Bayard Taylor - Travels in Arabia

This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler

ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY OF TRAVEL

COMPILED AND ARRANGED BY
BAYARD TAYLOR

REVISED BY
THOMAS STEVENS

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNERS SONS
1898

Copyright 1881, 1892, by
CHARLES SCRIBNERS SONS

TROW DIRECTORY

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY

NEW YORK

The continuance of Bayard Taylors Library of Travel in the popular favor is one of the accepted facts of the literary world. So much so, indeed, that a revision of his works on the part of another is to be permitted only on certain conditions of reserve, and by reason of events that have transpired since the death of the distinguished traveller.

Travellers and authors die; but the tribes, nations, and races visited by them continue on, making war or peace, changing frontiers, setting up or pulling down dynasties.

The whole political complexion of a country may be changed in a decade. Though the people of Arabia, the genuine Bedouins, are believed to have changed little or nothing in their mode of life since the days of the Shepherd Kings of Abrahams time, waves of political and religious agitation have occasionally rippled over one part or another of the ancient peninsula. Seemingly they make as little permanent impression on the undercurrent of Bedouin life, as do the waves of the sea on its immutable whole, so that the accounts of the earlier chroniclers of Arabian life and manners agree in a singular manner with the descriptions of contemporary visitors. For this reason, no less than for the respect and admiration entertained by the reviser for Mr. Taylors conscientiousness and judgment as a traveller and compiler, and his literary excellence as an author, this volume remains, practically, as fully the work of its original editor as before.

By way of bringing it up to date, however, Chapter XVII. has been added, and such slight revision of preceding chapters has been made as was found necessary, consistent with the scope and intention of the new edition.

Thomas Stevens .

Sketch of Arabia: Its Geographical Position, and Ancient History .

The Peninsula of Arabia, forming the extreme southwestern corner of Asia, is partly detached, both in a geographical and historical sense, from the remainder of the continent. Although parts of it are mentioned in the oldest historical records, and its shores were probably familiar to the earliest navigators, the greater portion of its territory has always remained almost inaccessible and unknown.

The desert, lying between Syria and the Euphrates is sometimes included by geographers as belonging to Arabia, but a line drawn from the Dead Sea to the mouth of the Euphrates (almost coinciding with the parallel of 30 N.) would more nearly represent the northern boundary of the peninsula. As the most southern point of the Arabian coast reaches the latitude of 12 40, the greater part of the entire territory, of more than one million square miles, lies within the tropics. In shape it is an irregular rhomboid, the longest diameter, from Suez to the Cape El-Had, in Oman, being 1,660, and from the Euphrates to the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, 1,400 miles.

The entire coast region of Arabia, on the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Gulfs of Oman and Persia, is, for the most part, a belt of fertile country, inhabited by a settled, semi-civilized population. Back of this belt, which varies in width from a few miles to upwards of a hundred, commences a desert table-land, occasionally intersected by mountain chains, and containing, in the interior, many fertile valleys of considerable extent, which are inhabited. Very little has been known of this great interior region until the present century.

The ancient geographers divided Arabia into three parts,Arabia Petra, or the Rocky, comprising the northwestern portion, including the Sinaitic peninsula, between the Gulfs of Suez and Akaba; Arabia Deserta, the great central desert; and Arabia Felix, the Happy, by which they appear to have designated the southwestern part, now known as Yemen. The modern Arabic geography, which has been partly adopted on our maps, is based, to some extent, on the political divisions of the country. The coast region along the Red Sea, down to a point nearly half way between Djidda and the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, and including the holy cities of Medina and Mecca, is called the Hedjaz. Yemen, the capital of which is Sana, and the chief sea-ports Mocha, Hodeida, and Loheia, embraces all the southwestern portion of the peninsula. The southern coast, although divided into various little chiefdoms, is known under the general name of Hadramaut. The kingdom of Oman has extended itself along the eastern shore, nearly to the head of the Persian Gulf. The northern oases, the seat of the powerful sect of the Wahabees, are called Nedjed; and the unknown southern interior, which is believed to be almost wholly desert, inhabited only by a few wandering Bedouins, is known as the Dahna or Akhaf.