I c. Arabia Petr.ea (Gr. Uirpaia) appears to have derived its name from its chief town Petra (i. e. a rock), in Heb. Sela ; although (as is remarked by Burckhardt) the epithet is also appropriate on account
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of the rocky mountains and stony plains whicb enm- poBe its surface, h embraces all the north-western portion of the country; being bounded on the east by Desert and Happy Arabia, <>n the north by Palestine and the Mediterranean, on the west by Egypt, and on the south by the Red Sea. This division of Arabia has been of late years visited by a great many travel- lers from Europe, and is consequently much better known than the other portions of the country. Con- fining ourselves at present to a general outline, we re- fer for details to the articles Sinai, Edom, Moab, etc. Beginning at the northern frontier, there meets the elevated plain of Belka, to the east of the Dead Sea, the district of Kerak ( Kir), the ancient territory of the
Moabites, their kinsmen of Ammon having settled to the north of this, in Arabia Deserta. The north bor- der of Moab was the brook Anion, now the Wady-el- Mojeb ; to the south of Moab, separated from it by the Wady-el-Ashy, lay Mount Seir, the dominion of the Edomites, ot'ldumaa, reaching as far as to Elath on the Red Sea. The great valley which runs from the Dead Sea to that point consists, first, of El-Ghor, which is comparatively low, but gradually rises by J succession of limestone cliffs into the more elevated plain of ELArabah above mentioned. "We were now," says Dr. l.'obinson (Biblical Researches, ii, 502), "upon the plain, or rather the rolling desert, of the Avab<ih; the surface was in general loose gravel and
ARABIA
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ARABIA
stones, everywhere furrowed and torn with the beds of torrents. A more frightful desert it had hardly been our lot to behold. The mountains beyond pre- sented a most uninviting and hideous aspect ; preci- pices and naked conical peaks of chalky and gravelly formation rising one above another without a sign of life or vegetation." This mountainous region is divided into two districts : that to the north is called Jebdl (i. e. mountains, the Gebal of Psa. lxxxiii, 7) ; that to the south Esh-Sherah, which has erroneously been supposed to be allied to the Hebrew "Seir;" whereas the latter (written with a ") means "hairy," the for- mer denotes "a tract or region." To the district of Esh-Sherah belongs Mount Hor, the burial-place of Aaron, towering above the Wady Mousa (valley of Moses), where are the celebrated ruins of Petra (the ancient capital of the Nabathaio-Idumajans), brought to light by Seetzen and Burckhardt, and now familiar to English readers by the illustrations of Irby and Mangles, Laborde, etc. As for the mountainous tract immediately west of the Arabah, Dr. Robinson de- scribes it as a desert limestone region, full of precipi- tous ridges, through which no travelled road has ever passed. See Aeabaii. To the west of Idumaja ex- tends the "great and terrible wilderness" of Et-Tih, i. e. "the Wandering," so called from being the scene of the wanderings of the children of Israel. It con- sists of vast interminable plains, a hard gravelly soil, and irregular ridges of limestone hills. The researches of Robinson and Smith furnish new and important in- formation respecting the geography of this part of Arabia and the adjacent peninsula of Sinai. It ap- pears that the middle of this desert is occupied by a long central basin, extending from Jebel-et-Tih (i. e. the mountain of the wandering, a chain pretty far south) to the shores of the Mediterranean. This basin descends toward the north with a rapid slope, and is drained through all its length by Wady-el- Arish, which enters the sea near the place of the same name on the borders of Egypt. " The soil of the Sina- itic peninsula is in general very unproductive, yield- ing only palm-trees, acacias, tamarisks (from which exudes the gum called manna), coloquintida, and dwarfish, thorn}- shrubs. Among the animals may be mentioned the mountain-goat (the beden of the Arabs), gazelles, leopards, a kind of marmot called waber, the sheeb, supposed by Col. Hamilton Smith to be a species of wild wolf-dog, etc. : of birds there are eagles, partridges, pigeons, the katta, a species of quail, etc. There are serpents, as in ancient times (Num. xxi, 4, C), and travellers speak of a large lizard called dhob, common in the desert, but of unusually fre- quent occurrence here. The peninsula is inhabited b}- Bedouin Arabs, and its entire population was esti- mated by Burckhardt at not more than 4000 souls. Though this part of Arabia must ever be memorable as the scene of the journeying of the Israelites from Egypt to the Promised Land, 3ret very few of the spots mentioned in Scripture have been identified ; nor after the lapse of so many centuries ought that to be occasion of surprise. — Kitto, s. v. See Exode.