[FN#1] In Holy Writ, As The Indigens Are Not Alluded To—Only The Noachian Race Being Described—We Find Two Divisions:

1 The children of Joktan (great grandson of Shem), Mesopotamians settled in Southern Arabia, “from Mesha (Musa or Meccah?) to Sephar” (Zafar), a “Mount of the East,”—Genesis, x. 30:

That is to say, they occupied the lands from Al-Tahamah to Mahrah. 2. The children of Ishmael, and his Egyptian wife; they peopled only the Wilderness of Paran in the Sinaitic Peninsula and the parts adjacent. Dr. Aloys Sprenger (Life of Mohammed, p. 18), throws philosophic doubt upon the Ishmaelitish descent of Mohammed, who in personal appearance was a pure Caucasian, without any mingling of Egyptian blood. And the Ishmaelitish origin of the whole Arab race is an utterly untenable theory. Years ago, our great historian sensibly remarked that “the name (Saracens), used by Ptolemy and Pliny in a more confined, by Ammianus and Procopius in a larger sense, has been derived ridiculously from Sarah the wife of Abraham.” In Gibbon’s observation, the erudite Interpreter of the One Primaeval Language,—the acute bibliologist who metamorphoses the quail of the wilderness into a “ruddy goose,”—detects “insidiousness” and “a spirit of restless and rancorous hostility” against revealed religion. He proceeds on these sound grounds to attack the accuracy, the honesty and the learning of the mighty dead. This may be Christian zeal; it is not Christian charity. Of late years it has been the fashion for every aspirant to ecclesiastical honours to deal a blow at the ghost of Gibbon. And, as has before been remarked, Mr. Foster gratuitously attacked Burckhardt, whose manes had long rested in the good-will of man. This contrasts offensively with Lord Lindsay’s happy compliment to the memory of the honest Swiss and the amiable eulogy quoted by Dr. Keith from the Quarterly (vol. xxiii.), and thus adopted as his own. It may seem folly to defend the historian of the Decline and Fall against the compiler of the Historical Geography of Arabia. But continental Orientalists have expressed their wonder at the appearance in this nineteenth century of the “Voice of Israel from Mount Sinai” and the “India in Greece”[;] they should be informed that all our Eastern students are not votaries of such obsolete vagaries. [FN#2] This is said without any theory. According to all historians of long inhabited lands, the advenae—whether migratory tribes or visitors—find indigens or [Greek]. [FN#3] They are described as having small heads, with low brows and ill-formed noses, (strongly contrasting with the Jewish feature), irregular lines, black skins, and frames for the most part frail and slender. For a physiological description of this race, I must refer my readers to the writings of Dr. Carter of Bombay, the medical officer of the Palinurus, when engaged on the Survey of Eastern Arabia. With ample means of observation he has not failed to remark the similarity between the lowest type of Badawi and the Indigens of India, as represented by the Bhils and other Jungle races.

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