Establicimientos Ultramarinos, vol. iii. Madrid, 1768. CHAPTER X. COMPARATIVE ANTHROPOLOGY (ETHNOLOGY) OF ZANZIBAR. THE ARABS. ‘Les Arabes ne sont maintenant, dans l’Afrique Orientale, que des parasites, comme l’est tout peuple exclusivement commerçant.’—M. GUILLAIN, vol. ii. part ii. chap. ii. p. 151. The Arabs upon the Island may amount to a total of 5000,[97] all Omans; and they are divided, as in their fatherland, into two great Kabilah or tribes, the Hináwi and the Gháfiri. When Malik bin Fakhm, of the Benu Hunayfah tribe, marched from his own country, Nejd, to recover Oman from the Persians under Dara, son of Bahman, son of Isfandiyar, an event popularly dated about the end of our 1st century, he was joined by some 100 Yemeni warriors who were called Benu Yemin, sons of the right hand, because they dwelt to the south or on the right hand of the Ka’abah. Their migration is attributed to the bursting of the dyke of Arim, near Mareb, the Mariaba of Ptolemy, which is the Babel-tower of Arabian history in the Days of Ignorance. The learned Dr Wetzstein (p. 104, Reisebericht über Hauran, &c. Berlin, 1860) believes this event to have taken place about the beginning of our era; most authors, however, place it at the end of the 1st or the beginning of our 2nd century. It was probably the over-populating of the land which sent forth the two great Sabæan tribes of Azud and Himyar to Bahrayn and N. Eastern Arabia; they united, and were known as the Tanukh or Confederates. The former, also called from a chief ‘Nasri,’ settled upon the Euphrates, and founded the East Tanukh kingdom, whose capital was afterwards Hira. The Himyar or Kudai originated, in the Hauran and the Belka, the West Tanukh kingdom, also termed from a chief ‘Salih.’ These men, converted to Christianity, were probably the builders of the ‘Giant cities’ of Bashan, mere provincial towns of the Greco-Roman Empire. Ta’alab (Thalaba), one of the sons of Malik bin Fakhm, is mentioned as the first ruler of East Tanukh. The extinct family of the Druze Tanukhs claimed descent from the western kingdom.