CHAPTER XII.
OF THE ARABIAN TRIBES DISPERSED THROUGH THE
NORTHERN REGIONS OF AFRICA.
^ S e c t io n I.—General Observations.
The survey of African ethnography, with reference to the
regions which lie on thé northern side of the equator, would
be incomplete without some notice of the Arabian tribes who
have now for many centuries" inhabited various countries in
Atlantica and the Sahara, as well as a great part of the .Nubian
desert.
The immigration of Arabians into Africa is generally cönsi-
dered to have commenced after the Hegira, and the conquest
of Egypt and Lybia by the Mohammedans ; but there is reason
to believe that the same people, or tribes nearly allied to
them in origin, had begun to direct their movements towards
the same quarter from much earlier times.
M. Malte-Brun has strongly censured that “ Orientalisme,”
or propensity to deduce the origin of all nations from the East,
in which, as he thought, writers on ethnography have capriciously
indulged. It must be admitted that no class of writers
have raised theories more chimerical, or on more slender
foundations, than many of those who have employed themselves
in tracing the origin of nations ( but without inquiring
how far they are justly liable to censure on the ground above
indicated, or adverting to the general question which regards
the eastern origin of mankind, I shall venture to remark th'at
early historical records testify the frequency of migrations into
Africa rather than in a contrary direction. We have few and
scarcely authentic hints of any ancient settlements of Africans
in Europe or Asia. Danaus and his daughters, Cecrops and
the Cecropidse; the black pigeons or the African priestesses
of Dodona,^-belong to mythology-; and the woolly-haired
colony of Sesostris, at Colchis* to obscure and doubtful tradition.
The most ancient relic 5 of archaeology properly so
termed, and the . oldest ethnographical work extant, by at
least one thousand years, is the Toldoth Beni-Noach, embodied
in the Book of Genesis. On this work we have two
elaborate commentaries by Bocfrart* and Michaelis,‘f' the
latter of whom treats it merely as a compendium of the historical
and geographical information that dould be collected
at the time of its composition; In this ancient document three
great divisions bfAfrican races are expressly derived from the
family of Noah, viz.-.the Mizraim, or Egyptians; the Leha-
bimfifl&Rpposed to be Lybians; and the Gush. Whether
under this fiast;name, whiclh in the time of the LXX. was
equivalents© Ethiopian, the stock or ancestry of the Negro
nations? are included, I shall not at present inquire.
The migratory movements of Semitic tribes iiito Africa appear
thus to have preceded the first dawning of history. The
oldest account expressly recording such a migration is Mane-
tho’s narrative of.the invasion of Egypt by the Arabian Shepherds.
It appears to melclear, and I have endeavoured to prove,
that Manetho connects the exode of the Beni-Israel with the
departure of the Shepherds: but even before the age of Abraham,
Egypt must have been already opened to the inwanderings
of nomadic people from Asia, otherwise the patriarch
with his horde could not have passed so .easily to the residence
of an Egyptian sovereign, who, though styled Pharaoh,
may have been one of the Shepherd-kings of Egypt, or a
native prince reigning under their sway. The establishment or
restoration of a powerful monarchy in Egypt arrested, for a
long course of time, the immigratory movement into Africa
in the same direction; but the Asiatic language and the
literature of the Axumites prove that a similar impulse still
continued in action where not resisted. For a short period in
a much later-age the kings, of Abyssinia held a doubtful as-
* Sam. Bocharti Geographia Sacra.
i* Specimen Geographic Hebrcohim Exterae. Auctore J. D. Michaelis. 4to.
Goetting.