time of Solomon, was acknowledged throughout the peninsula. The people
of the north and the centre differed from this population in both race
and language, though all alike belonged to the same Semitic stock. The
Midianites on the western coast perhaps partook of the characteristics
of both. But the Ishmaelites were wholly northern; they were the kinsmen
of the Edomites and Israelites, and their language was that Aramaic
which represents a mixture of Arabic and Canaanitish elements. Wandering
tribes of savage Bedâwin pitched their tents in the desert, or robbed
their more settled neighbours, as they do to-day; these were the
Amalekites of the Old Testament, who were believed to be the first
created of mankind, and the aboriginal inhabitants of Arabia. Apart from
them, however, the peninsula was the seat of a considerable culture. The
culture had spread from the spice-bearing lands of the south, where it
had been in contact with the civilisations of Babylonia on the one side
and of Egypt on the other, and where wealthy and prosperous kingdoms had
arisen, and powerful dynasties of kings had held sway. It is to Arabia,
in all probability, that we must look for the origin of the alphabet--in
itself a proof of the culture of those who used it; and it was from
Arabia that Babylonia received that line of monarchs which first made
Babylon a capital, and was ruling there in the days of Abraham. We must
cease to regard Arabia as a land of deserts and barbarism; it was, on
the contrary, a trading centre of the ancient world, and the Moslems who
went forth from it to conquer Christendom and found empires, were but
the successors of those who, in earlier times, had exercised a profound
influence upon the destinies of the East.

[Footnote 6: 2 Sam. xvii. 27.]

[Footnote 7: Jer. xl. 14.]