ABSTRACT
WITH the Sab;;eans Arabian history in the proper sense may be said to begin, but as a preliminary step we must take
account of certain races which figure more or less prominently in legend, and are considered by Moslem chroniclers to have been the original
inhabitants of the country. Among these are the peoples of 'Ad and Thamud, which are constantly held up in the Koran as terrible examples of the pride that goeth before destruction. The home of the 'Adites was in I:IaQramawt, the province adjoining Yemen, on the borders of the desert named .A bqdfu 'I-RamI. It is doubtful whether they were Semites, possibly of Aramaic descent, who were subdued and exterminated by invaders from the north, or, as Hommel maintains,I the
representatives of an imposing non - Semitic Legend of 'Ad. I h' h h d' . cu ture w IC survIves III tetra ltJon of
manner of wrong; and when God sent to them a prophet, Hud by name, who should warn them to repent, they answered: "0 Hud, thou hast brought us no evidence, and we will not abandon our gods for thy saying, nor will we believe in thee. We say one of our gods hath affiicted thee with madness." I Then a fearful drought fell upon the land of 'Ad, so that they sent a number of their chief men to Mecca to pray for rain. On arriving at Mecca the envoys were hospitably received by the Amalekite prince, Mu'awiya b. Bakr, who entertained them with wine and music-for he had two famous singing-girls known as al-Jarddatlm; which induced them to neglect their mission for the space of a whole month. At last, however, they got to business, and their spokesman had scarce finished his prayer when three clouds appeared, of different colours-white, red, and black-and a voice cried from heaven, "Choose for thyself and for thy people!" He chose the black cloud, deeming that it had the greatest store of rain, whereupon the voice chanted-
From these, in course of time, a new people arose, who are called 'the second 'Ad.' They had their settlements in Yemen, in the region of Saba. The building of the great Dyke of Ma'rib is commonly attributed to their king, Luqman b. 'Ad, about whom many fables are told. He was surnamed 'The Man of the Vultures' (Dhu 'I-Nusur), because it had been granted to him that he should live as long as seven vultures, one after the other.
