(b) Keturahilcs, the descendants of Abraham and his concubine Keturah, by whom he had six sons (Gen. xxv:2) ; Simram, Jokshan (who, like Raamah, son of Cush, was also the father of two sons, Sheba and Dedan), Medan, Midian, Jishbak, and Shuach. Among these the posterity of Mid ian became the best known. Their principal scat appears to have been in the neighborhood of the Moabites, but a branch of them must have settled in the peninsula of for Jethro, the father-in law of Moses. was a priest of Midian (Exod. ; xviii :5 ; Num. x :29). To the posterity of Shuach belonged Bildad, one of the friends of Job.
(e) Edo/ales, the descendants of Esau, who possessed Mount Seir and the adjacent region, called from them Idunuca. They and the Naba thzeans formed in later times a flourishing com mercial state, the capital of which was the remark ;Ade city called Petra.
(d) Nahorites, the descendants of Nalmr. Abra ham's brother, who seem to have peopled the land of U.:, the country of Job, and of Buz, the coun try of his friend Iaihu the Buzite, these being the names of Nailer's sons (Gen. xxii :21).
(5) Lotites are divided into: (a) Moahlies, who occupied the northern por tion of Arabia Petr.ea, as above described; and their kinsmen. the (b) Ammonites, who lived north of them, in Arabia Deserta.
Besides these, the Scriptures mention various other tribes who resided within the bounds of Arabia. hut whose descent is unknown, e. g. the Amalekitcs. the Kenites. the I lorites, the inhab itants of Maon, Ilazor, Vedan and Javan-Mensal (Ezek. :to), where the English version has 'Dan also and Javan going to and fro.' In process of time sonic of these tribes were per haps wholly extirpated (as seems to have been the case with the Amalekites), but the rest were more or less mingled together by intermarriages, by military conquests, political revolutions and other causes of which history has preserved no record ; and thus amalgamated, they became known to the rest of the world as the 'Arabs,' a people whose physical and mental characteristics are very strongly and distinctly marked. In both respects they rank very high among the nations, so much so that some have regarded them as furnishing the prototype—the primitive model form—the standard figure of the human species. (See Sayce, Races of the Old Testament.) 9. Secular History. Arabia in earliest his tory was divided into several kingdoms, of which Yemen was the chief. In the fifth century the northern Arabs overran Yemen; later, in A. D. 529, came the great Abyssinian invasion; then the era of Mohammed, 622-632, followed by the conquests of his followers, who swept over Ara bia, Palestine, Syria and the whole of Western Asia, Northern Africa and into Europe. In the
next century their power in Arabia was broken and lost by dissensions. Arabia was disorgan ized, but rearranged in 929; furnished rulers for Egypt until 1171, in the time of Saladin; in 1517 the Turkish sultan, Selim I, was invested with the Mohammedan caliphate, and Arabia became subject to, and has since continued under, the Ottoman rule.
10. Arabia and the Monuments. Assyriolo gists have collected some notices of Arabia from the cuneiform inscriptions in which the Arabs were concerned. "From these inscriptions, in teresting as they are, we learn, however, little more than the names of states and occasionally of kings, many of which offer easy Arabian etymologies. The peninsula might seem to have been occupied by a number of independent tribes, subordinate to no central authority—a state of things to which the diffi culty of communication has very frequently re duced it. Nor is much more light to be obtained from the classical authors, who, till the beginning of the third century B. C., had only vague ideas about the peninsula. Great collections of inscrip tions have, however, been made both in North and South Arabia by European scholars, especially Arnaud, Halevy and Glaser, and although many of the most remarkable of these still await publica tion, the Arabian states, of which merely the names had been recorded by Pliny and Ptolemy, and of which only a vague tradition circulated among the Arabs, have become far more familiar than formerly, and something has been learnt about their lines of kings, the extent of their ter ritory and their wars and alliances. To the Eng lish travelers Wellsted and Cruttenden belongs the merit of having first called attention to the existence of the ruined cities in South Arabia, whence the most important of these documents have been brought. Of the nations thus rescued from oblivion the most important were the Min means, of the Hebrew records, and Sableans, whose dialects differed in certain particulars, while both had more in common with Hebrew than with Arabic. A third monarchy, of which the in digenous name was Libyan, has left traces of its existence and its language in North Arabia, but far less distinct in their nature than those of The former two" (D. S. Margolionth, Hastings' Bib. Diet.). (For further information on the inhabitants of Arabia, see article on NATIONS, DISPERSION OF).