to form a city about forty miles to the southward
of the ruins of Babylon. Their service in the field was speedy and
vigorous; but their friendship was venal, their faith inconstant, their
enmity capricious: it was an easier task to excite than to disarm these
roving barbarians; and, in the familiar intercourse of war, they learned
to see, and to despise, the splendid weakness both of Rome and of
Persia. From Mecca to the Euphrates, the Arabian tribes [29] were
confounded by the Greeks and Latins, under the general appellation of
Saracens, [30] a name which every Christian mouth has been taught to
pronounce with terror and abhorrence.

[Footnote 21: A nameless doctor (Universal Hist. vol. xx. octavo
edition) has formally demonstrated the truth of Christianity by the
independence of the Arabs. A critic, besides the exceptions of fact,
might dispute the meaning of the text (Gen. xvi. 12,) the extent of the
application, and the foundation of the pedigree. * Note: See note 3 to
chap. xlvi. The atter point is probably the least contestable of the
three.--M.]

[Footnote 22: It was subdued, A.D. 1173, by a brother of the great
Saladin, who founded a dynasty of Curds or Ayoubites, (Guignes, Hist.
des Huns, tom. i. p. 425. D'Herbelot, p. 477.)]

[Footnote 23: By the lieutenant of Soliman I. (A.D. 1538) and Selim
II., (1568.) See Cantemir's Hist. of the Othman Empire, p. 201, 221. The
pacha, who resided at Saana, commanded twenty-one beys; but no revenue
was ever remitted to the Porte, (Marsigli, Stato Militare dell' Imperio
Ottomanno, p. 124,) and the Turks were expelled about the year 1630,
(Niebuhr, p. 167, 168.)]

[Footnote 24: Of the Roman province, under the name of Arabia and the
third Palestine, the principal cities were Bostra and Petra, which
dated their aera from the year 105, when they were subdued by Palma, a
lieutenant of Trajan, (Dion. Cassius, l. lxviii.) Petra was the capital
of the Nabathaeans; whose name is derived from the eldest of the sons
of Ismael, (Gen. xxv. 12, &c., with the Commentaries of Jerom, Le Clerc,
and Calmet.) Justinian relinquished a palm country of ten days' journey
to the south of Aelah, (Procop. de Bell. Persic. l. i. c. 19,) and the
Romans maintained a centurion and a custom-house, (Arrian in Periplo
Maris Erythraei, p. 11, in Hudson, tom. i.,) at a place (Pagus Albus,
Hawara) in the territory of Medina, (D'Anville, Memoire sur l'Egypte, p.
243.) These real possessions, and some naval