﻿ON THE ARABS. 12 



l 3 



By reasoning downwards, however, we may ascertain 

 some points of considerable importance. The uni- 

 versal tradition of Yemen is, that Yoktan, the son of 

 Eber, first settled his family in that country ; which 

 settlement, by the computation admitted in Europe, 

 must have been above three thousand six hundred yew's 

 ago, and nearly at the time when the Hindus, under 

 the conduct of Rama, were subduing the first inhabit- 

 ants of these regions, and extending the Indian em- 

 pire from Ayodhya, or Audh, as far as the isle of Sinhal, 

 or Silan. According to this calculation, Nuuman, king 

 of Yemen, in the ninth generation from Eber, was con- 

 temporary with Joseph ; and, if a verse composed by 

 that prince, and quoted by Abulfeda, was really pre- 

 served, as it might easily have been, by oral tradition, 

 it proves the great antiquity of the \ Arabian language 

 and metre. This is a literal version of the couplet : 

 ' When thou, who art in power, conductest affairs with 



* courtesy, thou attainest the high honours of those 

 t who are most exalted, and whose mandates are 



* obeyed/ We are told that, from an elegant verb in 

 this distich, the royal poet acquired the surname of 

 /flmuaaser, or the Courteous. Now the reasons for 

 believing this verse genuine are its brevity, which made 

 it easy to be remembered, and the good sense com- 

 prized in it, which made it become proverbial ; to 

 which we mav add, that the dialect is apparently old, 

 and differs in three words from the idiom of Hejaz. 

 The reasons for doubting are, that sentences and verses 

 of indefinite antiquity are sometimes ascribed by the 

 Arabs to particular persons of eminence ; and they 

 even go so far as to cite a pathetic elegy of Adam 

 himself on the death of Abel, but in vey good Arabic 

 and correct measure. Such are the doubts which 

 necessarily must arise on such a subject ; vet we have 

 no need of ancient monuments or traditions to prove 

 all that our analysis requires, namely that the Arabs of 

 Hejaz and Yemen sprang from a stock entirely differ- 



