Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/374

 358 MINAEI. marks, in direct opposition to Gosselin, that Bocliart, in placing them at Carm-l-Manazoli (1. Karn- el-Mayhsal), only 3 stations S. of Mecca, which he supposes to be the Carna or Carana of Pliny, brings them too far to the N., for that " Ptolemy places them much farther S." (Periplus, cap. ssvii. p. 363, and note 254.) But BI. Jomard holds that Wady Mhia, to the S. (?) of Mecca, cor- responds with the ancient Minaei : the distance to Aila he computes as 10^ degrees, or 294 hours (ap. Mengin. Histoire de VEgypte, cfc p. 377). Jlr. Forster assigns them a wide extent of territory in the modern provinces of Hedjaz, Nedjd, and Yemen, even to the borders of Hadramaut. " The seat of this great commercial people, who divided with the Gerraei the commerce of the peninsula (transported by D'Anville to the heart of Yemen, and by Vincent to the country of the Asp- Arabs), assuredly lay, if any rehance whatever may be placed in the position of Ptolemy, in an inland direction ESE. of Jlecca. For the Jlinaei, according to him, lay immediately S. of the " regio interior myrrifera;" and this, again, was situated due S. of the JIanitae. The Manitae being the same with the Mezeyne, this description would identify the " in- terior myrrifera" with the fruitful mountain region E. of Tuyf. and the Jlinaei, consequently, with the great A ieyhe tribe described by Burckhardt, as the most numerous of the tribes of Hedjaz, and in- habiting the rich inland country stretching eastward, under those mountains, from Lye and Koldkh to Taraba." {Arahia, vol. ii. pp. 251, 252.) He adds, in a note(*), " Its site (viz. that of the ' interior myr- rifera '), with that of its inhabitants,' the Minaei, may be determined independently, by the concurrent testimonies of Ptolemy and Pliny: the fomier places his Chargatha [XapiaQa, Pal. Xapyada], and the latter his Karriata, in conjunction with the Minaei. The town thus denominated is clearly that of Kariatain; but Kariatain is seated beneath, or rather upon, the mountains of Tayf." Having thus determined their northern border " S. of Kariatain, or in the plains below the mountain chain running ENE. from Tayf," he thus defines their southern limits. " On the S., according to Ptolemy, the Minaei ■were bounded by the Doreni and the Mokeretae. It is impossible to mistake, in the Doreni, the inhabit- ants of Zukran, or in the Mokeretae, those of Mekhi-a, two adjoining provinces, lying S. of Mecca and Tayf, and crossing the entire space between the sea and the uninhabited desert. This decisive veri- fication shuts in the ancient Jlinaei between the mountains of Zohran and MeJchi-a, and those K. of Tayf" (p. 255). " The chief towns, the territory, and the national habits of the Minaei, as described by the ancient geographers, bear a remarkable correspondence to those oi the Ataybe Arabs, the present inhabitants of this district ; and the coinci- dence of the palm -groves, and other fruit-trees of the Minaei, and their wealth in cattle, noticed by Pliny, with the excellent pasture-grounds, the great abundance of camels and sheep, possessed by the powerful tribe of Ateybe, and with the plantations for which Taraba is remarkable, that furnish all the surrounding country with dates, environed, as Burckhardt describes both it and Tayf to be, ' with palm-groves and gardens, watered by numerous rivulets,' must be allowed to corroborate, in a very remarkable manner, this verification of the ancient seats of the Minaei." (Forster, Arabia, vol. ii. pp. 254—257.) MINAEI. Mr. Forster further identifies the principal town of the Minaei (the Carman Eegia of Ptolemy) with Karn-al-Manzil, a considerable town still in beino' between Tajif&TYA. Mekka; . . . and Carnon with Karn-al-Magsal, upon the mountains S. of Tayf; which former Bochart had already identified with the Carna or Carana of Pliny. " The site of their capital, within a few miles of Wady Mina [immediately to the E. of Melclca]. suggests the not improbable derivation of their name from that famous seat of the idolatry of ancient Arabia" (p. 254,iiotef); an hypothesis in which, it has been seen, Jomard coin- cides. But, though fixing the original and principal seat of the Minaei in the S. of the Hedjaz, he thinks " it still is certain, from Pliny's statement, that this people possessed a key to the commerce of the incense country, by having obtained the command of one of the two passes into the Djebal-al-Kamur " (which is in the heart of Hadramaut) ; and he hence infers that they possessed one of the two emporiums of the trade in incense and myrrh, mentioned by Pliny, on the southern coast; "an inference which at once conducts us to Thauane or Doan [NE. of Ras Farfak'], and to the mountain pass immediately behind it" (p. 258, comp. vol. i. p. 135, 136). The arguments in proof of this position, and of the con- nection of the Minaei with the Joktanite patriarch Jerah, which cannot be considered as convincing, are fully stated and enforced by Mr. Forster with his usual ingenuity (vol. i. pp. 128 — 136); but it is an unfortunate circumstance that he has removed the central seat of this tribe, — descended, according to this hypothesis, from " the father of Yemen," — into the territoiy of Hedjaz and for Xedjd; he main- tains that, " from E. to W. the 5Iinaei stretched the entire breadth of the peninsula, their eastern frontier touching the Gen-heans, on the Persian Gulf ; while Carman Eegia, now Karn-al-Manzil, their metropolis, is seated only 21 leagues ESE. of Jlekka, in the great province of Al-Kardje or Icmama" vol. i. p. Ixviii.) The question of the position of the Minaeans has been investigated by JI. Fresnel with a widely different result. (Journal Asiatique, 3me Seri^, tome X. pp. 90—96, 176—200.) He confines them to the central part of Yemen, and denies their connection either with Wady Mina, near Mekka, or with Manah. an idol of the Houdbay- lides and the Khouzai'des, between 3fekka and Medina. He regards the name as a possible cor- ruption of Yemenaei, the first syllable being con- verted into the Greek article, in its transmutation from one language to another; but suggests also another derivation of the name from the patriarch Ayman, found in the native genealogies third in descent from Saba. In confirmation of the fonner ety- mology, he maintains that the name Fenie«, which now comprehends the eastern quarter of Southern Arabia, was formerly proper to the central portion of that province. He thinks that the capital of the Minaei — the Carna or Carana of Strabo, the Carnon of Pliny, identical, also, with the Carman Eegia of Ptolemy (to which that geographer assigns too high a latitude, as he does also the Minaei) — is to be found in the Al-Karn of Wady Boan, five or six days N.. or, according to another authority, WNW., of Mukallak. Their other town, Mariaba Baramalacum, he places in the same valley. [Ma- lUABA, 2.1 The position thus assigned to Carna in the Wady Doan, enables us to fix the extent of the territory of the Jlinaei between the Sabaeans and