To the settled Arabs these remarks apply with the difference that the primitive mode of life is in a great degree lost, and the Jewish practices are much more observable ; while intermixture with foreigners, es- peclally with Abyssinian and negro concubines in the Yemen and the Hejaz, has tended to destroy their puri- ty of blood. A Bedouin will scarcely marry out of his tribe, and is not addicted' to concubinage; he con- siders himself, and is, quite distinct from a townsman, i,i habits, in in »lc of thought, and in national feeling. Again, a distinction should lie made between the peo- ple of Northern and those of Southern Arabia ; the former being chiefly of Ishmaelite, the latter of Jok- tanite descent, and in other respects than settlement and intermarriage with foreigners farther removed from the patriarchal character.
Regarded in the light we have indicated, Arab man- ners and customs, whether those of the Bedonins or of the townspeople, afford valuable help to the student of the Bible, and testimony to the truth and vigor of the scriptural narrative. No one can mix with this people without being constantly and forcibly remind- ed either of the early patriarchs or of the settled Israel-
ites. We may instance their pastoral life, their hos- pitality— that most remarkable of desert virtues [see Hospitality] — their universal respect for age (comp. Lev. xix, 32), their familiar deference (comp. 2 Kin^s v, 13), their superstitious regard for the beard. On the signet-ring, which is worn on the little finger of the right hand, is usually inscribed a sentence expres- sive of submission to God, or of his perfection, etc., explaining Exod. xxxix, 30, "the engraving of a sig- net, Holiness to the Lord," and the saying of our Lord (John iii, 33), " He . . . hath set to his seal that God is true." As a mark of trust this ring is given to an- other person (as in Gen. xli, 42). The inkhorn worn in the girdle is also very ancient (Ezek. ix, 2, 3, 11), as well as the veil. (For these, and many other illus- trations, see Lane's Modern Egyptians, Index.) A man has a right to claim his cousin in marriage, and he relinquishes this right by taking off his shoe, as the kinsman of Ruth did to Boaz (Ruth iv, 7, 8; see Burckhardt's Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys, i, 113). — Smith, s. v. See Jon.
6. The commerce of Arabia especially connected with the Bible has been referred to in the sections on West- ern and "Northern Arabia, and incidentally in men- tioning the products of the peninsula. Direct men- tion of the commerce of the south does not appear to be made in the Bible, but it seems to have passed to Pal- estine principally through the northern tribes. So early as the days of Jacob (Gen. xxxvii, 28) we read of a mixed caravan of Arab merchants (Ishmaelitea and Midianites) who were engaged in the conveyance of various foreign articles to Egypt, and made no_ scru- ple to add Joseph, " a slave," to their other purchases. The Arabs were doubtless the first navigators of their own seas, and the great carriers of the produce of In- dia, Abyssinia, and other remote countries, to Western Asia and Egypt. Various Indian productions thus ob- tained were common among the Hebrews at an early period of their history (Exod. xxx, 23, 25). The traf- fic of the Red Sea was to Solomon a source of great profit ; and the extensive commerce of Sabwa (Sheba, now Yemen) is mentioned by profane writers as well as alluded to in Scripture (1 Kings x, 10-15). In the description of the foreign trade of Tyre (Ezek. xxvii, 19-24) various Arab tribes are introduced (comp. Isa. Ix, 6; Jer. vi, 20; 2 Chron. ix, 14). The Nabathaeo- Iduma?ans became a great trading people, their capi- tal being Petua (q. v.). The Joktanite people of South- ern Arabia have always been, in contradistinction to the Ishmaelite tribes, addicted to a seafaring life. The latter were caravan-merchants ; the former the chief traders of the Red Sea, carrying their commerce to the shores of India, as well as to the nearer coasts of Africa. Their own writers describe these voyages ; since the Christian era especially, as we might expect from the modern character of their literature. (See the curious Accounts of India and China by two Mo- hammedan Travellers of the ninth Cent., trans, by Re- naudot, and amply illustrated in Mr. Lane's notes to his translation of the Thousand and One Niyhts.) The classical writers also make frequent mention of the commerce of Southern Arabia (see Smith's Diet, of Class. Geoff.). It was evidently carried on with Pales- tine by the two preat caravan routes from the head of the Red Sea and from that of the Persian Gulf; the former especially taking with it African produce, the latter Indian. It should be observed that the wander- ing propensities of the Arabs, of whatever descent, do not date from the promulgation of Islamism. All tes- timony goes to show that from the earliest ages the peoples of Arabia formed colonies in distant lands, and have not been actuated solely either by the desire of conquest or by religious impulse in their foreign ex- peditions, but rather by restlessness and commercial activity. The transit-trade from India continued to enrich Arabia until the discovery of the passage to In. dia by the Cape of Good Hope; but the invention tf