heights, it is natural that the limits of these provinces should be very inexactly fixed. According to Blunt (i.e. i. 23Bqq.), Nejd includes all *the land that lies within the Nefuds, 'the only
doubt being whether it includes the Nefuds or not.' The treble division, Hijaz, Nejd, and Yemen, would thus include all A. within the Tihamas ; Nejd itself being subdivided into seven provinces, whose names need not be given here. Ordinarily, however, it is not customary to extend the application of the name Yemen beyond 45* E. of Green^vich. Yet the name Hadramaut, applied in European maps to the vast region which extends hence to the S.E. of the peninsula, has been shown by Wellsted and Bent to be properly applied to a wady about icio miles in length. Great discrepancies exist as to the delimitation of the province of Oman on the E. side, which, according to Palgrave (Travels, ii. 255), 'touches Hadramaut on the 8., and Katar, or at least its immediate vicinity, on the N., forming a huge crescent, having the sea in front, and the vast desert ol South A. for its background ' ; while the travellers Wellsted and Bent give the name a very limited application.
ii. Climate, Flora, and Fauna.— The fertility of portions of Yemen is so great as to have become proverbial in antiquity ; and the few modem travellers who have climbed the mountains which tower above the S. coast, and have reached the table- lands beyond, speak with enthusiasm of the wealth of the soil, and the high degree of skill displayed by the natives in cultivating it. The greater part of the peninsula, however, is capable of supporting but a small population. 'Nothing like one-third of its surface,' says one of the most capable ex- plorers, ' is cultivated without irrigation, the task of extending which beyond the valleys and natural oases is probably beyond the power of Turk or Arab. Vast spaces of unchangeable and un- changing barrenness spread themselves over it. Joining themselves to these are larger and scarcely less dreary regions, occupied by precipitous moun- tains accessible only to tne goat : by labyrinthine sandy ravines or gorges bearing only the hardiest shrubs ; and by tepid cultivated palra-oasea, thick with semi-tropical vegetation ' (Tweedie, The Arabian Horse). It must be observed that even in Yemen, according to Glaser (Petermann's Mittheil ungen for 1884), cultivation even in this century has been steadily diminishing. Thus the plateaus between the basalt peaks were once cultivated, but are so no longer. Cultivation is indeed confined to the oases, which, of varying extent, enliven the stony plain, and to the valleys which intersect the central plateau, ' some broad, some narrow, some long and winding, some of little length, but almost all bordered with steep and sometimes precipitoiia banks, and looking as though they had been arti- ficially cut out of the limestone mountain' (Pal- grave). In some of the more northerly oases
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not only cere-ils, but fruits such as the plum, the poraetrraniile, the li<;, the IX^^^f- c-itron, suur and sweet leiiioiis, are cultivated. The pahii, whioh has been compared to the camel for its small need of water, is w idely Hpread, and its dates form the staple food of the nouiad population. No part of the country, however, except perhaps the desert called Ahkaf, is quite destitute of vegetation ; this has been proved in the case of the Ncfud by Blunt, and l)oughty assures us that the harrahs form better Kedawin country than the sandstone.
Tlio flora and fauna of A. are still imperfectly known. Glaser (Von Hodaida nach Snn'n) states that he has himself collected out of South A. more than a hundred specimens of animals and birds previously unknown. In the Nefud, Hlunt 'ascer- tained the existence of the ostrich, the leopard, the wolf, the fox, the hyjena, the hare, the jerboa, the white antelope, and the gazelle ; and of the ibex and the marmot in Jebel Aja ; of reptiles the Nefud boasts, by all accounts, the horned viper and the cobra, besides the harmless grey snake ; there are also immense numbers of lizards. Birds are less numerous . . . yet in the Nefud most of the common desert birds are found.' Of animals the most characteristic of A. is undoubtedly the camel, the ability of which to go without water ' twenty-five days in winter and five in summer, working hard all the time,' renders it of unique service in the desert ; the ' observations on the camel ' in Baron Nolde's lieUe nach Inner- arabien, 1895, ch. vii., form the latest contribution to our knowledge of this creature, with which the early Arabian poets are fond of parading their acquaintance. No less elaborate are their descrip- tions of the Arabian horse, seen at its best in the highlands of Nejd, of which special studies have been made by many English travellers, and most recently by the tnglish officer, Major-General Tweedie, who would seem to have proved that the home of this animal is elsewhere. The ass is to be seen at his best in the province of Hasa, to the N.W. of the Pers. Gulf.
iii. History and Ethnology. — Of the histoiy of A. during the period covered by OT, little is known, since the records begin much later. Some notices, however, have been collected by Assyri- ologista from the cuneiform inscriptions of cam- paigns in which the ' Arabs ' were concerned. In 854, Shalmaneser II. met in battle a confederation in which was * Gindibu the Arab ' with 1000 camels. In the next century Tiglathpileser III. makes an expedition into A., and m the latter half of it we find Assyr. influence extending over the N.W. and E. of the peninsula ; and in tlie following century many tribes which can beidentilied with more or less certainty as occupyin" localities in inner A. were defeated by Esarhaddon at Bazu (Buz). From these in-scriptions, interesting as they are, we learn, however, little more than the names of Btates and occasionally of kings, many of which otTer easy Arab, etymologies. The peninsula might seem to nave been occupied by a number of inde- pendent tribe, sulxjrdinate to no central authority, — a state of things to which the difficulty of com- munication has very fre<|uently reduced it. Nor is much more light to be obtamed from the classical authors, who till the lieginning of the 3rd cent. B.C. had only vague ideas aliout the pcnin- •ala. Great collections of inscriptions have, how- ever, l)een made both in N. and S. Arabia by Euro- pean scholars, esp. Arnaud, Ilali^vy, and Gla-serj and although many of the most remarkable of these still await p\iblication, the Arabian states, of which merely the names liad been recorded by Pliny and Ptolemy, and of which only a vague tratlition circulated among the Arabs, have become far more familinr timn formcrlv, and something