ARABIA. The great southwestern penin sula of Asia, called by the inhabitants "Jazirat a d'Arah," the peninsula of Arabia ; by the Turks and Persian:. "Arabistan." It is situated in lati tude 12° 40' to 34° N., and longitude 32' 30' to (30° E. Its length from north to south is about 1500 miles, and its greatest breadth about 1200: its area is about 1,200,000 square miles (Slap: Tin-key in Asia, 1) 0). It is bounded on the north by Asiatic Turkey; on the east by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman; on the south by the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden, and on the west by the Red Sea. It is connected with Africa on the northwest. by the isthmus of Suez. Through the centre of the land. be tween Mecca and :Medina, runs the Tropic of Cancer. The name Arabia has been derived by some from 'Aruba (which means a level waste), a district in the territory of Tiliamah by others, from 'Eber, a word signifying a nomad ("wanderer"), as the primitive Arabs were such. This would connect it with the word Hebrew, which has a similar origin. Others again are inclined to derive it from the Hebrew verb `drab, to go down—that is. the region in which the sun appeared to'-set to the Semitic dwellers on the Euphrates. There is also a Hebrew word.
rabah, which means "a hart-en place," and which is occasionally employed in Scripture to denote the border land between Syria and Arabia. Ptol emy is supposed to be the author of the famous threefold division into Arabia l'ctrcra, Arabia Felix, and .1 rabic Dessert a which has been gen erally used since his time; the first included the northwest corner; the second. the west and southwest coasts; and the third, the dimly known interior. This division, however, is not recognized by the natives themselves; neither is it very accurate as at present understood, for Pet•cra was not intended to mean rocky or stony. Ptolemy formed the adjective from the flour ishing city of Petra (the capital of the kingdom of the Nabataeans), whose proper name was Thamud—that is. the rock with a single stream. The word Felix, also, arose from an incorrect translation of Yemen, which does not signify "happy," but the land lying to the right of Mecca—as Al-Sham (Syria) means the land lying to the left of the same. The divisions of the
Arab geographers are as follows: (1) Bahr-el Tar Sinai (Desert of \lount Sinai) ; (2) Hi ji: (a barrier), along the Red Sea ; (3) Ti m ah and Yemen. along the Red Sea; (4) Ha d mama, the region along the southern coast ; (5) Oman, the sultanate of Shiseat, in the ex treme east; (6) Bahrain, on the Persian Gulf; (7) El-Hasa, along the Persian Gulf ; (8) Nejd, the central highlands of Arabia.
Our knowledge of the interior of Arabia is still very imperfect in detail, but its general acteristic.s are decidedly African. The largest portion of it lies in that great desert zone which stretches from the shores of the Atlantic to those of the Northern Pacific. The interior, so far as it has yet been explored by Europeans, seems to be a great plateau, in some places reaching a height of 8000 feet. The western border crest of this plateau may be regarded as part of a mountain-chain, beginning in the north with Lebanon, and stretching south to the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb. From Bab-el Mandeb another chain runs northeast, parallel to the coast, to Oman. The elevation of the mountains in the extreme south of the peninsula is estimated at 13,000 feet. From the mountain range on the west the plateau slopes to the northeast, and forms in general a vast tract of shifting sands, interspersed here and there about the centre with various ranges of hills, which, like the shores of the peninsula, arc generally barren and uninteresting.
One of the chief characteristics in the physi cal aspect of the country is the scarcity of per manent rivers. With the exception of \laidan, at the southwestern end of the country, the streams of Arabia dry up for a considerable part of the year. Like most desert regions, Arabia has a large number of dried-up river courses, or wadies, among which the Wadi al Rumen is the longest, traversing under different names the entire country from west to east.