The division of Arabia into provinces has always been rather according to physical geography than political boundaries. The earliest division of the peninsula, and in some respects the most correct, was that of the Greek and Roman writers into _Arabia Deserta_ and _Arabia Felix_. The latter epithet was perhaps only a mistaken translation of _El-Yemen_—the land on “the right hand,” that is south of Mecca, for the Orientals face east. This is contrasted with Syria which in Arabic is called “_Es-Sham_” or the land “to the left” of Mecca. The third division, _Arabia Petræa_, or “Stony Arabia,” first appears in Ptolemy and is applied to the Sinai district. He limits Arabia Deserta to the extreme northern desert and so his map of the entire peninsula bears the title of Arabia Felix. The great geographer anticipated all modern maps of Arabia by naming the regions according to the tribes that inhabit them; a much more intelligent method than the drawing of artificial lines around natural features and dubbing them with a name to suit the cartographer. The Arab geographers know nothing of this threefold division into sandy, stony, and happy-land. They divide the Island-of-the-Arabs (Jezirat-el-Arab) into five provinces.[4] The first is called _El-Yemen_ and includes Hadramaut, Mehrah, Oman, Shehr, and Nejran. The second _El-Hejaz_, on the west coast, so called because it is the barrier between Tehama and Nejd; it nearly corresponds to our Hejaz, excluding its southern portion. The third is _Tehama_, along the coast, between Yemen and Hejaz. The fourth is _Nejd_, a term loosely applied to all the interior table-lands. The fifth is called _Yemama_ or _’Arudh_ because it extends all the “wide” way between Yemen (Oman) and Nejd. It is important to distinguish between this Arabian division and that now nearly everywhere adopted on the maps of the occident; much confusion has arisen when this distinction was not made. The modern division of the peninsula into seven provinces: Hejaz, Yemen, Hadramaut, Oman, Hasa, Irak and Nejd, is according to political geography and serves all practical purposes, although it is not strictly accurate. Hejaz, the Holyland of Arabia, includes the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina. Yemen is bounded by the line of fertility on the north and east so as to include the important region of Asir. Hadramaut has no clearly defined boundaries and stretches northward to the unknown region of the Dahna. Oman is the peninsula between the southern shore of the Gulf and the Indian Ocean, while Hasa covers the entire coast district north of El-Katar peninsula (on some maps called El-Bahrein). Irak-Arabi or Irak is the northern river-country politically corresponding to what is called “Turkish-Arabia.”