first at Dshafar (Dhu Raidan), then at Mareb, and finally at Sanaa.[466] The tribes of the high land of the interior, whom the Arabs call Neshd, _i.e._ "the high people," and certain tribes of Hidyaz, are derived by tradition from Adnan, a grandson of Ishmael. When Ibrahim (Abraham) had sent away Hagar and her son, and Hagar was about to perish in the desert, the child Ishmael struck the earth with his foot, and from it sprang the fountain of Zamzam, close to Mecca. Amalekites, in search of their lost camels, found the spring, settled down beside it, and worshipped Ishmael as the lord of the spring. Then came tribes from the South, the Dshorhomites and Katura, to the fountain; and Ishmael married the daughter of the chief of the Dshorhomites and begot Nabit (the Nebajoth) and Kaidar (the Kedarites). The Amalekites and Katura were then driven away, and the Dshorhomites remained alone in possession of the fountain of Zamzam. Kaidar's son was Adnan. From Adnan sprang the Benu Bekr, the Taghlib, the Temim, the Takif, the Gatafan, &c. If we ascend the genealogies which Arab tradition gives to the princes of the tribes sprung from Ishmael, in twenty generations, ending with Adnan, the grandson of Ishmael, we only arrive at the end of the second century B.C., even if we allow thirty years for each generation.[467] The few facts which we can make out about the religious worship of the southern Arabs (they belong almost exclusively to the period in which the Himyarites obtained the supremacy in South Arabia) exhibit a certain connection with the worship of the Babylonians; but we cannot ascertain whether this coincidence, like the close relationship of the South Arabian and Babylonian languages (p. 256), is due to original unity or later intercourse. The Byzantines tell us that the Himyarites worshipped the sun, the moon, and certain demons of the land. The tradition of the Arabs mentions Abd-Shams-Sabah as the founder of the kingdom of the Sabæans, and the name Abd-Shams signifies the servant of the sun-god, and hence in the eyes of the Arabs the worship of the sun-god must have occupied a very prominent place in the religion of the Sabæans--a fact which is confirmed by the inscriptions. They mention the sun-god (Shams, Shamas), the moon-god Al-makak, and the gods Aththor, Haubas, and Dhu Samavi.[468] The Himyarites are said to have worshipped the sun under the form of an eagle (Nasr), and the Hamdanids (who dwelt to the north of Sanaa and Mareb) under the form of a horse; a third tribe in Yemen are said to have worshipped him in the form of a lion.[469]