was the more extensive of the two divisions, and comprehended all the eastern parts of this great continent; while Asia Minor included several countries in the western division, from the Bay of Issus in Cilicia, in a northern direction, to the Euxine Sea, its more western parts having been the receptacle of all the ancient emigrations from Greece, and totally peopled by Grecian colonies.

Modern Divisions.—Asia has been variously divided by geographers in modern times. Some have assigned to it three grand divisions-Northern Asia, which lies between 76° and 56° of latitude, now called Asiatic Russia and Siberia, and through which we have supposed the Asiatic migration into America by Behring's Straits to have progressed. Middle Asia, between 50° and 40° north latitude, comprehending the ancient Scythia, Asiatic Sarmatia, now called the Great Tartary, and Mongolia, described as a mere pasture land, an immense and unproductive prairie, without forests and without cultivation, the inhabitants of which, leading pastoral lives, are called Nomades, without cities or places of fixed residence, and are divided into various tribes, governed by their particular chiefs. Southern Asia—which comprehends the countries between 40° north latitude almost to the Equator, containing part of Asiatic Turkey, Persia, Arabia, Thibet, the Burman Empire, the greater part of the Chinese Empire, and Hindostan, or the British Empire in India, with the numerous islands of the Indian and Northern Pacific Oceans-is entirely different from either of the two former divisions both in soil and climate, is possessed of great agricultural advantages, the sandy deserts of Arabia and similar deserts in other countries excepted, and is admitted to be rich in the most costly and varied productions of the earth. Other geographers have divided Asia into five districts, the first, Western Asia, containing Persia, the Peninsula of Arabia, the countries under the actual or nominal dominion of Turkey, which comprehend Mesopotamia, part of Armenia, Syria,

and Palestine; Asia Minor, surrounded on the north, south, and west by the Mediterranean and the Black Seas, and the mountainous regions of Caucasus between the Black Sea and the Caspian; the second, Northern Asia, the Asiatic part of the Russian Empire, extending from the Altai Mountains, which border Mongolia, to the Arctic Ocean; the third, Eastern Asia, occupied by the Chinese Empire and Chinese Tartary; the fourth, Southern Asia, including Hindostan or British India, Afghanestan, and the tribes in the Valley of the Indus, the Kingdom of Nepaul, the Country of Bootan, the Burmese Empire, the Peninsula of Malacca, and the Kingdom of Camboja; and the fifth, Central Asia, containing Thibet, Chinese Tartary, and Independent Tartary, bounded on all sides by the Russian, Chinese, and Persian Empires, a region of elevated mountains and plains, and almost interminable wastes, of which comparatively little is known, and as little of the predatory hordes who range over them, some of whom nominally acknowledge the Chinese authority.

Ancient Empires and Cities of Asia.It has been already observed that only particular empires, countries, and cities of Asia are mentioned in the Scriptures, and these are included in Western Asia. Of the empires we have the Assyrian as the earliest on record, so called from Ashur, the son of Shem, who gave his name to the country. According to Archbishop Usher's Chronology, the As syrian Empire began in the year of the world 2737, and before the Christian era twelve hundred and eighty-seven years. Out of this empire, founded by Nimrod at Babylon, sprung the Babylonian or Chaldean, the capital of which was Babylon, and that of Assyria was Nineveh. The Empire of the Medes also sprung from the Assyrians, the Medes having thrown off the yoke of the latter, and was in turn united by Cyrus with Persia, a country which, previous to the reign of that great prince, did not contain more than a single province of the present extensive kingdom now so

called, and which continued to rule over Asia upwards of two centuries, until its power was overthrown by Alexander the Great. These are the principal empires mentioned in the Sacred Scriptures, the monarchs of which for centuries successively ruled the western part of the Asiatic continent, and carried their victorious arms on every side. The Persians are the same as Elam, which originally denoted the Elymai, or people of Elymais, in the modern Khusistan, but which was afterwards extended, and became the Hebrew term for the Persians, who were allied to the Madai, or Medes. The ancient Ashurites, or Assyrians, whose cities are supposed to be founded by the Cushites, were subsequently conquered by the Chasdim, or Chaldeans, and few traces are found of them after the destruction of Nineveh. The other nations of Asia mentioned in the Scriptures have each their appropriate designations, such as the Arphaxad, or ArphChesed, supposed to be the Chaldeansthe Lud, or Ludim, alleged by Josephus and Bochart to be the Lydians—and the Aramites, or the Proper Syrians. Respecting the cities which belonged to the empires and nations of Western Asia, such as Babylon, Nineveh, Tyre, Jerusalem, Antioch, Damascus, Samaria, &c., the reader is referred to all these under their proper heads.

But the countries of Asia specially mentioned in the Sacred Scriptures as the scenes of great events and important transactions, are Arabia, Armenia, Assyria, Babylonia, Syria, or Judea, or Palestine, Phoenicia, and Persia, although the last mentioned country is not alluded to in such direct terms as the others. Under the article ARABIA, to which the reader is referred, we entered into a general description of that singular peninsula and of its equally singular people, whose vast regions in the interior, proverbial for sterility and desolation, no civilized Europeans have hitherto penetrated, while the shores of the Hadramaut, or Southern Arabia, have chiefly been seen by voyagers. The general descriptions,

therefore, of the countries of Western Asia mentioned in the Scriptures will be viewed as farther illustrative of the more minute account of those countries in their proper alphabetical order in the present work. Those which follow, illustrative of Arabia and Armenia, the reader will subjoin to what is already said respecting them.

I. ARABIA. While the Arabians were the undisputed occupants of their own peninsula, the coast of the Gulf of Persia was lined for ages with the petty sovereignties of Arab sheiks, who, while they occupied the shores of Persia, yielded a very uncertain obedience to its monarchs. Those Arabs, who were located exactly opposite to their own country, had no particular towns or cities of importance, but lived in communities among themselves, and were generally well armed, and noted as a bold and undaunted race. They were often serviceable in cases of disputed accessions to the Persian crown, while they had piratical vessels cruizing in the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean, and the Red Sea, the crews of which were well known to be desperate and fearless adventurers. The coast of Bushire in Persia still retains a great proportion of Arab families. The Persians appear never to have obtained any kind of control over them, for it is said that while all the tribes, both in Bushire and Teheran, pay tribute, and are obliged to send a proportion of men to the service of the king of Persia, who are always ready at his summons, the Arabs and the Failee tribes are excepted. As to the Arab pirates, a predatory tribe is particularly mentioned in the Koran, whose king "forcibly seized every sound ship," and latterly the piratical Arabs were extremely numerous. "The Portugese power," says Mr Morier, "was often violated by these pirates, and in the same age the English interests in the East were so much endangered by them, that one of the Agents in Persia (who had all, indeed, successively made rep:esentations on the necessity of sending an armed force to destroy them) declared

that they were likely to become as great plagues in India as the Algerines were in Europe. Some of these ships had from thirty to forty guns; and one of their fleets, consisting of five ships, carried between them one thousand five hundred men. Within the last few years (referring to the commencement of the nineteenth century), their attacks have been almost indiscriminate, nor had they learnt to respect even the English colours. The British government, however, knowing the intimate connexion of these pirates on the coast with the Wahabees, proceeded in the suppression of the evil with cautious judgment; and when, by the extension of these outrages to themselves, they were driven to vindicate the honour of their flag, and to extirpate their enemies, they regarded all the ports which had not actually included the British within their depredations as still neutral, and endeavoured to confine their warfare to reprisals for specific acts of violence, rather than array themselves against the Wahabees, by extending the attack to those of that alliance who amid all the pirates had not yet violated the commerce of England."

Among the Arabs who are spread over extensive districts there is a great variety of physical complexion. A learned traveller well remarks, that "in proportion as people are exposed to the sun they become swarthy. The lower classes in towns are of a dusky complexion, the peasants are very dark, and some of the Bedouins, or Arabs of the Desert, are almost black." The Arabs of the Desert, between Bassora and Damascus, according to M. De Pagés, a French traveller, "run with extraordinary swiftness, have large bones, a deep brown complexion, bodies of an ordinary stature, lean, muscular, active, and vigorous. The Bedouins suffer their hair and beard to grow; and indeed among the Arabian tribes in general the beard is remarkably bushy. The Arab has large, ardent, black eyes, a long face, features high and regular; and as the result of the whole, a physiognomy peculiarly stern and

severe. The tribes who inhabit the middle of the Desert have locks somewhat crisped, extremely fine, and approaching the woolly hair of the negro." The Arabs on the coast of Yemen are of a yellow colour, bordering on brown, which is conjectured to be the natural colour of their race; but in more elevated situations they are of a lighter colour, and some of them are of what is called a fair sanguine complexion; the Arab women, according to Bruce, not being black, and some of them rather exceedingly fair. In various other districts the Arabs are of different complexions, from brown or tawny yellow to the darkest brown, approaching to black, or a clear, glossy jet-black. Mr Frazer, in his "Narrative of a Journey in Khorassan," has given a general description of this singular people, which is considered as amongst the best hitherto published. "The genuine Arabs," he says, "with some exceptions, are rather spare and active than athletic men. Those of the superior orders who came under our observation, as the sheiks and their families, bore a characteristic resemblance to each other in features. The countenance was generally long and thin; the forehead high, with a rounded protuberance near its top; the nose prominent and aquiline; the mouth and chin receding; giving to the line of the face a circular rather than a straight character; the eye deep set under the brow, dark and bright; thin and spare; deficient in muscle; their limbs were small, particularly their hands, which were sometimes even of feminine delicacy; their beards were almost of a deep black, artificially coloured, if not naturally so. A few wore them grizzled; and we observed an old man whose beard, of a milk-white colour, he had dyed yellow, which, contrasted with a singular pair of blue eyes, had a very extraordinary effect."

There is a large colony of Arabs on the south coast of Malabar in British India. They originally settled in India soon after the promulgation of the Moslem faith, for the purposes of trade, which they carried on most prosperously, and were

called by the natives Moplaymar, or Moplays. They formerly paid tribute to the East India Company, but the Rajah now pays tribute to the Company, and he exacts that of the Arabs and other tribes in his dominions. Those engaged in trade and commerce are described as quiet and industrious; but the inland Moplays, or Arabs of the interior of this colony, preserve even there the original features of their descent from Ishmael. They pretend to be soldiers by birth, and despise all industry. Their chief enjoyment is in parading up and down fully armed, each man having a firelock and at least one sword; but those who wish to be thought men of extraordinary courage carry two sabres. Every one of them stalks about with his sword drawn, and, in consequence, assassinations were at one time very frequent. The Moplays, or commercial Arabs, were very rich before they were oppressed by the celebrated Tippoo, and possessed vessels which sailed to Serrat, Mocha, Madras, and Bengal. They are rigid Mahometans, no instance being known of even one of them being converted to Christianity. Their chief priest resided at a place called Panyani, who pretended to be descended from Ali, and Fatima, the daughter of Mahomet. These descendants of Ishmael look upon themselves as of far more honourable birth than the Tartar Mussulmans from the north of Judea, who, however, retaliate on them by being quite of the contrary opinion. It is remarkable, that though the language of their original country is hardly known to any of these Arabs except to their muftis or priests, they use a written character peculiar to themselves, and totally distinct from the present Arabic, and they have never acquired the language of the country in which they have been so long settled, so as to speak it even in decent purity, but use a jargon as corrupted as what Europeans in general speak for Hindostanee. These Arabs never had any laws nor any authority, even over their own sect, except in the small district of Cananore, but were, and doubtless still are, subject to

the Hindoo chiefs in whose dominions they reside.

It is unnecessary to enumerate here the various tribes of Bedouin Arabs, who, for the most part, appear to carry on a predatory warfare against each other, robbing and pillaging in the same manner as did the feudal clans of the north and north-western districts of our own country in ancient times. The Aenese Bedouins, whom Burckhardt alleges to be the only true Bedouin nation in Syria, while the other Arab tribes in the neighbourhood have more or less degenerated in manners, are in constant motion throughout the whole year, having their summer quarters on the heights near the Syrian frontiers, and in the winter retiring into the heart of the Desert, or towards the Euphrates. "In summer," says Burckhardt, who resided a long time among them, "they encamp close to rivulets and springs, which abound near the Syrian Desert, but they seldom remain above three or four days in the same spot; as soon as their cattle have consumed the herbage near a watering place, the tribe removes in search of pasture, and the grass, again springing up, serves for a succeeding camp. The encampments vary in number of tents from eight to ten hundred." It appears that when they are few, the tents are pitched in a circle, but when numerous, they are ranged in a straight line, or rows of single tents, especially along the banks of a rivulet; but in winter, when there is no scarcity of water and pasture, the tribes spread themselves all over the plains in parties of three or four tents each. The sheik's tent is always on the western side, because the Arabs expect to meet their friends as well as their enemies invariably from the west. The covering of a tent consists of stuff made of black goats' hair, supported by poles driven into the ground, each piece stitched together being about three quarters of a yard in breadth, and is impenetrable to the heaviest rain. The tent is divided into two apartments, one for the men, and the other for the women, and their apartments are separated

by a white woollen carpet of Damascus manufacture, called kateaa, or sahhe. The apartment occupied by the men is generally covered with a good Persian or Bagdad carpet, the wheat sacks and camel-bags being piled round the middle post which supports the tent; the women's apartment is the receptacle for all the rubbish of the tent, the cooking utensils, butter and water-skins, &c., which are placed near the pole supporting the apartment, where the slave sits, and the dog is kennelled during the day. The furniture of these tents consists of various kinds of saddles for riding the camels, and other articles of harness, tanned camelskinned bags in which water is kept for the horses, goat-skins in which the camel's milk is kept, wheat sacks, leather buckets for drawing water from the deep wells, large and small copper pans for cooking, mortars in which the women beat or pound wheat, and various utensils of a similar description. Such is the mode of life to which so many allusions are made in the Scriptures, when the patriarchs, and their families and retainers, lived in tents, and when the Children of Israel, in their progress through the Arabian Wilderness, were thus domiciled, before they took possession of the country long promised to their ancestors.

The dress of the Bedouins is peculiar to Arabia, yet it does not require any minute description. The Aenese Bedouins usually walk and ride barefooted, even the richest of them, although they are partial to yellow boots and red shoes. All the Bedouins wear a turban or square kerchief of cotton, or cotton and silk, and a few of the rich sheiks wear shawls on their heads, of Damascus or Bagdad manufacture, striped white and red. Their women generally wear a wide cotton gown of a dark colour, blue, brown, or black, with a kerchief on their heads, that of young females being a red colour, and of the old females black. They are partial to wearing silver rings in their ears and noses, and they puncture their lips, and dye them blue with a liquid which they also apply to spot their foreheads.

The arms most commonly in use among the Bedouins are lances, one kind of which is made of wood brought from Gaza in Judea, and the other, which is in greater estimation, is brought from Irak and Bagdad. The Arabs throw the lance a short distance when they are pursuing a horseman whom they cannot overtake, and when they are sure of hitting, but they have various ways of using it in their predatory warfare, as occasion or necessity requires; they also carry sabres on all occasions, and a curved knife, which they call sekin. The Arabian soldiers often wear coats of mail, of which there are several sorts, and it is alleged that they have also armour which partially covers the bodies of their horses. Fire-arms are well known, yet Burckhardt says that the only guns he saw among them were matchlocks, to discharge which a man couches upon his belly, and scarcely ever misses his aim. Pistols are in use, and "the shepherds who tend flocks at a short distance from the camp are armed with short lances, and also slings, which they use dexterously in throwing stones as large as a man's fist.”

The wealth and property of the Bedouins, as of most, if not all the Arab tribes, consist chiefly in their horses and camels. No Arab family can exist with. out one camel; a man who has ten is reckoned poor; he who has thirty or forty is held to be in comfortable circumstances; and the possessor of sixty is esteemed rich. A good Arab camel is worth about ten pounds sterling. "I once," says Burckhardt, "inquired of an Arab in easy circumstances what was the amount of his yearly expenditure, and he said that in ordinary years he consumed four camel-loads of wheat, which would cost two hundred piastres; barley for his mare one hundred; clothing for his wife and children two hundred; luxuries, as coffee, kammerdin, a dried apricot jelly from Damascus, debs, a sweet jelly made of grapes, tobacco, and half a dozen of lambs, two hundred; in all, seven hundred piastres, or about L.35 or L.40 sterling. The greatest festival among the Arabs