The Result, However, Of His Inquiry Has Not Proved Satisfactory; For To Each Of The Neighbouring Countries.

[P.viii] certain writers have assigned towns, stations, and districts, which by others of equal authority are placed in Hedjaz.

Such confusion may partly have arisen from the different statements of the number, extent, and names of divisions comprised within the same space; this being occupied, according to European writers, by three great regions, the Stony, the Desert, and the Happy Arabia; while Oriental geographers partition it into two, five, six, seven, or more provinces, under denominations by no means corresponding in signification to the epithets above mentioned, which we have borrowed from the Greeks and Romans.

That it would be a most difficult, or scarcely possible task, to fix precisely the limits of each Arabian province, is acknowledged by that excellent geographer, D'Anville; but he seems disposed to confound the region comprising Mekka, Djidda, and Yembo, (places which, as we know, are unequivocally in Hedjaz,) with Arabia Felix. [D'Anville, Geographie Ancienne.] D'Herbelot, in one place, declares Hedjaz to be Arabia Petraea, [See the Bibliotheque Orientale in "Hegiaz ou Higiaz" - "Nom d'une province de l'Arabie, que nous appelons Pierreuse," &c. - Richardson also, in his Arabic and Persian Dictionary, explains Hijaz by "Mecca and the adjacent country, Arabia Petraea;" and Demetrias Alexandrides, who translated some portions of Abulfeda's Geography into Greek, (printed at Vienna, 1807, 8vo.) always renders Hedjaz by [Greek text] and in another he identifies it with Arabia Deserta. ["Les Provinces de Tahama et d'Iemamah sont comme au coeur du pays; celle de Hegiaz est devenue la plus celebre a cause des villes de la Mecque et de Medine, et fait avec les deux dernieres que nous avons nommees ce que nous appelons l'Arabie Deserte." - Biblioth.

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