they had any other Sciences, but breeding of Cattle; nor that they had ever made use of the Opportunity of learning to write; and if Mahomet had not started up among them, they had never been named among civilized Men; I hope that Affair will not make Chriftians have a better Opinion of them. If I am right in my Affertion, that Writing confounded the Languages of the Heathens, this People might retain the Sounds of fome original Words later than thofe who began to write fooner; but unluckily they had little or no Occafion to use the Words which we have the chief Concern with, much less with the Ideas or Significations, or what we call the Ufage of them; fo to look for any Thing about the Religion of the true Aleim in Arabia, is to no Purpofse; that Knowledge was never there; nay, they might, if they had had Temples, Hieroglyphicks, &c. have preferved the Knowledge of the Objects of their Worship longer than other Nations who used Writing; but we have no Appearance of Evidence that they had any fuch: There is one Place called Gur-Baal, which seems to denote fomething of a Settlement; but that will scarce prove whether it was Town or Country: Indeed the Jewish Rabbies

father

father one Invention upon them; I beg pardon, I would not have brought these in Evidence against Men, that is of a Species of Images, call'd from pho Talif mans, as you may fee in B. C. about which there have been the most stupid and more impudent Lies told, than about all the Heathen Religion befides. I think we have very little Account of their Language, and none of their Writing, till after the Time of the Impoftor Mahomet. And by the by, if there be no Writing in their Language before that preferved and well attefted, I mean fo much of it as would determine many of the Words, and the Nature of the Language; we have no Account of their Language; the first Accounts we have of them were, by the Undertakers in this Project, collected by Dr. Walton in faid Proleg. p. 93, and by others I hope they have not left them fhort; I fhall take theirs, 'tis not worth while to look further back. We fhall first examine how they endeavour to put their Evidence in a new Drefs, § 1. Because the Scripture had given them this fcandalous riffraff Name, they would fain mend the Matter, and very ftrangely derive their Name from 2 Rabba to have Dominion; but if it must be from any, a Mixture,

VOL. IV.

K

Mixture, then, "it is from its being a Region which has vaft Defarts and much Pasture-Ground, which the Hebrew Word any fignifies." This is very ftrange, that having vaft Defarts and many Pastures, fhould give Name to a Country, when every Country in the World had fuch. Befides, y has no fuch Signification in the Hebrew, conveys no other Idea but to mix; and as the Defarts were then, as we fay here, in common; and every one, at leaft each in each Nation, had a common or mixed Property in thofe adjoining, till they were inclofed, this Word is applied to them, and was common to those in each Country; fo could not give a Name of Diftinction to any Country: And they cannot even fuppofe this was the most defart, because moft Part of the Earth was then totally defart; bút as cited above at p. 41. from Ptolemy, Pliny, Strabo, &c. into Littleton's Dictionary," or because the Arabians are a Mixture of People, and the Scum of Mankind." And they must not, Ibid. § 1. be Saracens as the Word fignifies Thrives; but Saracens must come from Skarkion, the Eaft; the reft is all like this. $3 "What I have faid of the Antiquity of the Arabic Tongue, I would not have understood of their Letters, and Wri

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ting which Dr. Pocock, in Notes to his Specimen of Arabic, p. 154, 155, 156, fhews to be of a much later Date: He alfo proves that there were many p. 150 Dialects among them. For the Language which the Hamyans, and Pure Arabians fpake was different from that which the Koraifpites used, and in which the Alcoran is wrote, which they will have the fame which Ifmael firft fpake. Dr. Pocock also admonishes us, p. 153, that none can wonder if fomething hath been loft of a Language fo widely extended, when he confiders how lately they have had the Invention of Writing among them, whose firft Inventor Ebn Chalcan fhews from History to have been Maramer the Son of Mora an Aubarian, which was not long before the Rife of Mahomet. Nevertheless this is to be understood of the Koraifhites and other Tribes of the Ifmaelites, fince it is confeffed that the Art of Writing was known among the Hymarienfes before; but the Characters were very different from those which the Arabians ufe; which Kind of Writing- they called Almofnad, its Letters being confufedly intangled one with another, and by no Means.distinct, these they did not permit the Vulgar to learn, nor any one to use without first obtaining leave. For Ebn Chalican writes K 2

that

that when the Alcoran came firft to be published, there was not be found in the whole Region of Yayman, a fingle Perfon who could either read or write Arabic. Whence Shareftan a famons Author among them, relates, that before Mahomet there were two Sects; the People of the Book, or Book-learned People, who knew Letters, namely the Chriftians and Jews that inhabited Midina: And the Idiots that inhabited Mecca, and were ignorant of Letters. Indeed all allow that Mahomet himself was Ignorant both of Writing and Reading; whence they call him- Nabeyan Ommian, i. e. the Illiterate Prophet. P. 156, The Characters invented by Moramer, and long retained among the Arabians, were very rude fuch as they call the Kufienfes which are to be feen engraved in the Titles of Books, and upon Stones. Nor was the Alcoran formerly wrote in any other Characters, as appears from fome old Copies wrote on Skins in Letters half an Inch long which the learned J. Grave brought with him out of Egypt. Thefe elegant and neat ones they now use, are the Refinement of Ebn Mulka not lefs than 300 Years after Mahomet: and brought to perfection by Ali Abu Bencah,

as