THE ARAB PIRATES. 
1> 44.] 
The Arabs in every age, have been alike distinguished for a spirit of 
commerce and of plunder: and were early and great navigators, both 
as merchants and as pirates. In the time of Mahomed there existed 
a predatory tribe, whose chief is described in the Koran, according to 
Ebn Hauical,* as “ the King, who forcibly seized every sound ship." 
This empire is said to have been founded prior to the time of Moses ; 
and if the continuance of the same occupations on the spot be a proof 
of the identity of the people, it may be traced to the Arabs of the 
present day. 
The Portuguese power was often violated by these pirates i-p and in 
the same age the English interests in the East were so much endangered 
by them, that one of the Agents in Persia (who had all indeed succes¬ 
sively made representations on the necessity of sending an armed force 
to destroy them) declared, that “ they were likely to become as great 
“ plagues in India, as the Algerines were in Europe/’:]: Some of these 
ships had from thirty to fifty guns :§ and one of their fleets, consisting 
of five ships, carried between them one thousand five hundred men.|| 
* Sir William Ouseley’s Ebn Haukal, p. 12. p. 95. 
t Stevens’s Faria y Sousa, vol. iii. p. 30, &c. 
% Bruce’s Annals of the East India Company, vol. iii. p. 198. 
i and [| Bruce, iii. 649. 169. In 1715 the Muscat fleet consisted of one ship of seventy- 
3 B 2 
