Chapter 13

Diodorus Siculus xxxvi. 3; Appian,Mithrid. ii. 17. 21; Vell. Paterculus ii. 18; Cicero,Verres, iii. 54,De Officiis, ii. 14,Tusc. v. 5.

AQUINAS, THOMAS[Thomas of AquinorAquino], (c.1227-1274), scholastic philosopher, known asDoctor Angelicus, Doctor Universalis, was of noble descent, and nearly allied to several of the royal houses of Europe. He was born in 1225 or 1227, at Roccasecca, the castle of his father Landulf, count of Aquino, in the territories of Naples. Having received his elementary education at the monastery of Monte Cassino, he studied for six years at the university of Naples, leaving it in his sixteenth year. While there he probably came under the influence of the Dominicans, who were doing their utmost to enlist within their ranks the ablest young scholars of the age, for in spite of the opposition of his family, which was overcome only by the intervention of Pope Innocent IV., he assumed the habit of St Dominic in his seventeenth year.

His superiors, seeing his great aptitude for theological study, sent him to the Dominican school in Cologne, where Albertus Magnus was lecturing on philosophy and theology. In 1245 Albertus was called to Paris, and there Aquinas followed him, and remained with him for three years, at the end of which he graduated as bachelor of theology. In 1248 he returned to Cologne with Albertus, and was appointed second lecturer andmagister studentium. This year may be taken as the beginning of his literary activity and public life. Before he left Paris he had thrown himself with ardour into the controversy raging between the university and the Friar-Preachers respecting the liberty of teaching, resisting both by speeches and pamphlets the authorities of the university; and when the dispute was referred to the pope, the youthful Aquinas was chosen to defend his order, which he did with such success as to overcome the arguments of Guillaume de St Amour, the champion of the university, and one of the most celebrated men of the day. In 1257, along with his friend Bonaventura, he was created doctor of theology, and began to give courses of lectures upon this subject in Paris, and also in Rome and other towns in Italy. From this time onwards his life was one of incessant toil; he was continually engaged in the active service of his order, was frequently travelling upon long and tedious journeys, and was constantly consulted on affairs of state by the reigning pontiff.

In 1263 we find him at the chapter of the Dominican order held in London. In 1268 he was lecturing now in Rome and now in Bologna, all the while engaged in the public business of the church. In 1271 he was again in Paris, lecturing to the students, managing the affairs of the church and consulted by the king, Louis VIII., his kinsman, on affairs of state. In 1272 the commands of the chief of his order and the request of King Charles brought him back to the professor’s chair at Naples. All this time he was preaching every day, writing homilies, disputations, lectures, and finding time to work hard at his great work theSumma Theologiae. Such rewards as the church could bestow had been offered to him. He refused the archbishopric of Naples and the abbacy of Monte Cassino. In January 1274 he was summoned by Pope Gregory X. to attend the council convened at Lyons, to investigate and if possible settle the differences between the Greek and Latin churches. Though suffering from illness, he at once set out on the journey; finding his strength failing on the way, he was carried to the Cistercian monastery of Fossa Nuova, in the diocese of Terracina, where, after a lingering illness of seven weeks, he died on the 7th of March 1274, Dante (Purg. xx. 69) asserts that he was poisoned by order of Charles of Anjou. Villani (ix. 218) quotes the belief, and theAnonimo Fiorentinodescribes the crime and its motive. But Muratori, reproducing the account given by one of Thomas’s friends, gives no hint of foul play. Aquinas was canonized in 1323 by Pope John XXII., and in 1567 Pius V. ranked the festival of St Thomas with those of the four great Latin fathers, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome and Gregory. No theologian save Augustine has had an equal influence on the theological thought and language of the Western Church, a fact which was strongly emphasized by Leo XIII. (q.v.) in hisEncyclicalof August 4, 1879, which directed the clergy to take the teachings of Aquinas as the basis of their theological position. In 1880 he was declared patron of all Roman Catholic educational establishments. In a monastery at Naples, near the cathedral of St Januarius, is still shown a cell in which he is said to have lived.

The writings of Thomas are of great importance for philosophy as well as for theology, for by nature and education he is the spirit of scholasticism incarnate. The principles on which his system rested were these. He held that there were two sources of knowledge—the mysteries of Christian faith and the truths of human reason. The distinction between these two was made emphatic by Aquinas, who is at pains, especially in his treatiseContra Gentiles, to make it plain that each is a distinct fountain of knowledge, but that revelation is the more important of the two. Revelation is a source of knowledge, rather than the manifestation in the world of a divine life, and its chief characteristic is that it presents men with mysteries, which are to be believed even when they cannot be understood. Revelation is not Scripture alone, for Scripture taken by itself does not correspond exactly with his description; nor is it church tradition alone, for church tradition must so far rest on Scripture. Revelation is a divine source of knowledge, of which Scripture and church tradition are the channels; and he who would rightlyunderstand theology must familiarize himself with Scripture, the teachings of the fathers, and the decisions of councils, in such a way as to be able to make part of himself, as it were, those channels along which this divine knowledge flowed. Aquinas’s conception of reason is in some way parallel with his conception of revelation. Reason is in his idea not the individual reason, but the fountain of natural truth, whose chief channels are the various systems of heathen philosophy, and more especially the thoughts of Plato and the methods of Aristotle. Reason and revelation are separate sources of knowledge; and man can put himself in possession of each, because he can bring himself into relation to the church on the one hand, and the system of philosophy, or more strictly Aristotle, on the other. The conception will be made clearer when it is remembered that Aquinas, taught by the mysterious author of the writings of the pseudo-Dionysius, who so marvellously influenced medieval writers, sometimes spoke of a natural revelation, or of reason as a source of truths in themselves mysterious, and was always accustomed to say that reason as well as revelation contained two kinds of knowledge. The first kind lay quite beyond the power of man to receive it, the second was within man’s reach. In reason, as in revelation, man can only attain to the lower kind of knowledge; there is a higher kind which we may not hope to reach.

But while reason and revelation are two distinct sources of truths, the truths are not contradictory; for in the last resort they rest ononeabsolute truth—they come from the one source of knowledge, God, the Absolute One. Hence arises the compatibility of philosophy and theology which was the fundamental axiom of scholasticism, and the possibility of a Summa Theologiae, which is a Summa Philosophiae as well. All the many writings of Thomas are preparatory to his great work theSumma Theologiae, and show us the progress of his mind training for this his life work. In theSumma Catholicae Fidei contra Gentileshe shows how a Christian theology is the sum and crown of all science. This work is in its design apologetic, and is meant to bring within the range of Christian thought all that is of value in Mahommedan science. He carefully establishes the necessity of revelation as a source of knowledge, not merely because it aids us in comprehending in a somewhat better way the truths already furnished by reason, as some of the Arabian philosophers and Maimonides had acknowledged, but because it is the absolute source of our knowledge of the mysteries of the Christian faith; and then he lays down the relations to be observed between reason and revelation, between philosophy and theology. This work,Contra Gentiles, may be taken as an elaborate exposition of the method of Aquinas. That method, however, implied a careful study and comprehension of the results which accrued to man from reason and revelation, and a thorough grasp of all that had been done by man in relation to those two sources of human knowledge; and so, in his preliminary writings, Thomas proceeds to master the two provinces. The results of revelation he found in the Holy Scriptures and in the writings of the fathers and the great theologians of the church; and his method was to proceed backwards. He began with Peter of Lombardy (who had reduced to theological order, in his famous book on theSentences, the various authoritative statements of the church upon doctrine) in hisIn Quatuor Sententiarum P. Lombardi libros. Then came his deliverances upon undecided points in theology, in hisXII. Quodlibeta Disputata, and hisQuaestiones Disputatae. HisCatena Aureanext appeared, which, under the form of a commentary on the Gospels, was really an exhaustive summary of the theological teaching of the greatest of the church fathers. This side of his preparation was finished by a close study of Scripture, the results of which are contained in his commentaries,In omnes Epistolas Dim Apostoli Expositio, hisSuper Isaiam et Jeremiam, and hisIn Psalmos. Turning now to the other side, we have evidence, not only from tradition but from his writings, that he was acquainted with Plato and the mystical Platonists; but he had the sagacity to perceive that Aristotle wasthegreat representative of philosophy, and that his writings contained the best results and method which the natural reason had as yet attained to. Accordingly Aquinas prepared himself on this side by commentaries on Aristotle’sDe Interpretatione, on hisPosterior Analytics, on theMetaphysics, thePhysics, theDe Anima, and on Aristotle’s other psychological and physical writings, each commentary having for its aim to lay hold of the material and grasp the method contained and employed in each treatise. Fortified by this exhaustive preparation, Aquinas began hisSumma Theologiae, which he intended to be the sum of all known learning, arranged according to the best method, and subordinate to the dictates of the church. Practically it came to be the theological dicta of the church, explained according to the philosophy of Aristotle and his Arabian commentators. TheSummais divided into three great parts, which shortly may be said to treat of God, Man and the God-Man. The first and the second parts are wholly the work of Aquinas, but of the third part only the first ninety quaestiones are his; the rest of it was finished in accordance with his designs. The first book, after a short introduction upon the nature of theology as understood by Aquinas, proceeds in 119 questions to discuss the nature, attributes and relations of God; and this is not done as in a modern work on theology, but the questions raised in the physics of Aristotle find a place alongside of the statements of Scripture, while all subjects in any way related to the central theme are brought into the discourse. The second part is divided into two, which are quoted asPrima SecundaeandSecunda Secundae. This second part has often been described as ethic, but this is scarcely true. The subject is man, treated as Aristotle does, according to hisτέλος, and so Aquinas discusses all the ethical, psychological and theological questions which arise; but any theological discussion upon man must be mainly ethical, and so a great proportion of the first part, and almost the whole of the second, has to do with ethical questions. In his ethical discussions (a full account of which is given underEthics) Aquinas distinguishes theological from natural virtues and vices; the theological virtues are faith, hope and charity; the natural, justice, prudence and the like. The theological virtues are founded on faith, in opposition to the natural, which are founded on reason; and as faith with Aquinas is always belief in a proposition, not trust in a personal Saviour, conformably with his idea that revelation is a new knowledge rather than a new life, the relation of unbelief to virtue is very strictly and narrowly laid down and enforced. The third part of theSummais also divided into two parts, but by accident rather than by design. Aquinas died ere he had finished his great work, and what has been added to complete the scheme is appended as aSupplementum Tertiae Partis. In this third part Aquinas discusses the person, office and work of Christ, and had begun to discuss the sacraments, when death put an end to his labours.

The purely philosophical theories of Aquinas are explained in the articleScholasticism. In connexion with the problem of universals, he held that the diversity of individuals depends on the quantitative division of matter (materia signata), and in this way he attracted the criticism of the Scotists, who pointed out that this very matter is individual and determinate, and, therefore, itself requires explanation. In general, Aquinas maintained in different senses the real existence of universalsante rem,in reandpost rem.

The best modern edition of the works of Aquinas is that prepared at the expense of Leo XIII. (Rome, 1882-1903). The Abbé Migne published a very useful edition of theSumma Theologiae, in four 8vo vols., as an appendix to hisPatrologiae Cursus Completus; English editions, J. Rickaby (London, 1872), J.M. Ashley (London, 1888). SeeActa Sanct., vii. Martii; A. Touron,La Vie de St Thomas d’Aquin, avec un exposé de sa doctrine et de ses ouvrages(Paris, 1737); Karl Werner,Der Heilige Thomas van Aquino(1858); and R.B. Vaughan,St Thomas of Aquin, his Life and Labours(London, 1872): other lives by P. Cavanagh (London, 1890); E. Desmousseaux de Giuré (Paris, 1888); M. Didot (Louvain, 1894). For the philosophy of Aquinas, see Albert Stöckl,Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, ii.; B. Hauréau,De la philosophie scolastique, vol. ii.; J. Frohschammer,Die Philos. d. Th. van A. (Leipzig, 1889); K. Prantl,Geschichte d. Logik, vol. iii.; C.M. Schneider,Natur, Vernunft, Gott(Regensburg, 1883),Das Wissen Gottes nach d. Lehre des Th. v. A. (4 vols. Regensburg, 1884-1886),Die socialistische Staatsidee beleuchtet durch Th. v. A. (Paderborn, 1894); A. Harnack,Hist, of Dogma(trans. Wm.Gilchrist, London, 1899); Ueberweg’sHistory of Philosophy, vol. i. See also H.C. O’Neill,New Things and Old in St Thomas Aquinas(1909), with biography.

(T. M. L.; J. M. M.)

AQUINO,a town and episcopal see of Campania, Italy, in the province of Caserta; it is 56 m. N.W. by rail from the town of Caserta, and 7½ m. N.W. of Cassino. Pop. (1901) 2672. The modern town, close to the ancient, is unimportant, though the canons of the cathedral have the privilege of wearing the mitre andcappa magnaat great festivals. It is close to the site of the ancient Aquinum, amunicipiumin the time of Cicero, and made a colony by the Triumviri, the birthplace of Juvenal and of the emperor Pescennius Niger. The Via Latina traversed it; one of the gates through which it passed, now called Porta S. Lorenzo, is still well preserved, and there are remains within the walls (portions of which, built of large blocks of limestone, still remain) of two (so called) temples, a basilica and an amphitheatre (see R. Delbrück inRöm. Mitteilungen, 1903, p. 143). Outside, on the south is a well-preserved triumphal arch with composite capitals, and close to it the 11th-century basilica of S. Maria Libera, a handsome building in the Romanesque style, but now roofless. Several Roman inscriptions are built into it, and many others that have been found indicate the ancient importance of the place, which, though it does not appear in early history, is vouched for by Cicero and Strabo.1A colony was planted here by the Triumviri. St Thomas Aquinas was born in the castle of Roccasecca, 5 m. N.

See E. Grossi,Aquinum(Rome, 1907).

(T. As.)

1According to H. Nissen,Ital. Landeskunde(Berlin, 1902), ii. 665, a road ran from here to Minturnae; but no traces of it are to be seen.

AQUITAINE,the name of an ancient province in France, the extent of which has varied considerably from time to time. About the time of Julius Caesar the nameAquitaniawas given to that part of Gaul lying between the Pyrenees and the Garonne, and its inhabitants were a race, or races, distinct from the Celts. The name Aquitania is probably a form of Auscetani, which in its turn is a lengthened form of Ausces, and is thus cognate with the words Basque and Wasconia,i.e.Gascony. Although many of the tribes of Aquitania submitted to Julius Caesar, it was not until about 28B.C.that the district was brought under the Roman yoke. In keeping with the Roman policy of denationalization, the term Aquitania was extended, and under Augustus it included the whole of Gaul south and west of the Loire and the Allier, and thus ceased to possess ethnographical importance. In the 3rd centuryA.D.this larger Aquitania was divided into three parts:Aquitania Prima, the eastern part of the district between the Loire and the Garonne;Aquitania Secunda, the western part of the same district; andAquitania Tertia, orNovempopulana, the region between the Garonne and the Pyrenees, or the original Aquitania. The seats of government were respectively Bourges, Bordeaux and Eauze; the province contained twenty-six cities, and was in the diocese of Vienne. Like the rest of Gaul, Aquitania absorbed a large measure of Roman civilization, and this continued to distinguish the district down to a late period. In the 5th century the Visigoths established themselves in Aquitania Secunda, and also in parts of Aquitania Prima and Novempopulana, but after the defeat of their king Alaric II. by the Franks under Clovis in 507, they were supplanted by their conquerors. Clovis and his successors extended their authority nominally to the Pyrenees, but, as Guizot has remarked, “the conquest of Aquitania by Clovis left it almost as alien to the people and king of Franks as it had formerly been.” Subsequently during the Merovingian period it was contended for by the feeble rulers of the various Frankish kingdoms, and was frequently partitioned among them; but the Aquitanians had little difficulty in effectually resisting this authority, although they did not establish themselves as a separate kingdom. About 628, indeed, they gathered around Charibert, or Haribert, a brother of the Frankish king, Dagobert I., in the hope of national independence; but after his death in 630 they returned to their former condition. But this effort, although a failure, brought about a certain measure of concord between the two principal races inhabiting the district, and so prepared the way for the stubborn resistance which, subsequently, the Aquitanians were able to offer to the Franks.

The first line of dukes began about 660 with one Felix, who, like his successor, Lupus, probably owned allegiance to the Frankish kings, and whose seat of government was Toulouse. About the end of the 7th century an adventurer named Odo, or Eudes, made himself master of this region. Attacked by the Saracens he inflicted on them a crushing defeat, but when they reappeared, he was obliged to invoke the aid of Charles Martel, who, as the price of his support, claimed and received the homage of his ally. Odo was succeeded by his son Hunald, who after carrying on a war against the Franks under Pippin the Short, retired to a convent, leaving both the kingdom and the conflict to Waifer, or Guaifer. For some years Waifer strenuously carried on an unequal struggle with the Franks, but he was assassinated in 768, and with him perished the national independence, although not the national individuality, of the Aquitanians. In 781 Charlemagne bestowed Aquitaine upon his young son, Louis, and as Louis was generally described as a king, Aquitaine is referred to during the Carolingian period as a kingdom, and not as a duchy. When Louis succeeded Charlemagne as emperor in 814, he granted Aquitaine to his son Pippin, on whose death in 838 the Aquitanians chose his son Pippin II. (d. 865) as their king. The emperor Louis I., however, opposed this arrangement and gave the kingdom to his youngest son Charles, afterwards the emperor Charles the Bald. Now followed a time of confusion and conflict which resulted eventually in the success of Charles, although from 845 to 852 Pippin was in possession of the kingdom. In 852 Pippin was imprisoned by Charles the Bald, who soon afterwards gave to the Aquitanians his own son Charles as their king. On the death of the younger Charles in 866, his brother Louis the Stammerer succeeded to the kingdom, and when, in 877, Louis became king of the Franks, Aquitaine was united to the Frankish crown.

A new period now begins in the history of Aquitaine. By a treaty made in 845 between Charles the Bald and Pippin II. the kingdom had been diminished by the loss of Poitou, Saintonge and Angoumois, which had been given to Rainulf I., count of Poitiers. Somewhat earlier than this date the title of duke of the Aquitanians had been revived, and this was now borne by Rainulf, although it was also claimed by the counts of Toulouse. The new duchy of Aquitaine, comprising the three districts already mentioned, remained in the hands of Rainulf’s successors, in spite of some trouble with their Frankish overlords, until 893 when Count Rainulf II. was poisoned by order of King Charles III. the Simple. Charles then bestowed the duchy upon William the Pious, count of Auvergne, the founder of the abbey of Cluny, who was succeeded in 918 by his nephew, Count William II., who died in 926. A succession of dukes followed, one of whom, William IV., fought against Hugh Capet, king of France, and another of whom, William V., called the Great, was able considerably to strengthen and extend his authority, although he failed in his attempt to secure the Lombard crown. William’s duchy almost reached the limits of the Roman Aquitania Prima and Secunda, but did not stretch south of the Garonne, a district which was in the possession of the Gascons. William died in 1030, and the names of William VI. (d. 1038), Odo or Eudes (d. 1039), who joined Gascony to his duchy, William VII. and William VIII. bring us down to William IX. (d. 1127), who succeeded in 1087, and made himself famous as a crusader and a troubadour. William X. (d. 1137) married his daughter Eleanor to Louis VII., king of France, and Aquitaine went as her dowry. When Eleanor was divorced from Louis and was married in 1152 to Henry II. of England the duchy passed to her new husband, who, having suppressed a revolt there, gave it to his son Richard. When Richard died in 1199, it reverted to Eleanor, and on her death five years later, was united to the English crown and henceforward followed the fortunes of the English possessions in France. Aquitaine as it came to the English kings stretched as of old from the Loire to the Pyrenees, but its extent was curtailed on thesouth-east by the wide lands of the counts of Toulouse. The name Guienne, a corruption of Aquitaine, seems to have come into use about the 10th century, and the subsequent history of Aquitaine is merged in that of Gascony (q.v.) and Guienne (q.v.).

See E. Desjardins,Géographie historique el administrative de la Gaule romaine(Paris, 1876, 93); A. Luchaire,Les Origines linguistiques de l’Aquitaine(Paris, 1877); A. Longnon,Géographie de la Gaule au VIesiècle(Paris, 1876); A. Perroud,Les Origines du premier duché d’Aquitaine(Paris, 1881); and E. Mabille,Le Royaume d’Aquitaine et ses marches sous les Carlovingiens(Paris, 1870).

ARABESQUE,a word meaning simply “Arabian,” but technically used for a certain form of decorative design in flowing lines intertwined; hence comes the more metaphorical use of this word, whether in nature or in morals, indicating a fantastic or complicated interweaving of lines against a background. In decorative design the term is historically a misnomer. It is applied to the grotesque decoration derived from Roman remains of the early time of the empire, not to any style derived from Arabian or Moorish work. Arabesque and Moresque are really distinct; the latter is from the Arabian style of ornament, developed by the Byzantine Greeks for their new masters, after the conquests of the followers of Mahomet; and the former is a term pretty well restricted to varieties of cinquecento decoration, which have nothing in common with any Arabian examples in their details, but are a development derived from Greek and Roman grotesque designs, such as we find them in the remains of ancient palaces at Rome, and in ancient houses at Pompeii. These were reproduced by Raphael and his pupils in the decoration of some of the corridors of the Loggie of the Vatican at Rome: grotesque is thus a better name for these decorations than Arabesque. This technical Arabesque, therefore, is much more ancient than any Arabian or Moorish decoration, and has really nothing in common with it except the mere symmetrical principles of its arrangement. Pliny and Vitruvius give us no name for the extravagant decorative wall-painting in vogue in their time, to which the early Italian revivers of it seem to have given the designation of grotesque, because it, was first discovered in the arched or underground chambers (grotte) of Roman ruins—as in the golden house of Nero, or the baths of Titus. What really took place in the Italian revival was in some measure a supplanting of the Arabesque for the classical grotesque, still retaining the original Arabian designation, while the genuine Arabian art, the Saracenic, was distinguished as Moresque or Moorish. So it is now the original Arabesque that is called by its specific names of Saracenic, Moorish and Alhambresque, while the term Arabesque is applied exclusively to the style developed from the debased classical grotesque of the Roman empire.

There is still much of the genuine Saracenic element in Renaissance Arabesques, especially in that selected for book-borders and for silver-work, the details of which consist largely of the conventional Saracenic foliations. But the Arabesque developed in the Italian cinquecento work repudiated all the original Arabian elements and devices, and limited itself to the manipulating of the classical elements, of which the most prominent feature is ever the floriated or foliated scroll; and it is in this cinquecento decoration, whether in sculpture or in painting, thatArabesquehas been perfected.

In the Saracenic, as the elder sister of the two styles, which was ingeniously developed by the Byzantine Greek artists for their Arabian masters in the early times of Mahommedan conquest, every natural object was proscribed; the artists were, therefore, reduced to making symmetrical designs from forms which should have no positive meaning; yet the Byzantine Greeks, who were Christians, managed to work even their own ecclesiastical symbols, in a disguised manner, into their tracery and diapers; as the lily, for instance. The cross was not so introduced; this, of course, was inadmissible; but neither was the crescent ever introduced into any of this early work in Damascus or Cairo. The crescent was itself not a Mahommedan device till after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453A.D.The crescent, as the new moon, was the symbol of Byzantium; and it was only after that capital of the Eastern empire fell into the hands of the Turks that this symbol was adopted by them. The crescent and the cross became antagonist standards, therefore, first in the 15th century. And the crescent is not an element of original Moorish decoration.

The Alhambra diapers and original Majolica (Majorca) ware afford admirable specimens of genuine Saracenic or Moorish decoration. A conventional floriage is common in these diapers; tracery also is a great feature in this work, in geometrical combinations, whether rectilinear or curvilinear; and the designs are rich in colour; idolatry was in the reproduction of natural forms, not in the fanciful combination of natural colours. These curves and angles, therefore, or interlacings, chiefly in stucco, constitute the prominent elements of an Arabian ornamental design, combining also Arabic inscriptions; composed of a mass of foliation or floral forms conventionally disguised, as the exclusion of all natural images was the fundamental principle of the style in its purity. The Alhambra displays almost endless specimens of this peculiar work, all in relief, highly coloured, and profusely enriched with gold. The mosque of Tulun, in Cairo,A.D.876, the known work of a Greek, affords the completest example of this art in its early time; and Sicily contains many remains of this same exquisite Saracenic decoration.

Such is the genuine Arabesque of the Arabs, but a very different style of design is implied by the Arabesque of the cinquecento, a purely classical ornamentation. This owes its origin to the excavation and recovery of ancient monuments, and was developed chiefly by the sculptors of the north, and the painters of central Italy; by the Lombardi of Venice, by Agostino Busti of Milan, by Bramante of Urbino, by Raphael, by Giulio Romano, and others of nearly equal merit. Very beautiful examples in sculpture of this cinquecento Arabesque are found in the churches of Venice, Verona and Brescia; in painting, the most complete specimens are those of the Vatican Loggie, and the Villa Madama at Rome and the ducal palaces at Mantua. The Vatican Arabesques, chiefly executed for Raphael by Giulio Romano, Gian Francesco Penni, and Giovanni da Udine, though beautiful as works of painting, are often very extravagant in their composition, ludicrous and sometimes aesthetically offensive; as are also many of the decorations of Pompeii. The main features of these designs are balanced scrolls in panels; or standards variously composed, but symmetrically scrolled on either side, and on the tendrils of these scrolls are suspended or placed birds and animals, human figures and chimeras, of any or all kinds, or indeed any objects that may take the fancy of the artist. The most perfect specimens of cinquecento Arabesque are certainly found in sculpture. As specimens of exquisite work may be mentioned the Martinengo tomb, in the church of the Padri Riformati at Brescia, and the façade of the church of Santa Maria del Miracoli there, by the Lombardi; and many of the carvings of the Château de Gaillon, France—all of which fairly illustrate the beauties and capabilities of the style.

See also Wornum,Analysis of Ornament(1874).

(R. N. W.)

ARABGIR,orArabkir(Byz.Arabraces), a town of Turkey in Asia in the Mamuret el-Aziz or Kharput vilayet, situated near the confluence of the eastern and western Euphrates, but some miles from the right bank of the combined streams. Pop. about 20,000, of which the larger half is Mussulman. It is connected with Sivas by achaussée, prolonged to the Euphrates. The inhabitants are enterprising and prosperous, many of them leaving their native city to push their fortunes elsewhere, while of those that remain the greater part is employed in the manufacture of silk and cotton goods, or in the production of fruit. The present town was built at a comparatively recent date; but about 2 m. north-east is the old town, now called Eski-Shehr, given (c.1021) to Senekherim of Armenia by the emperor Basil II. It contains the ruins of a castle and of several Seljuk mosques. The Armenian population suffered severely during the massacres of 1895.

(D. G. H.)

ARABIA,a peninsula in the south-west of Asia, lying between 34º 30′ and 12º 45′ N., and 32º 30′ and 60º E., is bounded W. by the Red Sea, S. by the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, and E. by the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf. Its northern or land boundary is more difficult to define; most authorities, however, agree in taking it from El Arish on the Mediterranean, along the southern border of Palestine, between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Akaba, then bending northwards along the Syrian border nearly to Tadmur, thence eastwards to the edge of the Euphrates valley near Anah, and thence south-east to the mouth of the Shat el Arab at the head of the Persian Gulf,—the boundary so defined includes the northern desert, which belongs geographically to Arabia rather than to Syria; while on the same grounds lower Mesopotamia and Irak, although occupied by an Arab population, are excluded.

In shape, the peninsula forms a rough trapezium, with its greatest length from north-west to south-east. The length of its western side from Port Said to Aden is 1500 m.; its base from the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb (or Bab al Mandab) to Ras el Had is 1300 m., its northern side from Port Said to the Euphrates 600 m.; its total area approximately 1,200,000 sq. m.

Geography

General Features.—In general terms Arabia may be described as a plateau sloping gently from south-west to north-east, and attaining its greatest elevation in the extreme south-west. The western escarpment of the plateau rises steeply from the Red Sea littoral to a height of from 4000 to 8000 ft., leaving a narrow belt of lowland rarely exceeding 30 m. in width between the shore and the foot-hills. On the north-east and east the plateau shelves gradually to the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf; only in the extreme east is this general easterly slope arrested by the lofty range of Jebel Akhdar, which from Ras Musandan to Ras el Had borders the coast of Oman.

Its chief characteristic is the bareness and aridity of its surface; one-third of the whole desert, and of the remainder only a small proportion is suited to settled life, owing to its scanty water-supply and uncertain rainfall. Its mountains are insufficient in elevation and extent to attract their full share of the monsoon rains, which fall so abundantly on the Abyssinian highlands on the other side of the Red Sea; for this reason Arabia has neither lakes nor forests to control the water-supply and prevent its too rapid dissipation, and the rivers are mere torrent beds sweeping down occasionally in heavy floods, but otherwise dry.

The country falls naturally into three main divisions, a northern, a central and a southern; the first includes the area between the Midian coast on the west and the head of the Persian Gulf on the east, a desert tract throughout, stony in the north, sandy in the south, but furnishing at certain seasons excellent pasturage; its population is almost entirely nomad and pastoral. The central zone includes Hejaz (or Hijaz), Nejd and El Hasa; much of it is a dry, stony or sandy steppe, with few wells or watering-places, and only occupied by nomad tribes; but the great wadis which intersect it contain many fertile stretches of alluvial soil, where cultivation is possible and which support a considerable settled population, with several large towns and numerous villages.

The third or southern division contains the highland plateaus of Asir and Yemen in the west, and J. Akhdar in the east, which with a temperate climate, due to their great elevation and their proximity to the sea, deserve, if any part of Arabia does, the name of Arabia Felix—the population is settled and agricultural, and the soil, wherever the rainfall is sufficient, is productive. The Batina coast of Oman, irrigated by the mountain streams of J. Akhdar, is perhaps the most fertile district in the peninsula; Hadramut, too, contains many large and prosperous villages, and the torrents from the Yemen highlands fertilize several oases in the Tehama (or Tihama) or lowlands of the western and southern coast. These favourable conditions of soil and climate, however, extend only a comparatively short distance into the interior, by far the larger part of which is covered by the great southern desert, the Dahna, or Ruba el Khali, empty as its name implies, and uninhabitable.

Exploration.—Before entering on a detailed description of the several provinces of Arabia, our sources of information will be briefly indicated. Except in the neighbourhood of Aden, no regular surveys exist, and professional work is limited to the marine surveys of the Indian government and the admiralty, which, while laying down the coast line with fair accuracy, give little or no topographical information inland. For the mapping of the whole vast interior, except in rare cases, no data exist beyond the itineraries of explorers, travelling as a rule under conditions which precluded the use of even the simplest surveying instruments. These journeys, naturally following the most frequented routes, often cover the same ground, while immense tracts, owing to their difficulty of access, remain unvisited by any European.

The region most thoroughly explored is Yemen, in the south-west corner of the peninsula, where the labours of a succession of travellers from Niebuhr in 1761 to E. Glaser and R. Manzoni in 1887 have led to a fairly complete knowledge of all that part of the province west of the capital Sana; while in 1902-1904 the operations of the Anglo-Turkish boundary commission permitted the execution of a systematic topographical survey of the British protectorate from the Red Sea to the Wadi Bana, 30 m. east of Aden. North of Yemen up to the Hejaz border the only authority is that of E.F. Jomard’s map, published in 1839, based on the information given by the French officers employed with Ibrahim Pasha’s army in Asir from 1824 to 1827, and of J. Halévy in Nejran. On the south coast expeditions have penetrated but a short distance, the most notable exceptions being those of L. Hirsch and J.T. Bent in 1887 to the Hadramut valley. S.B. Miles, J.R. Wellsted, and S.M. Zwemer have explored Oman in the extreme east; but the interior south of a line drawn from Taif to El Katr on the Persian Gulf is still virgin ground. In northern Arabia the Syrian desert and the great Nafud (Nefud) have been crossed by several travellers, though a large area remains unexplored in the north-east between Kasim and the gulf. In the centre, the journeys of W. Palgrave, C. Doughty, W. Blunt and C. Huber have done much to elucidate the main physical features of the country. Lastly, in the north-west the Sinai peninsula has been thoroughly explored, and the list of travellers who have visited the Holy Cities and traversed the main pilgrim routes through Hejaz is a fairly long one, though, owing to the difficulties peculiar to that region, the hydrography of southern Hejaz is still incompletely known.

The story of modern exploration begins with the despatch of C. Niebuhr’s mission by the Danish government in 1761. After a year spent in Egypt and the Sinai peninsula the party reached Jidda towards the end of 1762, andModern Exploration in Yemen.after a short stay sailed on to Lohaia in the north of Yemen, the exploration of which formed the principal object of the expedition; thence, travelling through the Tehama or lowlands, Niebuhr and his companions visited the towns of Bet el Fakih, Zubed and Mokha, then the great port for the coffee trade of Yemen. Continuing eastward they crossed the mountainous region and reached the highlands of Yemen at Uden, a small town and the centre of a district celebrated for its coffee. Thence proceeding eastwards to higher altitudes where coffee plantations give way to fields of wheat and barley, they reached the town of Jibla situated among a group of mountains exceeding 10,000 ft. above sea-level; and turning southwards to Taiz descended again to the Tehama via Hes and Zubed to Mokha. The mission, reduced in numbers by the death of its archaeologist, von Haven, again visited Taiz in June 1763, where after some delay permission was obtained to visit Sana, the capital of the province and the residence of the ruling sovereign or imam. The route lay by Jibla, passing the foot of the lofty Jebel Sorak, where, in spite of illness, Forskal, the botanist of the party, was able to make a last excursion; a few days later he died at Yarim. The mission continued its march, passing Dhamar, the seat of a university of the Zedi sect, then frequented by 500 students. Thence four marches, generally over a stony plateau dominated by bare, sterile mountains, brought them toSana, where they received a cordial welcome from the imam, el Mahdi Abbas.

The aspect of the city must have been nearly the same as at present; Niebuhr describes theenceinteflanked by towers, the citadel at the foot of J. Nukum which rises 1000 ft. above the valley, the fortress and palace of the imams, now replaced by the Turkish military hospital, the suburb of Bir el Azab with its scattered houses and gardens, the Jews’ quarter and the village of Rauda, a few miles to the north in a fertile, irrigated plain which Niebuhr compares to that of Damascus. After a stay of ten days at Sana the mission set out again for Mokha, travelling by what is now the main route from the capital to Hodeda, through the rich coffee-bearing district of J. Haraz, and thence southward to Mokha, where they embarked for India. During the next year three other members of the party died, leaving Niebuhr the sole survivor. Returning to Arabia a year later, he visited Oman and the shores of the Persian Gulf, and travelling from Basra through Syria and Palestine he reached Denmark in 1764 after four years’ absence.

The period was perhaps specially favourable for a scientific mission of the sort. The outburst of fanaticism which convulsed Arabia twenty years later had not then reached Yemen, and Europeans, as such, were not exposed to any special danger. The travellers were thus able to move freely and to pursue their scientific enquiries without hindrance from either people or ruler. The results published in 1772 gave for the first time a comprehensive description not only of Yemen but of all Arabia; while the parts actually visited by Niebuhr were described with a fulness and accuracy of detail which left little or nothing for his successors to discover.

C.G. Ehrenberg and W.F. Hemprich in 1825 visited the Tehama and the islands off the coast, and in 1836 P.E. Botta made an important journey in southern Yemen with a view to botanical research, but the next advanceAsir.in geographical knowledge in south Arabia was due to the French officers, M.O. Tamisier, Chedufau and Mary, belonging to the Egyptian army in Asir; another Frenchman, L. Arnaud, formerly in the Egyptian service, was the first to visit the southern Jauf and to report on the rock-cut inscriptions and ruins of Marib, though it was not till 1869 that a competentJauf and Marib.archaeologist, J. Halévy, was able to carry out any complete exploration there. Starting from Sana, Halévy went north-eastward to El Madid, a town of 5000 inhabitants and the capital of the small district of Nihm; thence crossing a plateau, where he saw the ruins of numerous crenellated towers, he reached the village of Mijzar at the foot of J. Yam, on the borders of Jauf, a vast sandy plain, extending eastwards to El Jail and El Hazm, where Halévy made his most important discoveries of Sabaean inscriptions: here he explored Main, the ancient capital of the Minaeans, Kamna on the banks of the W. Kharid, the ancient Caminacum, and Kharibat el Beda, the Nesca of Pliny, where the Sabaean army was defeated by the Romans under Aelius Gallus in 24B.C.From El Jail Halévy travelled northward, passing the oasis of Khab, and skirting the great desert, reached the fertile district of Nejran, where he found a colony of Jews, with whom he spent several weeks in the oasis of Makhlaf. An hour’s march to the east he discovered at the village of Medinat el Mahud the ruins of the Nagra metropolis of Ptolemy. In June 1870 he at last reached the goal of his journey, Marib; here he explored the ruins of Medinat an Nahas (so called from its numerous inscriptions engraved on brass plates), and two hours to the east he found the famous dam constructed by the Himyarites across the W. Shibwan, on which the water-supply of their capital depended.

One other explorer has since visited Marib, the Austrian archaeologist, E. Glaser (1855-1908), who achieved more for science in Yemen than any traveller since Niebuhr. Under Turkish protection, he visited the territory of the Hashid and Bakil tribes north-east of Sana, and though their hostile attitude compelled him to return after reaching their first important town, Khamr, he had time to reconnoitre the plateau lying between the two great wadis Kharid and Hirran, formerly covered with Himyaritic towns and villages; and to trace the course of these wadis to their junction at El Ish in the Dhu Husen country, and thence onward to the Jauf. In 1889 he succeeded, again under Turkish escort, in reaching Marib, where he obtained, during a stay of thirty days, a large number of new Himyaritic inscriptions. He was unable, however, to proceed farther east than his predecessors, and the problem of the Jauf drainage and its possible connexion with the upper part of the Hadramut valley still remains unsolved.

The earliest attempt to penetrate into the interior from the south coast was made in 1835 when Lieuts. C. Cruttenden and J.R. Wellsted of the “Palinurus,” employed on the marine survey of the Arabian coast, visited the ruinsExploration in Hadramut.of Nakb (el Hajar) in the W. Mefat. The Himyaritic inscriptions found there and at Husn Ghurab near Mukalla, were the first records discovered of ancient Arabian civilization in Hadramut. Neither of these officers was able to follow up their discoveries, but in 1843 Adolph von Wrede landed at Mukalla and, adopting the character of a pilgrim to the shrine of the prophet Hud, made his way northward across the high plateau into the W. Duwan, one of the main southern tributaries of the Hadramut valley, and pushed on to the edge of the great southern desert; on his return to the W. Duwan his disguise was detected and he was obliged to return to Mukalla. Though he did not actually enter the main Hadramut valley, which lay to the east of his track, his journey established the existence of this populous and fertile district which had been reported to the officers of the “Palinurus” as lying between the coast range and the great desert to the north. This was at last visited in 1893 by L. Hirsch under the protection of the sultan of Mukalla, the head of the Kaiti family, and practically ruler of all Hadramut, with the exception of the towns of Saiyun and Tarim, which belong to the Kathiri tribe. Starting like von Wrede from Mukalla, Hirsch first visited the W. Duwan and found ancient ruins and inscriptions near the village of Hajren; thence he proceeded north-eastward to Hauta in the main valley, where he was hospitably received by the Kaiti sultan, and sent on to his deputy at Shibam. Here he procured a Kathiri escort and pushed on through Saiyun to Tarim, the former capital. After a very brief stay, however, he was compelled by the hostility of the people to return in haste to Shibam, from which he travelled by the W. bin Ali and W. Adim back to Mukalla. J. Theodore Bent and his wife followed in the same track a few months later with a well-equipped party including a surveyor, Imam Sharif, lent by the Indian government, who made a very valuable survey of the country passed through. Both parties visited many sites where Himyaritic remains and inscriptions were found, but the hostile attitude of the natives, more particularly of the Seyyids, the religious hierarchy of Hadramut, prevented any adequate examination, and much of archaeological interest undoubtedly remains for future travellers to discover.

In Oman, where the conditions are more favourable, explorers have penetrated only a short distance from the coast. Niebuhr did not go inland from Muscat; the operations by a British Indian force on the Pirate coast in 1810 gaveExploration in Oman.no opportunities for visiting the interior, and it was not till 1835 that J.R. Wellsted, who had already tried to penetrate into Hadramut from the south, landed at Muscat with the idea of reaching it from the north-east. Sailing thence to Sur near Ras el Had, he travelled southward through the country of the Bani bu Ali to the borders of the desert, then turning north-west up the Wadi Betha through a fertile, well-watered country, running up to the southern slopes of J. Akhdar, inhabited by a friendly people who seem to have welcomed him everywhere, he visited Ibra, Semed and Nizwa at the southern foot of the mountains. Owing to the disturbed state of the country, due to the presence of raiding parties from Nejd, Wellsted was unable to carry out his original intention of exploring the country to the west, and after an excursion along the Batina coast to Sohar he returned to India.

In 1876 Colonel S.B. Miles, who had already done much toadvance geographical interests in south Arabia, continued Wellsted’s work in Oman; starting from Sohar on the Batina coast he crossed the dividing range into the Dhahira, and reached Birema, one of its principal oases. His investigations show that the Dhahira contains many settlements, with an industrious agricultural population, and that the unexplored tract extending 250 m. west to the peninsula of El Katr is a desolate gravelly steppe, shelving gradually down to the salt marshes which border the shores of the gulf.

Leaving southern Arabia, we now come to the centre and north. The first explorer to enter the sacred Hejaz with a definite scientific object was the Spaniard, Badia y Leblich, who, under the name of Ali Bey and claimingExploration in Hejaz.to be the last representative of the Abbasid Caliphs, arrived at Jidda in 1807, and performed the pilgrimage to Mecca. Besides giving to the world the first accurate description of the holy city and the Haj ceremonies, he was the first to fix the position of Mecca by astronomical observations, and to describe the physical character of its surroundings. But the true pioneer of exploration in Hejaz was J.L. Burckhardt, who had already won a reputation as the discoverer of Petra, and whose experience of travel in Arab lands and knowledge of Arab life qualified him to pass as a Moslem, even in the headquarters of Islam. Burckhardt landed in Jidda in July 1814, when Mehemet Ali had already driven the Wahhabi invaders out of Hejaz, and was preparing for his farther advance against their stronghold in Nejd. He first visited Taif at the invitation of the pasha, thence he proceeded to Mecca, where he spent three months studying every detail of the topography of the holy places, and going through all the ceremonies incumbent on a Moslem pilgrim. In January 1815 he travelled to Medina by the western or coast route, and arrived there safely but broken in health by the hardships of the journey. His illness did not, however, prevent his seeing and recording everything of interest in Medina with the same care as at Mecca, though it compelled him to cut short the further journey he had proposed to himself, and to return by Yambu and the sea to Cairo, where he died only two years later.

His striking successor, Sir Richard Burton, covered nearly the same ground thirty-eight years afterwards. He, too, travelling as a Moslem pilgrim, noted the whole ritual of the pilgrimage with the same keen observation as Burckhardt, and while amplifying somewhat the latter’s description of Medina, confirms the accuracy of his work there and at Mecca in almost every detail. Burton’s topographical descriptions are fuller, and his march to Mecca from Medina by the eastern route led him over ground not traversed by any other explorer in Hejaz: this route leads at first south-east from Medina, and then south across the lava beds of the Harra, keeping throughout its length on the high plateau which forms the borderland between Hejaz and Nejd. His original intention had been after visiting Mecca to find his way across the peninsula to Oman, but the time at his disposal (as an Indian officer on leave) was insufficient for so extended a journey; and his further contributions to Arabian geography were not made until twenty-five years later, when he was deputed by the Egyptian government to examine the reported gold deposits of Midian. Traces of ancient workings were found in several places, but the ores did not contain gold in paying quantities. Interesting archaeological discoveries were made, and a valuable topographical survey was carried out, covering the whole Midian coast from the head of the Gulf of Akaba to the mouth of the Wadi Hamd, and including both the Tehama range and the Hisma valley behind it; while the importance of the W. Hamd and the extent of the area drained by its tributaries was for the first time brought to light.

Burckhardt had hoped in 1815 that the advance of the Egyptian expedition would have given him the opportunity to see something of Nejd, but he had already left Arabia before the overthrow of the Wahhabi powerExploration in Nejd.by Ibrahim Pasha had opened Nejd to travellers from Hejaz, and though several European officers accompanied the expedition, none of them left any record of his experience. It is, however, to the Egyptian conquest that the first visit of a British traveller to Nejd is due. The Indian government, wishing to enter into relations with Ibrahim Pasha, asde factoruler of Nejd and El Hasa, with a view to putting down piracy in the Persian Gulf, which was seriously affecting Indian trade, sent a small mission under Captain G.F. Sadlier to congratulate the pasha on the success of the Egyptian arms, and no doubt with the ulterior object of obtaining a first-hand report on the real situation. On his arrival at Hofuf, Sadlier found that Ibrahim had already left Deraiya, but still hoping to intercept him before quitting Nejd, he followed up the retreating Egyptians through Yemama, and Wushm to Ras in Kasim, where he caught up the main body of Ibrahim’s army, though the pasha himself had gone on to Medina. Sadlier hesitated about going farther, but he was unable to obtain a safe conduct to Basra, or to return by the way he had come, and was compelled reluctantly to accompany the army to Medina. Here he at last met Ibrahim, but though courteously received, the interview had no results, and Sadlier soon after left for Yambu, whence he embarked for Jidda, and after another fruitless attempt to treat with Ibrahim, sailed for India. If the political results of the mission werenil, the value to geographical science was immense; for though no geographer himself, Sadlier’s route across Arabia made it possible for the first time to locate the principal places in something like their proper relative positions; incidentally, too, it showed the practicability of a considerable body of regular troops crossing the deserts of Nejd even in the months of July and August.

Sadlier’s route had left Jebel Shammar to one side; his successor, G.A. Wallin, was to make that the objective of his journey. Commissioned by Mehemet Ali to inform him about the situation in Nejd brought about by the rising power of Abdallah Ibn Rashid, Wallin left Cairo in April 1845, and crossing the pilgrim road at Ma’an, pushed on across the Syrian desert to the Wadi Sirhan and the Jauf oasis, where he halted during the hot summer months. From the wells of Shakik he crossed the waterless Nafud in four days to Jubba, and after a halt there in the nomad camps, he moved on to Hail, already a thriving town, and the capital of the Shammar state whose limits included all northern Arabia from Kasim to the Syrian border. After a stay in Hail, where he had every opportunity of observing the character of the country and its inhabitants, and the hospitality and patriarchal, if sometimes stern, justice of its chief, he travelled on to Medina and Mecca, and returned thence to Cairo to report to his patron. Early in 1848 he again returned to Arabia, avoiding the long desert journey by landing at Muwela, thence striking inland to Tebuk on the pilgrim road, and re-entering Shammar territory at the oasis of Tema, he again visited Hail; and after spending a month there travelled northwards to Kerbela and Bagdad.

The effects of the Egyptian invasion had passed away, and central Arabia had settled down again under its native rulers when W.G. Palgrave made his adventurous journey through Nejd, and published the remarkable narrativePalgrave’s journey to Nejd.which has taken its place as the classic of Arabian exploration. Like Burton he was once an officer in the Indian army, but for some time before his journey he had been connected with the Jesuit mission in Syria. By training and temperament he was better qualified to appreciate and describe the social life of the people than their physical surroundings, and if the results of his great journey are disappointing to the geographer, his account of the society of the oasis towns, and of the remarkable men who were then ruling in Hail and Riad, must always possess an absorbing interest as a portrait of Arab life in its freest development.

Following Wallin’s route across the desert by Ma’an and Jauf, Palgrave and his companion, a Syrian Christian, reached Hail in July 1862; here they were hospitably entertained by the amir Talal, nephew of the founder of the Ibn Rashid dynasty, and after some stay passed on with his countenance through Kasim to southern Nejd. Palgrave says little of the desert part of the journey or of its Bedouin inhabitants, but much of thefertility of the oases and of the civility of the townsmen; and like other travellers in Nejd he speaks with enthusiasm of its bright, exhilarating climate. At Riad, Fesal, who had been in power since the Egyptian retirement, was still reigning; and the religious tyranny of Wahhabism prevailed, in marked contrast to the liberal régime of Talal in Jebel Shammar. Still, Palgrave and his companions, though known as Christians, spent nearly two months in the capital without molestation, making short excursions in the neighbourhood, the most important of which was to El Kharfa in Aflaj, the most southerly district of Nejd. Leaving Riad, they passed through Yemama, and across a strip of sandy desert to El Hasa where Palgrave found himself in more congenial surroundings. Finally, a voyage to the Oman coast and a brief stay there brought his adventures in Arabia to a successful ending.

Charles Doughty, the next Englishman to visit northern Arabia, though he covered little new ground, saw more of the desert life, and has described it more minutely and faithfully than any other explorer. Travelling downDoughty.from Damascus in 1875 with the Haj caravan, he stopped at El Hajr, one of the pilgrim stations, with the intention of awaiting the return of the caravan and in the meantime of exploring the rock-cut tombs of Medain Salih and El Ala. Having successfully completed his investigations and sent copies of inscriptions and drawings of the tombs to Renan in Paris, he determined to push on farther into the desert. Under the protection of a sheikh of the Fukara Bedouin he wandered over the whole of the borderland between Hejaz and Nejd. Visiting Tema, where among other ancient remains he discovered the famous inscribed stone, afterwards acquired by Huber for the Louvre. Next summer he went on to Hail and thence back to Khaibar, where the negro governor and townsmen, less tolerant than his former Bedouin hosts, ill-treated him and even threatened his life. Returning to Hail in the absence of the amir, he was expelled by the governor; he succeeded, however, in finding protection at Aneza, where he spent several months, and eventually after many hardships and perils found his way to the coast at Jidda.

Three years later Mr Wilfrid and Lady Anne Blunt made their expedition to J. Shammar. In their previous travels in Syria they had gained the confidence and friendship of a young sheikh whose family, though long settled at Tadmur, came originally from Nejd, and who was anxious to renew the connexion with his kinsmen by seeking a bride among them. In his company the Blunts set out from Damascus, and travelled across the Syrian desert by the Wadi Sirhan to Jauf. Here the sheikh found some of his relations and the matrimonial alliance was soon arranged; but though the object of the journey had been attained, the Blunts were anxious to visit Hail and make the acquaintance of the amir Ibn Rashid, of whose might and generosity they daily heard from their hosts in Jauf. The long stretch of waterless desert between Jauf and J. Shammar was crossed without difficulty, and the party was welcomed by the amir and hospitably entertained for a month, after which they travelled northwards in company with the Persian pilgrim caravan returning to Kerbela and Bagdad.

In 1883 the French traveller, C. Huber, accompanied by the archaeologist, J. Euting, followed the same route from Damascus to Hail. The narrative of the last named forms a valuable supplement to that published by the Blunts,Huber.and together with Doughty’s, furnishes as complete a picture as could be wished for of the social and political life of J. Shammar, and of the general nature of the country. Huber’s journal, published after his death from his original notes, contains a mass of topographical and archaeological detail of the greatest scientific value: his routes and observations form, in fact, the first and only scientific data for the construction of the map of northern Arabia. To archaeology also his services were of equal importance, for, besides copying numerous inscriptions in the district between Hail and Tema, he succeeded in gaining possession of the since famous Tema stone, which ranks with the Moabite stone among the most valuable of Semitic inscriptions. From Hail Huber followed nearly in Doughty’s track to Aneza and thence across central Nejd to Mecca and Jidda, where he despatched his notes and copies of inscriptions. A month later, in July 1884, he was murdered by his guides a few marches north of Jidda, on his way back to Hail.

One other traveller visited Hail during the lifetime of the amir Mahommed—Baron E. Nolde—who arrived there in 1893, not long after the amir had by his victory over the combined forces of Riad and Kasim brought the whole of Nejd under his dominion. Nolde crossed the Nafud to Haiyania by a more direct track than that from Shakik to Jubba. The amir was away from his capital settling the affairs of his newly acquired territory; Nolde therefore, after a short halt at Hail, journeyed on to Ibn Rashid’s camp somewhere in the neighbourhood of Shakra. Here he was on new ground, but unfortunately he gives little or no description of his route thither, or of his journey northwards by the Persian pilgrim road, already traversed by Huber in 1881. His narrative thus, while containing much of general interest on the climate and on the animal life of northern Arabia, its horses and camels in particular, adds little to those of his predecessors as regards topographical detail.

If the journeys detailed above be traced on the map they will be found to cover the northern half of the peninsula above the line Mecca-Hofuf, with a network of routes, which, though sometimes separated by wide intervals,General results of exploration.are still close enough to ensure that no important geographical feature can have been overlooked, especially in a country whose general character varies so little over wide areas. In the southern half, on the other hand, except in Nejran and Jauf, no European traveller has penetrated 100 m. in a direct line from the coast. The vast extent of the Dahna, or great southern desert, covering perhaps 250,000 sq. m., accounts for about a third of this area, but some of the most favoured districts in Arabia—Asir and northern Yemen—remain unexplored, and the hydrography of the Dawasir basin offers some interesting problems, while a great field remains for the archaeologist in the seat of the old Sabaean kingdom from Jauf to the Hadramut valley.

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