Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/738

 706 T P E T watered, it lay close to the most important lines of trade. The modern pilgrim-road from Damascus to Mecca, which has taken the place of the old incense-route, passes indeed a little to the east by Ma dn. But to touch Petra involves no great detour even on this line, and in ancient times, when Gaza was the great terminus of the Arabian trade, Petra was the place where the Gaza road branched off from that to Bostra, Palmyra, and north Syria. The route from Egypt to Damascus is also commanded by Petra, and from it too there went a great route direct through the desert to the head of the Persian Gulf. Thus Petra became a centre for all the main lines of overland trade between the East and the West, and it was not till the fall of the Nabatoan kingdom that PALMYRA (q.v.) superseded it as the chief emporium of north Arabia. Many Roman and other foreign merchants were settled here even in the time of Strabo, and he describes the caravans which passed between it and Leuce Come on the Red Sea coast as comparable to armies. Petra 1 is a Greek name which cannot have been that used by the Semitic inhabitants, and from Josephus (Ant., iv. 7, 1 ; 4, 7) and the Onomastica (ed. Lag., p. 286 sq.) it may be concluded that the natives called the place Rekem (Cp&quot;i), a designation probably derived from the variegated colours of the rocks about Wady Musa, to which all travellers refer with admiration. 2 But Petra had yet another ancient name familiar from the Bible. The Biblical Sela (generally with the article J^Dfl), a city of Edom (2 Kings xiv. 7 ; Isa. xvi. 1 ; also Judges i. 36, where E.V. has &quot;the rock&quot;; perhaps also Isa. xlii. 11), appears to be identified with Petra by the LXX., and certainly is so by the Onomastica. Petra, in fact, or the &quot;rock,&quot; seems to be simply a translation of Sela, but a somewhat loose one, for the Hebrew name, corresponding to the Arabic Sal 1, is properly a hollow between rocks, just such a place as Petra is. The fortress of Edom, according to Obadiah 3, lay &quot; in the clefts of the Sela,&quot; and seemed impregnable. And that the name of Sela survived the Nabataean occupation is known from Yakut, who places a fortress SaF in Wady Musa (comp. Noldeke in Z.D.M.G., xxv. 259). Petra, therefore, was a city before theNabatasans, and, occupying one of the few cultivable spots in the dis trict, probably never wholly ceased to be inhabited. This identification disposes of another which was accepted alike by the Jewish and Christian Aramaic versions of the Old Testament, and, passing from the Aramaeans to the Arabs, has given rise to the modern names Fountain and Wady of Moses (comp. Yakut, iv. 879). According to these versions Rkem, Rkam, or more precisely Rkem of Gaia (that is, Elji), is Kadesh Barnea, where flowed the waters of Strife or &quot; well of judgment &quot; (Gen. xiv. 7 ; Num. xx. 1 sq., xxvii. 14), where Moses struck the rock. This view is ably supported by Greene (The Hebrew Migration from Egypt); others identify Kadesh with Am Kadis (Kudais) on the south border of Juda?a. Petra survived the fall of the Nabatsean kingdom, and indeed most of the buildings may be dated from the 2d and 3d centuries. It appears from coins that Hadrian took it into favour and gave it his name. But Palmyra absorbed its trade with the Persian Gulf, and long before Islam the great incense-route was deserted and left Petra, like the more southern Nabatsean city of Egra (Hijr), to fall into ruin. The ruins were an object of curiosity in the Middle Ages, and were visited by Sultan Bibars (Quatremere, I.e.). The first European to describe them was Burckhardt, and since his time they have often been visited. See the descriptions, plans, and views of Laborde and Linant, Arable Pctrte (Paris, 1830-34) ; the Due de Luynes, Voyage d exploration A la mer mortc, &c. , Paris, 1 Arabia Petraea is not properly Stony Arabia, but the Arabia of which Petra is the centre i) Kara Il^rpav Apa/3/a of Agathemerus. 2 The rock-hewn city of Rakim (Istakhri, 64 ; Geogr. d Abulf., Fr. tr., ii. 2, 5), which Schultens (Ind. Geog. in Vlt. Sal.) proposes to identify with Petra, is a different place, close to Amman (Mokaddasi, P. 175). s.a. ; Palmer, Desert of the Exodus, vol. ii., 1871 ; Stanley, Sinai and Palestine ; Guerin, Terre Sainte, 1883. (W. R. S.) PETRARCH (1304-1374). Francesco Petrarca, eminent in the history of literature both as one of the four classical Italian poets and also as the first true reviver of learning in mediaeval Europe, was born at Arezzo on 20th July 1304. His father Petracco held a post of notary in the Florentine Rolls Court of the Rifonnagioni ; but, having espoused the same cause as Dante during the quarrels of the Blacks and Whites, Petracco was expelled from Florence by that decree of 27th January 1302 which condemned the poet of the Divine Comedy to lifelong exile. With his wife he took refuge in the Ghibelline township of Arezzo ; and it was here, on the very night when his father, in company with other members of the White party, made an unsuccessful attempt to enter Florence by force, that -Francesco first saw the light. He did not remain long in his birthplace. His mother, having obtained permission to return from banishment, settled at Incisa, a little village on the Arno above Florence, in February 1305. Here Petrarch spent seven years of boyhood, acquiring that pure Tuscan idiom which afterwards he used with such con summate mastery in ode and sonnet. Here too, in 1307, his brother Gherardo was born. In 1312 Petracco set up a house for his family at Pisa ; but soon afterwards, finding no scope there for the exercise of his profession as jurist, he removed them all in 1313 to Avignon. This was a step of no small importance for the future poet -scholar. Avignon at that period still belonged to Provence, and owned King Robert of Naples as sovereign. But the popes had made it their residence after the insults offered to Boniface VIII. at Anagni in 1303. Avignon was there fore the centre of that varied society which the high pontiffs of Christendom have ever gathered round them. Nowhere else could the youth of genius who was destined to impress a cosmopolitan stamp on mediaeval culture and to begin the modern era have grown up under conditions more favourable to his task. At Incisa and at Pisa he had learned his mother -tongue. At Carpentras, under the direction of Convennole of Prato, he studied the humani ties between the years 1315 and 1319. Avignon, at a distance from the party strife and somewhat parochial politics of the Italian commonwealths, impressed his mind with an ideal of civility raised far above provincial pre judices. What Petrarch lost in depth and intensity he gained in breadth and serenity by this exile s education. That disengagement from local circumstance which marks his patriotic theories, that conception of self-culture as an end in itself which distinguishes the humanism he in augurated, were natural to a man who had no country, and who found the spiritual city of his studies and his aspira tions in all quarters of the habitable globe. Petrarch s real name, according to Tuscan usage, was Francesco di Petracco. But he altered this patronymic, for the sake of euphony, to Petrarca, proving by this slight change his emancipation from usages which, had he dwelt at Florence, would most probably have been imposed on him. It does not appear that he was attached to either his father or his mother ; and, though he loved his brother Gherardo dearly, we recognize in him that type of character for which the self-chosen ties of friendship are more en thralling than the piety of domestic affection. Petracco, who was very anxious that his eldest son should become an eminent jurist, sent him at the age of fifteen to study law at Montpellier. Like Ovid and many other poets, Petrarch felt no inclination for his father s profession. His intellect, indeed, was not incapable of understanding and admiring the majestic edifice of Roman law ; but he shrank with disgust from the illiberal technicalities of practice. There is an authentic story of Petracco s flinging