ARABIA
345
ARABIAN
steam navigation has now restored the ancient route for travellers by the Red Sea. See Commerce.
IV. Literature. — The principal European authori- ties for the history of Arabia are, Schultens' Hist. Imp. Vetus. Joctanidarum (Hard. Gel. 1786), containing ex- tracts from various Arab authors ; and his Monumenta Vetustiora Arabim (Lug. Bat. 1740) ; Eichhorn's Mon- umenta Antiquiss. Hist. Arabum, chiefly extracted from Ibn-Kuteibeh, with his notes (Tioth. 1775) ; Fresnel, Lett res surVHist. des Arabes avant VIslamisme, pub- lished in the Journal A siatique, 1838-53; Quatremere, Memoire sur les Nabatheens ; Caussin, Essai sur VHist. lies Arabes avant VIslamisme (Paris, 1847-8); for the geography, Niebuhr's Description de V Arabia (Amst. 1774) ; Burckhardt's Travels in Arabia (Lond. 1839) ; Wellsted, Narrative of a Journey to the ruin's of Nakeb- al-Hajar, in Journ. of R. G. S. vii, 20 ; his copy of inscription, in Journ. of Asiat. Soe. of Bengal, iii, 1834; and his Journal (Lond. 1838); Cruttenden, Nar- rative of a Journey from Molha to San' a; Jomard, Etudes geogr. et hist, appended to Mengin, Hist, de VEgypte, vol. iii (Paris, 1839); and for Arabia Petrasa and Sinai, Robinson's Biblical Researches ; Stanley's Sinai and Palestine ; Tuch's Essay on the Sinaitic In- scriptions in the Journal of the. German Oriental Soc. xiv, 129 sq. Compare Chesney's Expedition to the Eu- phrates (Lond. 1850), and Ritter, Erdkunde, pt. xiv; also Palgrave, Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia (Lond. 1865, 2 vols. 8vo). For the manners and customs of the Arabs, see Burckhardt's Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys (8vo, 1831) ; Lane's Notes on the Thousand and One Nights (ed. 1838) ; and his Modern Egyptians (ed. 1861). See also Weil, Gesch. far Khali- fen (3 vols. 8vo, Mannh. 1846-61) ; Forster, Historical Geog. of Arabia (2 vols. 8vo, Lond. 1844).
The most important native works are, with two ex- ceptions, still untranslated, and but few of them are edited. Abulfeda's Hist. Anteislamica has been ed- ited and translated 1)}' Fleischer (Lips. 1831) ; and El- Idrisi's Geography translated by Jaubert, and pub- lished in the Recueil de Voyages et de Memoires, by the Geogr. Soc. of Paris (1836) ; of those which have been, or are in the course of being edited, are Yakut's Homonymous Geographical Dictionary, entitled El- Mushtarah Wad'an, ica-l-Muftarak SaWan (ed. Wiis- tenfeld, Got. 1845) ; the Marasid el-Ittilda, probably an abridgment by an unknown hand of his larger geogr. diet, called the Moajam (ed. Juynboll, Lug. Bat. 1852-4); the Histories of Mekkeh, ed." Wiistenfeld, and now published by the German Oriental Socie- ty; and Ibn-Khaldun's Prolegomena, ed. Quatremere, i (Paris, 1858). Of those in MS., besides the in- dispensable works of the Arab lexicographers, we would especially mention Ibn-Khaldun's History of the Arabs; the Kharidet el-Ajaib of Ibn-El-Wardi ; the Mir-dt ez-Zemdn of Ibn-El-J6zi ; the Murooj edh- Dhahab of El-Mesudi; Yakut's Moajam el-Buldan ;\ the Kitdb-el-Aghdni of El-Isfahani ; and the 'Ikd of El-Kurtubi. For a copious view of Arabic and kin- dred literature, see Zenker's Bibliotheca Orientalis (Lpz. 1840 sq.). Compare Arabia.
ARABIA, CHURCH OF. The Apostle Paul, on his conversion, retired into Arabia for some two years (Gal. i, 27), but whether this time was spent in preach- ing or in private exercises is doubtful ; nor is there any authentic record of the fruits of his labors if expend- ed there. Several other apostles, as Peter, Thomas, Bartholomew, Judas Thaddseus, are mentioned by tra- i dition as having preached there (see Wiltsch, i, 21 sq.). It is certain that Arabia received Christianity early. According to Eusebius (Hist. Eccles. vi, 19), an Arab ruler sent to Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, in the beginning of the 3d century, asking for Origen as a teacher. Between 247 and 250 a synod was held, under the presidency of Origen, for the condemnation of a certain heresy. Arabia was originally a province of the patriarchate of Antioch, having Bostra for its I
metropolitan see ; but it was separated from the Ori- ental diocese and added to that of Jerusalem, accord- ing to William of Tyre (Be Bello Sacro, xiv, 14), in the 5th Oecumenical Council. Metropolitans of Bos- tra, and bishops of Philadelphia and Esbus are still mentioned about the middle of the seventh century. The conversion of a Himyarite king occurred in the fourth century, and that of two kings of Hira in the sixth centurj'. Among the Saracens and Bedouins numerous conversions took place in the fifth century. Several important bodies, as the Bahrites, Taunchites, Taglebites, and others were entirely Christian, and Cosmas Indicopleustes reported in the sixth century that he. found everywhere in Arabia Christian churches. Both Nestorianism and Monophysitism found numer- ous adherents in Arabia ; the former principally in the north and north-west, the latter in the south. The Jacobites of Arabia have been under the rule of the Maphrians since the time of the Maphrian Marutas, i. e. since about 629, and contained two bishoprics, viz. : one of Arabia, so called, of which the see was at Akula; the other of the Taalabensian Scenite Arabi- ans, of which the see was at Hirta Naamanis. But Christianity in Arabia was nearly, if not quite, de- stroyed by Mohammedanism ; nor has it risen since in that country to any extent. The only place where it has gained a firm footing is Aden, which, in 1839, was ceded to the English. Here both a Protestant and a Roman Catholic congregation has been collected ; the membership of the latter is given by the missionaries as about 1000 (Schem, Eccles. Year-book for 1859, p. 18, 19). In fact, Christianity in Arabia had become very early corrupted by an admixture of Sabsean idola- try and Persian dualism, so that Origen, in the middle of the 3d century, declared Arabia to be a "country most fruitful in heresy." The tribes which professed Christianity when Mohammed first began to promul- gate Islamism appear to have paid as much attention to rabbinical legends and monkish fables as to the Scriptures. It is indeed pretty certain that the Koran contains a tolerably fair representation of the religious belief of the Arabian Christians in Mohammed's age, 1 and from this it appears that the idle stories in the ! apocryphal gospels were received with as much rev- j erence as the books of the evangelists ; it is even doubtful whether they possessed any translation of the J canonical books of the Bible, and this may serve to explain the facility with which they received the creed of Mohammed. — Wiltsch, Handbook of the, Geogr. and Statistics of the Church, transl. hv Leitscli (Lond. 1859, vol. i, 8vo). See Mohammed.