ma and the
islands off the coast, and in 1836 P.E. Botta made an important journey
in southern Yemen with a view to botanical research, but the next
advance in geographical knowledge in south Arabia was due to the French
officers, M.O. Tamisier, Chedufau and Mary, belonging to the Egyptian
army in Asir; another Frenchman, L. Arnaud, formerly in the Egyptian
service, was the first to visit the southern Jauf and to report on the
rock-cut inscriptions and ruins of Marib, though it was not till 1869
that a competent archaeologist, J. Halevy, was able to carry out any
complete exploration there. Starting from Sana, Halevy went
north-eastward to El Madid, a town of 5000 inhabitants and the capital
of the small district of Nihm; thence crossing a plateau, where he saw
the ruins of numerous crenellated towers, he reached the village of
Mijzar at the foot of J. Yam, on the borders of Jauf, a vast sandy
plain, extending eastwards to El Jail and El Hazm, where Halevy made his
most important discoveries of Sabaean inscriptions: here he explored
Main, the ancient capital of the Minaeans, Kamna on the banks of the W.
Kharid, the ancient Caminacum, and Kharibat el Beda, the Nesca of Pliny,
where the Sabaean army was defeated by the Romans under Aelius Gallus in
24 B.C. From El Jail Halevy travelled northward, passing the oasis of
Khab, and skirting the great desert, reached the fertile district of
Nejran, where he found a colony of Jews, with whom he spent several
weeks in the oasis of Makhlaf. An hour's march to the east he discovered
at the village of Medinat el Mahud the ruins of the Nagra metropolis of
Ptolemy. In June 1870 he at last reached the goal of his journey, Marib;
here he explored the ruins of Medinat an Nahas (so called from its
numerous inscriptions engraved on brass plates), and two hours to the
east he found the famous dam constructed by the Himyarites across the W.
Shibwan, on which the water-supply of their capital depended.

One other explorer has since visited Marib, the Austrian archaeologist,
E. Glaser (1855-1908), who achieved more for science in Yemen than any
traveller since Niebuhr. Under Turkish protection, he visited the
territory of the Hashid and Bakil tribes north-east of Sana, and though
their hostile attitude compelled him to return after reaching their
first important town, Khamr, he had time to reconnoitre the plateau
lying between the two great wadis Kharid and Hirran, formerly covered
with Himyar