ARABIA, a peninsula in the south-west of Asia, lying between 34° 30′ and 12° 45′ N., and 32° 30′ and 60° 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, and after a short stay sailed on to Lohaia in the north of Modern Exploration in Yemen.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 to
