says, " some 

 maintain that these herdsmen were Arabians." Other autho- 

 rities call them Phoenicians, a term which was extended in 

 antiquity to the inhabitants of the valley of the Jordan, and 

 to all Arabian races. The acute Ewald refers especially to 

 the Amalekites, who originally lived in Yemen, and then 

 spread themselves beyond Mecca and Medina to Canaan and 

 Syria, appearing in the Arabian annals as rulers over Egypt, 

 in the time of Joseph.* It seems extraordinary that the 



* Ewald, Gesch. des Volkes Israel, Bd. i. s. 300 und 450; Bunsen, 

 jEgyptcn, Buch iii. s. 10 und 32. The traditions of Medes and Per- 



