The following are the theoretical grounds : first, the Arabs of Jemen are derived from Qahtan, the Joktan of Gen. x. 25, whom the Arabs make the son of 'Eber (Pococke's Specimen Hist. Arab. p. 39, seq.) These form the pure Arabs. Then Ishmael intermarried with a descendant of the line of Qahtan, and became the progenitor of the tribes of Hig'az. These are the insititious Arabs. These two roots of the nation correspond with the two great dialects into which the language was once divided ; that of Jemen, under the name of the Himjarite, of which all that has come down to us (except what may have been preserved in the Ethiopic) is a few inscriptions ; and that of Hig'az, under that of the dialect of Mudhar, or, descend ing a few generations in the same line, of Quraish —the dialect of the Quran and of all their literature.
Then, Abraham sent away his sons by Keturah, and they also became the founders of Arabic tribes. Lastly, the circumstance of Esau's settling in Mount Seir, where the Idumwans descended from his loins, may be considered as a still later medium by which the idioms of Palestine and Arabia pre served their harmony. Secondly, Olaus Celsius (in his Hist. et Erudit. Arab.) cites the fact of the sons of Jacob conversing with the Ishmaelite caravan (Gen. xxxvii. 28), and that of Moses with his father-in-law the Midianite (Exod. iv. IS). To these, however, Schelling (in his Abhandl. v. a'. Gebmuch der Arab. Spraehe, p. 14) objects that they are not conclusive, as the Ishmaelites, being merchants, might have acquired the idiom of the nations they traded with, and as Moses might owe an acquaintance with Arabic to his residence in Egypt. Nevertheless, one of Celsius's inferences derives considerable probability from the only instance of mutual intelligibility which J. D. Michaelis has adduced (in his Beurtheilung der Mittel die ausgestorbene Hebr. Sprache zu verstehen, p. 156), namely, that Gideon and his servant went down by night to the camp of `Midian, Amalek, and all the Bene Quedem,' to overhear their con versation with each other, and understood what they heard (Judg. vii. 9-14). Lastly, Schultens (Oratio de Peg. Sabaor., in his Opp. .111inora) labours to shew that the visit of the queen of Sheba to Solomon is a strong proof of the degree of prox imity in which the two dialects then stood to each other. These late traces of resemblance, more over, are rendered more striking by the notice of the early diversity between Hebrew and A remote (Gen. xxxi. 47). The instance of the Ethiopian
chamberlain in Acts viii. 28, may not be con sidered an evidence, if Heinrichs, in his note ad loc. in Nov. Test. edit. Kopp., is right in asserting that he was reading the Septuagint version, and that Philip the deacon was a Hellenist.
Thus springing from the same root as the Hebrew, and possessing such traces of affinity to so late a period as the time of Solomon, this dialect was further enabled, by several circumstances in the social state of the nation, to retain its native re semblance of type until the date of the earliest extant written documents. These circumstances were, the almost insular position of the country, which prevented conquest or commerce from de basing the language of its inhabitants ; the fact that so large a portion of the nation adhered to a mode of life in which every impression was, as it were, stereotyped, and knew no variation for ages (a cause to which we may also in part ascribe the comparatively unimportant changes which the language has undergone during the 140o years in which we can follow its history); and the great and just pride which they felt in the purity of their language, which, according to a valuable testimony of Burckhardt, a competent judge of the learned as well as the living idiom, is still a characteristic of the Bedouins (Notes on the Bedouins, p. 21r). These causes preserved the language from foreign influences at a time when, as the Quran and a national literature had not yet given it its full stature, such influences would have been most able to destroy its integrity. During this interval, nevertheless, the language received a peculiarly ample development in a certain direction. The limited incidents of a desert life still allowed valour love, generosity, and satire to occupy the keen sensibilities of the chivalrous Bedouin. These feelings found their vent in ready verse and eloquent prose ; and thus, when Islam first called the Arabs into the more varied activity and more perilous collision with foreign nations, which resulted from the union of their tribes under a common interest to hold the same faith and to propagate it by the sword, the language had already received all the development which it could derive from the pre eminently creative and refining impulses of poetry and eloquence.