Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/192

 176 ABABIA. bere, above 1000 geo^;nphical miles in a stnught lino, and the whole KE. side is little less, perhaps no less if the great carve of the Persian Golf be allowed for. The form of the peninsula has been likened above to a hatchet ; the ancients compared it also to the skin of a leopard, the »poU denoting the oases in the desert: but some take this figure to refer to the Syrian Desert, or Arabia Deserta. Structure of Surface. — The peninsula consists of an elevated table-land, which, as far as any judg- ment can be formed in our very scanty knowledge of the interior, seems to rise to about 8000 feet above tiie sea. On the N. it slopes down gradu^ly to the banks of the Euphrates. On the other sides it de- scends more or less abruptly, in a series of mountain terraces, to a flat belt of sandy ground, which runs round the whole coast from the mouth of the Tigris to the Aelanitic Gulf (Mfof Akabah) ; but with very different breadths. The interior table-land is called EUTabal, the Hills, or EUN^d, the Highlands i and the flat margin El-Gaur or El- Tehdmay the Lowlands, The latter has eveiy ap- pearance of having been raised from the bed of the sea; and the process is going on, especially on the W. coast, where both the land and the coral ree& are rising and advancing towards each other. Along the N. part of the Bed Sea coast {El He- jaz the hills come very near the sea: further S., on the coast of ^^ Yemenj the Tehdma widens, being two days' journey across near ZoAeib and Hodeida,and a day's journey at Mokhuy where the retreat of the sea is marked by the town of Muza (JfotMa), which is mentioned as a seaport in the Periplus ascribed to Arrian (c 5), but is now several miles inland. Along the SE. coos^ so far as it is knoniTi, the belt of low- land is narrow; as also on the coast of Omany except about the middle, whore it is a day's journey wide: in other parts the hills almost join the sea. Of the highland very little is known. It appears to possess no considerable rivers, and but few, com- paratively to its size, of those sheltered spots where a spring or streamlet, perennial or mtermittent, flows through a depression in the surface, protected by hills from the sands around, in which the palm tree and other plants can flourish. The well-known Greek name of sudi islands in the sea of sand, ooms or ttwisisj seems to be identical with the Arabic name Wady, which is also used, wherever the Ara- bians have settled, to denote a valley through which a stream flows. So few are these spots in the high- land that water must generally be obtained by dig- ging deep wells. The highland has its regular rainy season, from the middle of June to the end of Sep- tember. The rains fall much less frequently in the lowlands, sometimes not for years together. At other times there are slight showers in March and April, and the dew is copious even in the driest dis- tricts. As, however, the periodic rains of the high- land Ml ahw in the mountains on its margin, these mountains abound in springs, which form rivers that flow down into the thirsty soil of the Tehdma. Such rivers are for the most part ost in the sand ; but others, fifilling into natural depressions in the sur- face, form verdant wadySf especially in the S. part of the W. coast (£/- Femen), where some consider- able streams reach the sea. The fertility of these toadijs, enhanced by the contrast with the surrounding sands, together with the beauty of the overhanging terraces, enriched with aromatic plants, gave rise to the appellation of ARABIA. first, it would seem, to Femen, and then extended to the whole peninsula. (Plin. xiL 13. s. 30, foU: Strab., Herod., AgatheoL, &c. &c ; and especially the verses of Dion. Perieg. 925, foil.). Even for the former district, the tiUe of Arahy Me Blai is somewhat of a poetic fiction; and its use can only be accounted for by supposing much Oriental exa^ere- tion in the accounts given by the Arabs of their country, and no little freedom of &ncy in those who accepted them; while, in its usual application to the peninsula in general, the best parallel to Arabia FeUx may be found, — passing from one extreme to another, " from beds of ragingfire to starve m ice," and from the poetic to the prosaic, — in that dinax of all m/e^*toitf nomenclature, Boothia Felix. Indeed Oriental scholars tell us that, in the anci^t ex- ample as in the modem, the misnomer was the result of accident or euphemism; for that FeUx is onlj a mistranslation of EU Temen^ which signifies the right handy and was applied, at first, by the N. Arabs to the peninsula, in contradistinction to Syria, Esh-Sham, the lefb hand, the face being always supposed by the Oriental geographers to be dire^ed towards the East. (As8eman.j9»621 Orient, iii. 2. p. 553.) Uenco El Yemen is the Southern Land, the very name applied to it as the country of the queen of Sheha. (Matt. xii. 42. ; Saba.) But the Greeks, interpret- ing " the country of the rigJU hand^ with reference to their ideas of omens, called it the " country of good omen " (cv3afu»y), or the " blessed," and then the appellation was explained of its supposed fer- tility and wealth: the process of confusion being completed by the double meaning of the word happy. On the NE. coast, along the Gtdf of Oman, the lowlands are better water^ and v>cudjfs are more fre- quent than in any other part except ^^Femen. Two considerable rivers reach the Indian Ocean. The shore of the Persian Gulf is almost entirely desert Of navigable rivers, Arabia is entirely des- titute. Motmtaint. — The mountain range which mna from NW. to SE., parallel to the Bed Sea, may be r^arded as a continuation of the Lebanon range; and ^e chains along the other sides of the penin- sula resemble it in character. Their structure is of granite and limestone. Their gmeral height is firom 3000 to 5000 feet; the latter being the pre- vailing elevation of the range along the SE. coast: while some summits reach 6000 feet, which is the height of the three mountains that overlook the chief angular points of the peninsula ; namely, on the NW. Jebel Tibout, on the E. side of the Gulf of Akabah f Jebel Tafou, on the SW. angle (6600 feet) ; and, on the E., Jebel Akdar in the centre of Oman. Climate. — The atmosphere of Arabia is probably the driest in the world. In the Tehdma, the average temperature is very high, and the heat in summer is intense. In the lowland of Yemen Niebuhr observed the thermometer to rise as high as 98^ in August and 86^ in January ; and on the E. coast, at Mus- hat in Oman, it ranges in summer &om 92^ to 102°. On the mountain slopes the climate varies from that of the tropics to that of the S. parts of the temperate zone, according to the elevation and exposure; while in the highland the winter is comparatively cold^ and water is said to fiieeze sometimes. Every reader of poetry and travels is familiar with the pciitilential wind of the Desert, the simoom (or, more properly, sam, samum, or samiel)^ which de-
 * Happy," which the Greeks and Bomans applied