Arăbia

, a large country of Asia, forming a peninsula between the Arabian and Persian gulfs. It is generally divided into three different parts, Petræa, Desert a, and Felix. It is famous for its frankincense and aromatic plants. The inhabitants were formerly under their own chiefs, an uncivilized people, who paid adoration to the sun, moon, and even serpents, and who had their wives in common, and circumcised their children. The country has often been invaded, but never totally subdued. Alexander the Great expre ed his wish to place the seat of his empire in their territories. The soil is rocky and sandy, the inhabitants are scarce, the mountains rugged, and the country without water. In Arabia, whatever woman was convicted of adultery was capitally punished. The Arabians for some time supported the splendour of literature which was extinguished by the tyranny and superstition which prevailed in Egypt, and to them we are indebted for the invention of algebra, or the application of signs and letters to represent lines, numbers, and quantities, and also for the numerical characters of 1, 2, 3, . , first used in Europe, A.D. 1253.— Hero dot us , bks. 1, 2, 3.— Diodorus , bks. 1 & 2.— Pliny , bks. 12 & 14.— Strabo , bk. 16 .— Xenophon. — Tibullus , bk. 2 , poem 2.— Curtius , bk. 5 , ch. 1 .— Virgil , Georgics , bk. 1 , li. 57 .――Also the name of the wife of Ægyptus. Apollo dor us.