history, I have taken the pains to form a genealogical table from their most
approved authors, to which I refer the curious.
Besides these tribes of Arabs mentioned by their own authors, who were all
descended from the race of Sem, others of them were the posterity of Ham by
his son Cush, which name is in scripture constantly given to the Arabs and
their country, though our version renders it Ethiopia; but strictly speaking,
the Cushites did not inhabit Arabia properly so called, but the banks of the
Euphrates and the Persian Gulf, whither they came form Chuzestân or Susiana,
the original settlement of their father.2 They might probably mix themselves
in process of time with the Arabs of the other race, but the eastern writers
take little or no notice of them.
The Arabians were for some centuries under the government of the
descendants of Kâhtan; Yárab, one of his sons, founding the kingdom of Yaman,
and Jorham, another of them, that of Hejâz.
The province of Yaman, or the better part of it, particularly the provinces
of Saba and Hadramaut, was governed by princes of the tribe of Hamyar, though
at length the kingdom was translated to the descendants of Cahlân, his
brother, who yet retained the title of king of Hamyar, and had all of them the
general title of Tobba, which signifies successor, and was affected to this
race of princes, as that of
11 Mirât Caïnât. 12 Vide Joseph. cont. Apion. l. i. 13 Vide
Exod. xvii. 18, &c.; I Sam. xv. 2, &c.; ibid. xxvii. 8, 9; I Chron. iv. 43.
14 R. Saad. in vers. Arab. Pentat. Gen. x. 25. Some writers make
Kahtân a descendant of Ismael, but against the current of oriental historians.
See Poc. Spec. 39. 15 An expression something like that of St.
Paul, who calls himself "an Hebrew of the Hebrews," Philip. iii. 5.
1 Poc. Spec. p. 40. 2 Vide Hyde Hist. Rel. veter. Persar. p. 37,
&c.
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