﻿ON THE ARABS. J 



tion, enough of them may be known to delight and 

 instruct us in an infinite degree. I conclude this head 

 with remarking, that the nature of the Ethiopic dia- 

 lect seems to prove an early establishment of the 

 Arahs in part of Ethiopia, from which they were 

 afterwards expelled, and attacked even in their own 

 country by the Abyssinians, who had been invited 

 over as auxiliaries against the tyrant of Yemen about a 

 century before the birth of Muhammed. 



Of the characters in which the old compositions of 

 ■Arabia were written, we know but little, except that 

 the Koran originally appeared in those of Citfah, from 

 which the modern Arabian letters, with all their ele- 

 gant variations, were derived , and which unquestionably 

 had a common origin with the Hebrew or Chaldaic> 

 but, as to the Himyaric letters, or those which we see 

 mentioned by the name of Almusnad, we are still in 

 total darkness ; the traveller JSiebuhr having been 

 unfortunately prevented from visiting some ancient 

 monuments in Yemen, which are said to have inscrip- 

 tions on them. If those letters bear a strong resem- 

 blance to the Nagari, and if a story current in India 

 be true, that some Hindu merchants heard the Sans- 

 crit language spoken in Arabia the Happy, we might 

 be confirmed in our opinion that an intercourse for- 

 merly subsisted between the two nations of opposite 

 coasts, — but should have no reason to believe that 

 they sprang from the same immediate stock. The 

 first syllable of Hamyar, as many Europeans write it, 

 might perhaps induce an etymologist to derive the 

 Arabs of Yemen from the great ancestor of the In- 

 dians ; but we must observe, that Himyar is the 

 proper appellation of those Jtrabs ; and many rea- 

 sons concur to prove that the word is purely Arabic. 

 The similarity of some proper names on the borders 

 of India to those of Arabia, as the river Arabius, a 

 place called Araba, a people named Aribes or Am* 



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