Page:03.BCOT.KD.HistoricalBooks.B.vol.3.LaterProphets.djvu/1884

 and built in the middle of the city a castle named after him, in which a temple to the planet (kôkeb) Mushteri, the guardian-god of the city, has been erected. That this temple, which, as is well known, under Theodosius, at the same time with the temple of the sun at Ba'lbek, passed over to the Christians, was actually surrounded with a strong, fortified wall, is capable of proof even in the present day. In this tradition, which has assumed various forms, a more genuine counterpart of the biblical עוץ appears than that ‘Ais which we have characterized above as an invention of the schools, viz., an ‘Aus (Arab. ‛wṣ), father of the Adite-tribe which is said to have settled in the Damascene district under that Gêrûn, and also ancestor of the prophet Hûd, lost to the tradition, whose makâm on the mountains of Suêt rises far above Gerash a city of pillars, this true Iram dhât el-'imâd, the valley of the Jabbok and the Sawâd of Gilead. It is with good reason that we have hitherto omitted to mention the Αἰσῖται of Ptolemy v. 18 (19). The Codd have both Αἰσεῖται and Αἰσῖται; different Semitic forms (e.g., the name of the Arab. bny hays, which, according to Jâkût, once dwelt in the Harra of the Ragil) may lie at the basis of this name, only not the form עוּץ, which ought to be Οὐσῖται, or at least Αὐσῖται (which no Cod. reads). As to the abodes of the Αἰσῖται, Ptolemy distributes them under nine greater races or groups of races, which in his time inhabited the Syrian steppe. Three of these had their settlements in the eastern half of the Syrian steppe towards the Euphrates of on its western banks: the Καυχαβηνοί in the north, the Αἰσῖται in the middle, and the Ὀρχηνοί in the south. According to this the Αἰσῖται would have been about between Hît and Kûfa, or in that district which is called by the natives Ard el-Wudjan, and in which just that race of the Chaldaeans might have dwelt that plundered Job's camels.