Page:An Essay on the Age and Antiquity of the Book of Nabathaean Agriculture.djvu/100

84 The perplexity which one experiences in certain chapters of Masoudi or Ibn-Abi-Oceibia, whenever the subject relates to Greece and Assyria, is scarcely less than that which “The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture” occasions. There are the same difficulties in seeking to establish the list of forty-two Babylonian kings, beginning with Nimrod, and ending with Darius, which is given by the first of these authors, as in finding the key to the history contained in the work of Kúthámí. The geography of “The Book of Nabathæan Agriculture,” which one would imagine must be more easy to settle, is not a bit less obscure. It is impossible to form equally sound deductions from such faulty records, as from faithful documents. Besides which, nearly the same effect is produced on historical facts by the poverty and scantiness of Arabic prose, as by their alphabet or proper names. Not one of the circumstances which they have handed down to us respecting Greece is