Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/191

 ABABIA. twtwari, the bonndury towards Palestine Taried ^th the Tajrinir fortxines of the Jews and Idomeans [iDrxAEAJ: tlien, l»88mg round the S£. part of the I>nd Sea, and keeping £. of the Talle/ of the Jordan, fo as to leave to Palestine the district of Peres: then nmning along the E. foot of Antlli- bonna, or retuipg further to the £., according to the TaiTing extent assigned to CoEUS Stria ; and tam- ing eastward at about 84^ N. U^., so as to pass S. of the territory of Pfelmjra; it reached the right bank of the £uphral«s somewhere S. of Thapeacns; and fcOowed the coarse of that river to the Persian Golf, except where portions of land on the right bank, in the actnal possession of the people of Babylonia, were reckoned as belonging to that ooontzy. (Comp. Strab. x?L p. 765; PHn. Ti. 28. aw 32; PtoL t. 17.) Bat even a wider extent is often given to Arabia bothen the NE.and on the W. On the former tide, Xem^^un gives the name of Arabia to the Hsdj tract on the £. bank of the Euphrates, in Maofntamia S. of the Chaboras, or, as he calls it, Araxes (^Kkabowr) ; and certainly, according to his mmnte and lively description, this region was tho- nogblv Arabian in its physical characteristics, ani- mals, and prodncts (^Anab. L 5. § 1 ). The S. part of Mesopotamia is at present <^ed Irak-Arabi. Pliny a^ applies the name of Arabia to the part of Mesopotamia adjoining the Euphrates, so fiu* N. as to include Edessa and tlra country opposite to Comma- gene; ahnost, therefore, or qnite to the confines of Armenia; and he makes Angara the cajntol of a tribe of Anhs, called Praetavi (v. 24. f.20, 21); and when he onnes expressly to describe Arabia, he repeats his statement more distinctly, and says that Anbia descends from M. Amanns over against COida and Oanmagene (vi 28. s. 32; comp. Pint Pomp. 39; Diod. six. 94; Tac Am. ziL 12). On the west, Herodotus (iL 12) regards Syria as fbrm- ii^ the seaboard of Arabia. Damascus and its toritoiT belaqged to Arabia in the time of St Paul {Get L 17); and the whole of Palestine E. of the Jordan was frequently included under the name. Say, even on the W. side of the Red Sea, the part of E^Tpt between the margin of the Nile Valley aad the coast was caQed Arabiae Nomos, and was njcoidered by Herodotus as part of Arabia. The nrxtbead. The surface of Arabia is calculated to be about fr,ar times that of France: its greatest length from N.toS. aboot l«dOO miles; its average breadth about 90i) nuks, and its area about 1,200,000 sq. miles. The Greek and Boman writers in general divided Arabia into two ports, Arabia Desbrta (^ ffn as 'Apa^my naooely, the northern desert between Syria aoA the Eophrates, and Ababia Feltx (^ tvSalfiwy ri'a (IHod. Sic. ii 48. foil.; Strab. xvi. p. 767; Mffia, vL 8 ; Plin. vi. 28. s. 32). Bespecting the origin uC the appellation FeliZf see below (^ III). The third £viaoa, Arabia Pittraea (i? lltrpcda 'ApaSta) is fr-t distinctly mentioned by Ptolemy (v. 17. § 1). It incbded the peninsula of Sinai, between the two ^vkb of the Red Sea, and the mountain range of Unsiea (Mt. Selr), which runs from the Dead Sea to the Aelanitic Gulf (Gulf of AkcJMh); and dc- xired its name, primarily, from the city of Petka ( ^ *Ap^la fi iy Tlirpi^ Dioscor. de Mat Med. i. 91 ; i mmk r^y Tlrrpar^KpaSia, Agathem. Geogr. ii. 6), t, as is often supposed, from its physical character, ARABIA. 175 as if the ^ony or Rocky Arabia, however well the name, in this sense, would apply to a portion of it. This division is altogether unknown to the Ara- bians themselves, who confine the name of Arab- land to the peninsula itself, and assign the greater part of Petraea to Egypt, and the rest to Syria, and call the desert N. of the pcm'nsula the Syrian Desert, notwithstanding that they themseh'es are tile masters of it. III. Physical and Descriptive Geography. — Though assigned to Asia, in the division ^ the world which has always prevailed, Arabia has been often said to belong more properly to Africa, both in its physical characteristics and in its position. The remark rests on a somewhat hasty anal(^ ; what there is in it of soundness merely amounts to an illustration of the entire want of scientific classifica- tion in our division of the world. Etknograpkicdlly, Arabia belongs decidedly to Western Asia, but so do the countries round the Mediterranean, both in S. Europe and N. Africa : they all belong, in fact, to a great zone, extending NW. and SE. from India to the Atlantic N. of M. Atlas. Physically^ Arabia belongs neither to Africa nor to Asia, but to another great zone, which extends from the Atlantic S. of the Atlas through Central Africa and Central Asia; consisting of a high table-land, for the most part desert, supported on its N. and S. margins by lofty mountains; and broken by deep transverse vallies, of which the basins of the Nile, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf, are the most remarkable. Thus Arabia stands in the closest physical connection, on the one hand, with the great African Desert (&>- Aora), in which Egypt Proper is a mere chasm, and on the other hand, with the great Desert of Iran ; the continuity being broken, on the former side, by the valley of the Red Sea, and on the latter, by that of the Tigris and Euphrates and the Persian Gulf; which d^ermine the limits of the country without teparaiiny it physically from the great central desert plateau which intersects our tripartite continent. General Outline. — The outline of the country is defined by the strongly marked promontories of Po- seidonium (Has Mohammed) between the two heads of the Red Sea; Palindromus (C Bdb-el-Mandeb) on the SW., at the entrance of the Red Sea ; Syagrus or Corodamum (Ras-d-Had) on the extreme E., at the mouth of the Paragon Sinus (Gulf of Oman); and Maoela (Eas Mutendom), NW. of the former, the long tongue of hind which extends northwards from Oman, dividing the Gulf of Oman from the Persian Gulf. These headltmds mark out the coast into four parts, the first of which, along the Red Sea, forms a slightly concave waving line (neglecting of course minor irregularities) facuig somewhat W. of SW.; the second, along the EiythSraeum Mare (Gulf of Bab-elMandebf and Arabian Sea) forms an ir- regular convex line fadng the SE. generally (this side might be divided into two parts at Eas Fartak, at the mouth of the Gvlf of Bab-el- Mandeh, W. of which the aspect is somewhat S. of SE.) : the third, along the Gulf of Oman, fonns a waving concave line fiidng the NE. ; and the fourth, along the Per- sian Gulf sweeps round in a deep curve convex to the N., as far as El-Kaiif broken however by tho great tongue of land which ends in Ras Anfir; and from EUKatif it passes to the head of the Gulf in a line nearly straight, facing ilnQ NE. The la.st two portions might be included in one, a.s the NK. side of the peninsula. The SW. and SE. sides are very nearly of equal length, namely, in round num-
 * ym >i ie ty of tiie designaticn will be seen under the
 * A^a$ia), oompming the whole of the actual penin-