in Damascus, when he died of a fever in the
second Jomada of A.H. 1041, (Jan. 1632,) leaving a high reputation as
a traditionist and doctor of the Moslem law.

The introductory chapter gives a sketch of the various nations which
inhabited _Andalus_ or Spain before the Arab conquest, prefaced by
extracts from numerous writers eulogistic of a country "whose
excellences" (as Al-Makkari himself declares) "are such and so many
that they cannot easily be contained in a book ... so that one of
their wise men, who knew that the country had been called the bird's
tail, owing to the supposed resemblance of the earth to a bird with
extended wings, remarked that that bird was the peacock, the principal
beauty of which was in the tail." These panegyrics are not in all
cases exactly consistent; for while the famous geographer, Obeydullah
Al-Bekri, "compares his native country to Syria for purity of air and
water, to China for mines and precious stones, &c. &c., and to
Al-Ahwaz (a district in Persia) _for the magnitude of its
snakes_"--the Sheikh Ahmed Al-Razi (better known as the historian
Razis) praises its comparative freedom from wild beasts and reptiles.
The name _Andalus_ is derived by some authors from a great grandson of
Noah so named, who settled there soon after the deluge; but Al-Makkari
rather inclines, with Ibn Khaldun and other writers, to deduce it from
the _Andalosh,_ (Vandals,) "a tribe of barbarians," who appear to be
considered as the earliest inhabitants; but who, having incurred the
divine wrath by their wickedness and idolatry, were all cut off by a
terrible drought, which left the land for a hundred years an
uninhabited desert. A colony then arrived from Africa, under a chief
named Batrikus, eleven generations of whose descendants reigned for
one hundred and fifty-seven years; after which they were all
annihilated by the "barbarians of Rome, who invaded and conquered the
country; and it was after their king Ishban, son of Titus, that
Andalus was called Ishbaniah," (Hispania.) As Ishban is just after
said to have "plundered and demolished Ilia, which is the same as
Al-Kods the illustrious," (Jerusalem,) it is obvious that the name
must be a corruption of Vespasian, who is thus made the son instead of
the father of Titus. We are told that authors differ whether it was on
this occasion, or at the former capture of Jerusalem by Bokht-Nasser,
(Nebuchadnezzar,) at which a king of Spain named Berian was also
present,