least twenty miles, and there died there from thirst thirtythree persons, and many were buried in the sand who were not quite dead, and they left only their faces uncovered.1· Afterwards we found a little mountain, near which was at well, whereat we were well pleased. We halted upon the said mountain. The next day, early in the morning, there came 24,000 Arabs, who said that we must pay for their water.2 We answered that we could not pay, for the water was given by God. They began to fight with us, saying that we had taken their water. We fortified ourselves, and made a wall of our camels," and the merchants stood within the

'After twelve days' journeying our traveller must have passed the valley of the Dead Sea proper, but being in the neighbourhood it was natural that he should refer to the Scriptural narrative of the destruction of Sodom and the other cities of the Plain. Besides which, it is now ascertained that the depression about the Dead Sea is but a section of a continuous valley, extending between Bâniâs, at the foot of Jebel eshSheikh, and the head of the Gulf of ’Akabah. True, Varthema's route, if he followed that of the Hajj at the present day, was about twenty miles to the eastward of the Wâdi 'Araba (the name which the valley takes to the south of Petra); but it is not surprising that he should have confounded therewith a dreary and difficult pass which branches off from the central chain of mountains, and which is known as the 'Akabet esh-Shâmi, for with that I am disposed to identify his "Valley of Sodom and Gomorrah." Burckhardt gives this as the twelfth day's journey of the pilgrims from Damascus, and describes it as follows: "The Hadj route, as far as Akabet Esh-Shami, is a complete desert on both sides. The mountain chain continues about ten hours to the west of the Hadj route... Here the Hadj descends a deep chasm, and it takes half an hour to reach below... The mountain consists of a red grey sandstone, which is used at Damascus for whetstones." [Was it this colour of the geological formation which Varthema's vivid or pious imagination converted into "what appeared to be blood, like red wax mixed with earth" ?]— Travels in Syria, Appendix iii.

The caravan was now in Edom, traversing a section of the route taken by the Israelites when they turned "northward" to "pass through the coast of the children of Esau," with whom they were commanded "not to meddle," but peaceably "to pass through the coast," and to "buy meat and water of them for money." (See Deut. ii. 3-6.) Payment for water is still exacted by the descendants of Esau in the same locality at the present day.

3 A prevailing custom among the Bedawîn when defending themselves

said camels, and we were constantly skirmishing, so that they kept us besieged two days and two nights, and things came at last to that state, that neither we nor they had any more water to drink. They had completely surrounded the mountain with people, saying that they would break through the caravan. Not being able to continue the fighting, our captain consulted with the Moorish merchants and we gave them (the Arabs) 1200 ducats of gold. They took the money, and then said that 10,000 ducats of gold would not pay for their water, and we knew that they wanted something else besides money. So our prudent captain arranged with the caravan, that all those men who were capable of bearing arms should not ride on the camels, and that each should prepare his arms. The morning having come, we put forward all the caravan, and we Mamelukes remained behind. We were in all three hundred persons, and we soon began to fight. One man and one lady were killed by bows on our side, and they did us no further harm. We killed of them 1600 persons. Nor is it to be wondered at that we killed so many of them: the cause was, that they were all naked and on horseback, without saddles, so that they had a difficulty in turning on their way.

against an attack. The right fore-leg is first bent at the knee, and firmly secured with the leading halter so as effectually to prevent the camel rising. The animals are then made to lie down in close contact, their mass serving as a rampart, the space between the shoulders as embrasures, and their bodies as rests for the matchlocks of the defenders.

1 Probably an exaggeration, though Strabo records a battle between the Roman army under Ælius Gallus and the Arabians of the southern part of the Hijâz, with a loss of two only of the former and ten thousand of the latter. Lib. xvi.

THE CHAPTER CONCERNING A MOUNTAIN INHABITED BY JEWS.

At the end of eight days we found a mountain which appeared to be ten or twelve miles in circumference, in which

1 This is a most interesting subject, and deserves more than a cursory notice. Our traveller describes the locality as being three days' journey from El-Medinah, which brings it to about "Hedye," given in Burckhardt's Itinerary as the twenty-fourth halt of the modern Hajj from Damascus, and four hours distant from Khaibar, "whither the people of the caravan often go to buy provisions." Travels in Syria, Appendix iii. Mons. Caussin de Perceval has collected together the various notices found in the principal Arabian historians respecting the first Jewish colony in the Hijâz, from which it will be seen that Khaibar was one of their most important settlements. According to Ibn Khaldoon, the original immigrants formed part of an army sent by Joshua against the Amâlica (Amalekites), which, after destroying that people, took possession of their country, and occupied Yathrib (El-Medînah), Khaibar, and the surrounding places.

Others, and among them the author of the Aghâni, make the original colonists to have consisted of a large body of troops which Moses, on reaching Syria, had despatched against the Amâlica, with order to exterminate them utterly; but that having spared the young son of the Amalekite king, Arcam, the Israelites refused to receive them on their return from the expedition. Whereupon they retraced their way back to the Hijâz, and finally settled at Yathrib, Khaibar, and the adjoining districts.

Caussin de Perceval, in noticing the striking resemblance which this narrative bears to the Scriptural account of the Amalekite king Agag, whose life was spared by the soldiers of Saul against the positive command of the prophet Samuel, remarks that if the Arab tradition is founded on any historical truth connecting the fact of the disobedience of the Israelitish troops with the establishment of a Jewish colony in the Hijâz, it would serve to fix the date of that emigration to the time of Saul, or four centuries after Moses.

Other Arabian historians assert that the emigration did not take place till after the fall of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, and the devastation of Judea by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar, when many Jewish families sought refuge in the Hijâz. Personal experience enables me to add that such also is the prevailing tradition among the Jews of Yemen of their original settlement in that country.

From these various accounts it is natural to infer that the Jewish

mountain there dwell four or five thousand Jews, who go naked, and are in height five or six spans, and have a fe

colony in the Hijâz was formed by several successive immigrations in very remote times, and that it received new accessions by similar immigrations of a more recent date, one of which, specially noticed by the author of the Aghani, may be referred either to the period of the reduction of Judea into a Roman province by Pompey, B.c. 64, to the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, A.D. 70, or to the cruel persecution of the Jews under Adrian, A.D. 136. It is, indeed, highly probable that on each of those occasions many fugitive Jews from Judea sought an asylum with their co-religionists in the Hijâz.

The existence of a considerable Jewish population in the district indicated by Varthema at the period of Muhammed is a well-authenticated historical fact. His cursory description of the particular locality is equally correct; and the enmity of the resident Jews towards the Muhammedans appears to have been inherited by them through many generations. Referring to that period, Caussin de Perceval says: "The Jewish race was still powerful. They possessed, between three or four days' journey from Medinah, a fertile territory, abounding in grain and date-trees, and protected by several forts, the principal of which, called El-Cammoos, was situated on a mountain difficult of access. The district occupied by these strongholds was denominated KHAIBAR, a word which Arabian authors take to signify a castle. [More probably a confederation or colony, from the Hebrew (khabar) to be confederated]. Its population was composed of different families, which had been established in the country from time immemorial. The Jews of Khaibar had manifested an active and implacable hatred towards the Prophet and his followers. United by an old alliance with their neighbours the Bedawîn descendants of Ghatafân, they laboured incessantly to stir up the hostility of that and other adjacent tribes against Muhammed."

In the month of Muharram of the seventh year of the Hijrah (12th April-12th May, A.D. 628) Muhammed led an army in person against Khaibar, and after a severe conflict, which lasted for several days, succeeded in capturing all the forts in that and the surrounding districts, and in reducing the Jews to abject submission. At first, they merely begged that their lives might be spared, promising to quit the country forthwith; but they were subsequently permitted to remain as simple farmers of the soil, binding themselves to give half of the produce to its new Mussulman proprietors. It was expressly stipulated, however, that their future expulsion should depend on the will of the Prophet.

Though it is generally believed that 'Omar, on his succession to the Khalifate A.D. 634, availed himself of this proviso to banish the Jews from the country, in order to execute an injunction said to have been

minine voice, and are more black than any other colour. They live entirely upon the flesh of sheep, and eat nothing else. They are circumcised, and confess that they are Jews; and if they can get a Moor into their hands, they skin him alive. At the foot of the said mountain we found a tank of water, which is water that falls in the rainy season. We loaded with the said water 16,000 camels, whereat the Jews were ill-pleased; and they went about that mountain like wild goats, and on no account would they descend into the plain, because they are mortal enemies of the Moors. At the foot of the mountain, by the said water, there were six or eight feet of beautiful thornbushes, in which we found two turtledoves, which circumstance appeared to us like a miracle, inasmuch as we had travelled fifteen days and given by Muhammed when dying, that two religions were not to be tolerated in Arabia; nevertheless, it is tolerably certain that they continued to occupy the neighbourhood of Khaibar in considerable numbers up to a very recent period. As late as 1762, Niebuhr was informed that that district was still inhabited by several independent Jewish tribes, who had sheikhs of their own like other Arabs. Burckhardt mentions the old colony of the Jews at Khaibar, but says that it had disappeared, though there still existed an unfounded belief at Meccah and Juddah that their descendants still existed there, strictly performing the duties of their religion. They seem, indeed, to have become extinct as a separate race, for Burton was assured that there is not a single Jewish family now in Khaibar, adding: "it is, indeed, the popular boast in El-Hejaz that, with the exception of Jeddah (and perhaps Yembo), where the Prophet never set his foot, there is not a town in the country harbouring an infidel. This has now become a point of fanatic honour; but if history may be trusted, it has become so only lately." Pilgrimage to Meccah and El-Medinah, vol. ii. p. 118, note. See also CAUSSIN DE PERCEVAL, Histoire des Arabes avant l'Islamisme, etc., vols. ii. 641-644; iii. 193-201, 444. NIEBUHR, Déscription de l'Arabie, pp. 326, 327.

Varthema evidently miscalculated the effects of distance in diminishing objects; hence, I presume, his fabulous measurement of the Jews at five or six spans in height, and his failing to see the scanty cloth round their loins, which still constitutes the only garment of the common Bedawîn of the Hijâz. As to complexion, if those seen by our traveller were like the generality of the Jews in Yemen, he aptly describes it as "more black than any other colour." In that respect they are not to be distinguished from the Arab Bedawîn.