Hated, spoken of as typical of the infernal regions, ugly as it is, Aden perhaps can claim an antiquity and an importance throughout all history unparalleled, for its size and its situation, in the annals of the world. When countries, now the centres of vast civilisations, consisted of primeval forests, inhabited by almost primeval man, and filled with wild beasts, Aden was an emporium of trade. With every possible natural disadvantage, except its harbour and its situation, it was inhabited by merchants, who collected and reshipped by vessel and by caravan the wealth of many lands. Africa, India, the Persian Gulf, poured on to the arid volcanic rock their gold and their purples, their spices and their precious stones. “Arabia, and all the princes of Kedar, they occupied with thee in lambs, and rams, and goats: in these were they thy merchants. The merchants of Sheba and Raamah, they were thy merchants: they occupied in thy fairs with chief of all spices, and with all precious stones, and gold. Haran, and Canneh, and _Eden_, the merchants of Sheba, Asshur, and Chilmad, were thy merchants.”[31] There is no doubt in the minds of competent authorities that the place here referred to as Eden is none other than Aden, while many other of the names mentioned have been identified with ruins and towns of modern Arabia; but of this more anon. Ibn Khaldun, in his geographical notes on the Yemen, writing in the eighth century A.H., mentions the extreme antiquity of Aden, speaking of it as a place of importance in the time of the Tubbas, who were the kings descended from Himyar, son of Abd esh-Shems, great-grandson of Kahtan, said to be the Joktan of the Jewish Scriptures, the founder of the oldest authentic tribes in the Yemen; for although they migrated to that country, there are no remains to be traced of the inhabitants who were there before them. Returning to more historical times, we find that during the reigns of one of the Cæsars, probably Claudius, Aden was destroyed by the Romans,[32] probably in order to divert the trade of India to the ports which Ælius Gallus had founded on the shores of the Red Sea, to which Aden proved, no doubt, a formidable rival. Later we find it conquered by the army of Constantine, and re-named Emporium Romanum. Returning once more to oriental sources, we find the place split up by the wars and factions which were so constant throughout the Yemen, and Aden several times was besieged and conquered. Most important, perhaps, of these early monarchs was the line of Hamdani princes, who, descended from the Beni Zuray, held it from about 440 A.H. with many ups and downs of fortune, until in A.H. 569 it was conquered by the troops of Turan Shah of the Ayyubite dynasty of Egypt.