ill considerable. Traces of the Arab type are met with in
Asia Minor, the Caucasus, western Persia and India, while the influence
of the Arab language and civilization is found in Europe (Malta and
Spain), China and Central Asia.

Ethnology.

The Arabs are at once the most ancient as they in many ways are the
purest surviving type of the true Semite. Certainly the inhabitants of
Yemen are not, and in historic times never were, pure Semites. Somali
and other elements, generally described under the collective racial name
of Hamitic, are clearly traceable; but the inland Arabs still present
the nearest approach to the primitive Semitic type. The origin of the
Arab race can only be a matter of conjecture. From the remotest historic
times it has been divided into two branches, which from their
geographical position it is simplest to call the North Arabians and the
South Arabians. Arabic and Jewish tradition trace the descent of the
latter from Joktan (Arabic _Kahtan_) son of Heber, of the former from
Ishmael. The South Arabians--the older branch--were settled in the
south-western part of the peninsula centuries before the uprise of the
Ishmaelites. These latter include not only Ishmael's direct descendants
through the twelve princes (Gen. xxv. 16), but the Edomites, Moabites,
Ammonites, Midianites and other tribes. This ancient and undoubted
division of the Arab race --roughly represented to-day by the
universally adopted classification into Arabs proper and Bedouin Arabs
(see BEDOUINS)-has caused much dispute among ethnologists. All
authorities agree in declaring the race to be Semitic in the broadest
ethnological signification of that term, but some thought they saw in
this division of the race an indication of a dual origin. They asserted
that the purer branch of the Arab family was represented by the
sedentary Arabs who were of Hamitic (Biblical Cushite), i.e. African
ancestry, and that the nomad Arabs were Arabs only by adoption, and were
nearer akin to the true Semite as sons of Ishmael. Many arguments were
adduced in support of this theory, (1) The unquestioned division in
remote historic times of the Arab race, and the immemorial hostility
between the two branches. (2) The concurrence of pre-Islamitic
literature and records in representing the first settlement of the
"pure" Arab as made in the extreme south-western part of the peninsula,
near Aden. (3) The use of Himyar, "dusky" or "red" (suggesting African
aff