(b) Abrahamites, divided into:
[1.] Hagarenes or Hagarites, so called from Hagar the mother, otherwise termed Ishmaelites from her son ; and yet in course of time these names appear to have been applied to different tribes, for in Psalm Ixxxiii, 6, the Hagarenes are expressly distinguished from the Ishmaelites (comp. 1 Chron. v, 10, 19, 22, and the apocryphal book of Baruch i, 35 ; iii, 23). The twelve sons of Ishmael (Gen. xxv, 13-15), who gave names to separate tribes, were Nebaioth (the Naba- tbasans in Arabia Petra?a), Kedar (the Kedarenes, sometimes also used as a designation of the Bedouins generally, and hence the Jewish rabuins call the Ara- bic language "the Kedarene,,s) , Adbeel, Mibsam, Mish= ma, Dumah, Massa, Hadad or Hadar, Tenia, Jetur, Naphish (the Iturreans and Naphishasans near the tribe of Gad ; 1 Chron. v, 19, 20), and Kedemah. They appear to have been for the most part located near Palestine on the east and south-east.
[2.] Keturahites, i. e. the descendants of Abraham and his concubine Keturah, by whom he had six sons (Gen. xxv, 2) : Zimram, Jokshan (who, like Raamah, son of Cush, was also the father of two sons, Sheba and Dedan), Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. Among these the posterity of Midian became the best known. Their principal seat appears to have been in the neigh- borhood of the Moabites, but a branch of them must have settled in the peninsula of Sinai, for Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, was a priest of Midian (Exod. iii. 1; xviii, 5; Num. x, 29). To the posterity of Shuah belonged Bildad, one of the friends of Job.
[3.] Edomite.s, i. e. the descendants of Esau, who pos- sessed Mount Seir and the adjacent region, called from them Idumaja. They and the Nabathreans formed in later times a flourishing commercial state, the capital of which was the remarkable city called Petra.
(c) Kahorites, the descendants of Nahor, Abraham's brother, who seem to have peopled the land of Uz, the country of Job, and of Buz, the country of his friend Pllihu the Buzite, these being the names of Nahor's sons (Gen. xxii, 21).
(d ) Lotites, viz. :
[1.] Moabites, who occupied the northern portion of Arabia Petraja, as above described, and their kins- men, the
[2.] Ammonites, who lived north of them, in Arabia Deserta.
c. Besides these the Bible mentions various other tribes who resided within the bounds of Arabia, but whose descent is unknown, e. g. the Amalekites, the Kcnites, the Horites, the inhabitants of Maon, Ilazor,
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Vedan, and Javan-Meuzzal (Ezek. xxvii, 19), where the English version has, " Dan also and Javan going to and fro."
In process of time some of these tribes were per- haps wholly extirpated (as seems to have been the case with the Amalekites), but the rest were more or less mingled together by intermarriages, by military conquests, political revolutions, and other causes of which history has preserved no record; and, thus amalgamated, the}- became known to the rest of the world as the "Arabs," a people whose physical and mental characteristics are very strongly and distinct- ly marked. In both respects they rank very high among the nations ; so much so that some have re- garded them as furnishing the prototype — the primi- tive model form — the standard figure of the human species. This was the opinion of the famous Baron de Larrey, surgeon-general of Napoleon's army in Egypt, who, in speaking of the Arabs on the east side of the Bed Sea, says (in a Memoir for the Use of the Scientific Commission to Algiers, Paris, 1838), "They have a physiognomy and character which are quite peculiar, and which distinguish them generally from all those which appear in other regions of the globe." In his dissections he found "their physical structure in all respects more perfect than that of Europeans ; their organs of sense exquisitely acute ; their size above the average of men in general ; their figure ro- bust and elegant (the color brown) ; their intelligence proportionate to that physical perfection, and, with- out doubt, superior, other things being equal, to that of other nations." — Kitto, s. v.
2. Native History. — The Arabs, like every other ancient nation of any celebrity, have traditions rep- resenting their country as originally inhabited by races which became extinct at a very remote period. These were the tribes of Ad, Thamud, Umeiyim, Abil, Tasm, Jedis, Emlik (Amalek), Jurhum (the first of this name), and Webari: some omit the fourth and the last two, but add Jasim. The majority of their historians derive these tribes from Shem ; but some from Ham, though not through Cush. Their earliest traditions that have any obvious relation to the Bible refer the origin of the existing nation in the first in- stance to Kahtan, whom they and most European scholars identity with Joktan; and secondly to Ish- mael, whom the}' assert to have married a descendant of Kahtan, though they only carry up their genealo- gies to Adnan (said to be of the 21st generation before Mohammed). They are silent respecting Cushite set- tlements in Arabia; but modern research, we think, proves that Cushites were among its early inhabitants. Although Cush in the Bible usually corresponds to Ethiopia, certain passages seem to indicate Cushite peoples in Arabia; and the series of the sons of Cush should, according to recent discoveries, be sought for in order along the southern coast, exclusive of Seba (Meroe), occupying one extreme of their settlements, and Nimrod the other. The great ruins of Mareb or Seba, and of other places in the Yemen and Hadra- maut, arc not those of a Semitic people; and farther to the e.st, the existing language of Mahreh, the rem- nant of that of the inscriptions found on the ancient remain.- just mentioned, is in bo great a degree appa- rently African as to be called by Bome scholars Cush- ite; while the settlements of k'aainah and those of his sons Sheba and Dedan, are probably to lie looked for toward the bead of the Persian Gulf, bordered on the north by the descendants of Keturah, bearing the same names as the two latter. In Babylonia also in- dependent proofs of this immigration of Cushites from Ethiopia have, it is thought, lieen lately obtained. The ancient cities and buildings of Southern Arabia, in their architecture, the inscriptions they contain, and the native traditions respecting them, are of the utmost value in aiding a student of this portion of primeval history. Indeed they arc the only impor-