Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/642

518 before Mecca, which will bring down the introduction of the small-pox to the year 522, just 100 years before the Hegira, and both Arabian and Abyssinian accounts might be then true.

two officers who governed Yemen, and the opposite coast Azab, which, as we have above mentioned, belonged to Abyssinia, were stiled Najashi, as was the king also, and both of them were crowned with gold. I am, therefore, persuaded, this is the reason of the confusion of names we meet in Arabian manuscripts, that treat of the sovereigns of Yemen. This, moreover, is the foundation of the story found in Arabic manuscripts, that Jaffar, Mahomet's brother, fled to the Najashi, who was governor of Yemen, and was kindly treated by him, and kept there till he joined his brother at the campaign of Hybarea. Soon after his great victory over the Beni Koreish, at the last battle of Beder Hunein, Mahomet is said to have written to the same Najashi a letter of thanks, for his kind entertainment of his brother, inviting him (as a reward) to embrace his religion, which the Najashi is supposed to have immediately complied with. Now, all this is in the Arabic books, and all this is true, as far as we can conjecture from the accounts of those times, very partially writ by a set of warm-headed bigotted zealots; such as all Arabic authors {historians of the time) undoubtedly are. The error only lies in the application of this story to the Najashi, or king of Abyssinia, situated far from the scene of these actions, on high cold mountains, very unfavourable to those rites, which, in low flat and warm countries, have been temptations to slothful and inactive men to embrace the Mahometan religion.