PREFACE XV 



From American missionaries I have invariably 

 met with a hospitality which can never be repaid. 

 The traveler in unbeaten paths realizes better than 

 any one else the extent to which the missionary is 

 not only the carrier of religion, but of civilization, 

 and while he admires the way in which they are 

 uplifting the native, he experiences also a purely per- 

 sonal feeling of gratitude when he is permitted to rest 

 in one of these oases of Occidental culture after 

 a more or less prolonged experience of life that is 

 based on so much lower ideals. Without the co- 

 operation of missionaries, and in particular of those 

 at Busreh, Turkey, who represent the Reformed 

 Church in America, my work would not only have 

 been far less pleasant — ^it would have been impossible. 



A few remarks upon the problems of orthography 

 in regard to the names of date varieties will be in 

 place in this introduction. In order to make Ameri- 

 can practice conform to that of the rest of the 

 scientific world, I have transliterated all Arabic date 

 names on a uniform system, which is based on the 

 principle in use for a century or more, that consonants 

 should be pronounced as in English but vowels as 

 in Spanish or other continental languages. This is 

 the simplest and most natural method of dealing 

 with a hard problem, and it is particularly simple 

 for residents of the southwestern United States, be- 

 cause they are already familiar with the pronunciation 

 of Spanish words. The system was elaborated by the 

 International Congress of Orientalists at Geneva, 

 in 1894, and recommended for general adoption; it 

 has been adopted with occasional insignificant changes 

 by the British, Indian and Egyptian governments, 

 the geographical bureau of the United States govern- 



