place, but also bears a strong resemblance to its original name. This is, however, merely a conjecture. Although Saba seems in the days of the Sabæans to have been a more important place than Sanaa, there is little reason to doubt that the latter was in existence; and amongst other authorities Ibn Khaldun states that Sanaa was the seat of the Tubbas or Himyaric kings for centuries before the time of Islam. This alone, apart from the traditions of far greater antiquity, of which we have no reason to doubt the truth, shows that probably two thousand years ago the city of Sanaa was a flourishing community, the seat of the government of powerful kings, who were living in a state of civilisation and culture. But the question of the antiquity of Sanaa is not one that can be entered into at any length here, and interesting as is the subject, space does not allow of carrying it further. There are one or two episodes in the history of Sanaa that cannot be passed over without some slight mention. The first is the erecting there of a Christian church by Abrahá el-Ashram, Viceroy of the Yemen, under the Abyssinian King Aryat, for the building of which the Emperor of Rome is said to have supplied marble and workmen. Abrahá, who was a fanatical Christian, hoped by the erection of this wonderful structure, of which unfortunately we have but few details—and such as do exist are absurd—to change the goal of pilgrimage from the Kaabah at Mecca, which, it must be remembered, was an object of veneration long before the time of Mahammed, to Sanaa. Failing to entice the Arabs, he attempted by force to bring them to his church, which eventually led to his famous attack upon Mecca in 570 A.D., and in the total destruction of his army by pebbles dropped from the claws and beaks of birds.[44] At the time of the introduction of Islam into the Yemen, we find the government in the hands of Budhan, or Budzan, the Persian Viceroy, who, however, embraced the new religion, and was confirmed by Mahammed as Governor of the Yemen—a post he held until he died. Within a year or two of the death of Mahammed himself, Islam was firmly grafted in the country, owing, it must be added, to the indomitable courage and energy of Mohajir, who, on his triumphal march to the Hadramaut, secured the leaders of the party dissentient to the rule of the then Caliph Abou Bekr, and, sending them prisoners to Mecca, planted the Caliph’s rule firmly in Sanaa. Although the Christians of Nejrán continued such for a period, the enthusiasm of the people for Islam swept them along in its tide, and idolatry and Christianity soon became extinct in the Yemen—the third Caliph, Othman, destroying almost the last vestige of the former by razing the temple of Zuhrah at Ghumdan, the remains of which and of the Christian church of Abrahá are visible to-day in a heap of ruins at and near Sanaa respectively.