4. Language— Arabic, the language of Arabia, is the most developed and the richest of the Semitic lan- guages, and the only one of which we have an exten- sive literature ; it is, therefore, of great importance to the study of Hebrew. Of its early phases we know nothing ; while we have archaic monuments of tho Himyaritic (the ancient language of Southern Arabia), though we cannot fix their precise ages. Of the ex- istence of Hebrew and Chaldee (or Aramaic) in the time of Jacob there is evidence in Gen. (xxxi, 47) ; and probably Jacob and Luban understood each other,
ARABIA
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ARABIA
the one speaking Hebrew and the other Chaldee. It seems also (Judg. vii, 9-15) that Gideon, or Phurah, or both, understood the conversation of the " Midian- ites, and the Amalekites, and all the children of the East." It is probable, therefore, that down to the 13th century B.C. the Semitic languages differed much less than in after timeo. But it appears from 2 Kings xviii, 26, that in the 8th century B.C. only the edu- cated classes among the Jews understood Aramaic. With these evidences before us, and making a due distinction between the archaic and the known phases of the Aramaic and the Arabic, we think that the Himyaritic is to be regarded as a sister of the Hebrew, and the Arabic (commonly so called) as a sister of the Hebrew and the Aramaic, or, in its classical phasis, as a descendant of a sister of these two, but that the Himyaritic is mixed with an African language, and that the other dialects of Arabia are in like manner, though in a much less degree, mixed with an African language. The inferred differences between the older and later phases of the Aramaic, and the presumed difference between those of the Arabic, are amply con- firmed by comparative philology. The division of the Ishmaelite language into many dialects is to be attrib- uted chiefly to the separation of tribes by uninhabita- ble tracts of desert, and the subsequent amalgamation of those dialects to the pilgrimage and the annual meetings of Okaz, a fair in which literary contests took place, and where it was of the first importance that the contending poets should deliver themselves in a language perfectly intelligible to the mass of the people congregated, in order that it might be critically judged by them ; for many of the meanest of the Arabs, utterly ignorant of reading and writing, were of the highest of the authorities consulted by the lex- icologists when the corruption of the language had commenced, i. e. when the Arabs, as Mohammedans, had begun to spread among foreigners. See Akabic Language.
Bespecting the Himyaritic until lately little was known ; but monuments bearing inscriptions in this language have been discovered in the southern jarts of the peninsula, principally in Hadramaut and the Yemen, and some of the inscriptions have been pub- lished by Fresnel, Arnaud, Wellsted, and Cruttenden ; while Fresnel has found a dialect still spoken in the district of Mahreh, and westward as far as Kishim, that of the neighborhood of Zafari and Mirbat being the purest, and called " Ekhili ;" and this is supposed with reason to be the modern phasis of the old Him- yaritic (4e Lettrc). Fresnel's alphabet has been ac- cepted by the learned. The dates found in the in- scriptions range from 30 (on the dike of Mareb) to G04 at Hisn Ghorab, but what era these represent is uncertain. Ewald (Ueber die Himi/arische Spracha in Holer's Zeitschrifl, i, 295 sq.) thinks that they arc years of the Rupture of the Dike, while acknowledg- ing their apparent high antiquity ; but the difficulty of supposing such inscriptions on a ruined dike, and the fact that some of them would thus be brought later than the time of Mohammed, make it probal that they belong rather to an earlier era, perhaps that of the Himyaritc empire, though what point marks its commencement is not determined. The Himyaritic in its earliest phasis probably represents the first Semitic language spoken in Arabia. — Smith, s. v. See Him-
YARITE ; SHEMITIC LANGUAGES.
5. The manners and customs of the Arabs are of great value in illustrating the Bible ; but supposed parallels between the patriarchal life of the Scrip- tures and the state of the modern Arabs must not be hastily drawn. It should be remembered that this people are in a degraded condition ; that they have been influenced by Jewish contact, especially 1))' the adoption through Mohammed of parts of the ceremonial law and of rabbinical observances ; and that they are not of the race of Israel. The inhabitants of Arabia