Midian is named authentically only in the Bible. It has no history elsewhere. The names of places and tribes occasionally throw a feeble light on its past dwell- ings ; but the stories of Arabian writers, borrowed, in the case of the northern Arabs, too frequently from late and untrustworthy Jewish writers, cannot be seriously treat- ed. For trustworthy facts we must rest on the Biblical narrative. The city of "Medyen [say the Arabs] is the city of the people of Shu'eib, and is opposite Tabuk, ontheshoreofBahrel-Kulzum [the Red Sea]: between these is six days' journey. It [ISIedyen] is larger than Tabuk ; and in it is the well from which Moses watered the flock of Shu'eib" {Mardsid, s. v.). El-IMakrizi (in his Khitat) enters into considerable detail respecting this city and people. The substance of his account, which is full of incredible fables, is as follows : Medyen are the people of Shu'eib, and are the offspring of Med- ydn [Midian], son of Abraham, and their mother was Kantura, the daughter of Yuktan [Joktan] the Ca- naanite : she bare him eight children, from whom de- scended peoples. He here quotes the passage above cited from the Mardsid almost verbatim, and adds that the Arabs dispute whether the name be foreign or Ara- bic, and whether IMedyen spoke Arabic, so called. Some say that they had a number of kings, who were respectively named Abjad, Hawez, Hutti, Kelemen, Saafas, and Karashet. This absurd enumeration forms a sentence common in Arabic grammars, which gives the order of the Hebrew and ancient Arabic alphabets, and the numerical order of the letters. It is only curi- ous as possibly containing some vague reference to the language of J.Iidian, and it is therefore inserted here. These kings are said to have ruled at Mekkeh, Western Nejd, the Yemen, Medyen, and Egypt, etc., ct)ntempo- raneously. That Midian penetrated into the Yemen is, it must be observed, extremely improbable, notwith- standing the hints of Arab authors to the contrary : Yakut, in the Jlfoajam (cited in the .Toiirnal of the Deutsch. Morgenl. Geselkchaft), saying that a southern Arabian dialect is of Midian ; and El-Mes'udi {ap. Schultens, p. 158) inserting a Midianitish king among the rulers of the Yemen ; the latter being, however, more possible than the former, as an accidental and individu- al, not a national occurrence. The story of Shu'eib is found in the Kuran. He was sent as a prophet to warn the people of Jlidian, and being rejected by them, they were destroyed by a storm from heaven (Sale's Kui-dn, vii and xi). He is generally supposed to be the same as Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses ,• but some, as Sale informs us, deny this ; and one of these says that " he was first called Buyun, and afterwards Shu'eib ; that he was a comely person, but spare and lean, and of few words." The whole Arab storj' of Medj'en and Shu'eib, even if it contain any truth, is encumbered by a mass of late rabbinical myths. El-Makrizi tells us that in the land of Midian were many cities, of which the people had disappeared, and the cities themselves had fallen to ruin ; that when he wrote (in the year 825 of the Hegira) forty cities remained, the names of some being known, and of others lost. Of the ibrmer? he says there were, between the Hijaz and Palestine and Egj'pt, sixteen cities; and ten of these in the direction of Palestine. They were El-Khalasah, El-Sanitah, El- Medereh, El-lMinveh, El-Aawaj, El-Khuweyrak, El- Birein, El-Ma-eyii, El-Seba, and El-Mu'allak. The most important of these cities were El-Khalasah and El-Sanitah ; the stones of many of them had been re- moved to El-Ghazzah (Gaza) to build with them. This list, however, must be taken with caution.
III. Condition and Customs. — jNIuch of this has al- ready been incidentally mentioned. The whole account of the doings of the Midianites with Israel— and it is
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only thus that they find a place in the sacred writings —plainly marks them as characteristically Arab. We have already stated our opinion that they had inter- married with Ishmael's descendants, and become nation- ally one ijcople, so that they arc apparently called Ish- maelites; and that, conversely, it is most jiroljable their power and numbers, with such intermarriages, had caused the name of Midian to be applied to the north- ern Abrahamic Arabs generally. They are described as true Arabs — now Bedawin, or " people of the desert ;" anon pastoral or settled Arabs— the " flock" of Jethro ; the cattle and Hocks of Midian, in the later days of Mo- ses; their camels without number, as the sand of the sea-side for multitude when they ojjpressed Israel in the days of the Judges— all agree with such a description. ' to expi Like Arabs, who are predominantly a nomadic people, they seem to have partially settled in the land of Moab, under the rule of Sihon the Amorite, and to have adapt- ed themselves readily to the "cities" (n"i"7^') and forts (A. V. " gootlly castles," n'"|ia), which they did not build, but occupied, retaining even then their flocks and lierds (Xumb. xxxi, 9, 10), but not their camels, which are not common among settled Arabs, because they are not reeiuired, and are never, in that state, healthy. Is- rael seems to have devastated that settlement, and when next Midian appears in history it is as a desert horde, pouring into Palestine with innumerable camels; and, when routed and broken by Gideon, fleeing " by the way of them that dwelt in tents ' to the east of Jordan. The character of Midian we think is thus unmistakably marked. The only glimpse of their habits is found in tlie vigorous picture of tlie camp in the valley of Jez- reel, wlien the men talked together in the camp, and one told how he had dreamed that "a cake of barley- bread tumbled into the host of INIidian, and came into a tent, and smote it that it fell, and overturned it, that the tent lay along" (Judg. vii, 13).