ABSTRACT
The peninsula of Arabia may be described as a vast rectangle of more than a million square miles in extent, placed between Africa and the main land-mass of Asia. The Red Sea, which forms its western boundary, is part of the great rift valley which continues northwards through the Gulf of Akaba, the Dead Sea, and the River Jordan; the huge convulsions which produced it have piled up mountain ridges which rise steeply along the coast from the Hijaz to the Yemen, and the land thus slopes down from west to east towards the gentle declivity of the Persian Gulf. On three sides Arabia faces the sea; her only land frontier is the Syrian Desert, and as the crossing of these sandy wastes was at least as difficult as landing on her almost harbourless coasts, she long remained an isolated and inaccessible country, whose inhabitants aptly styled her Jazirat al-Arab, the island of the Arabs.
