Midian

“ Midian, called nowadays by its inhabitants, as by the mediæval Arabic geographers, Arz Maydan, the Land of Midian, is that part of Arabia which occupies the east coast of the Gulf of Akabah, and extends some two degrees further to the south. The borders are somewhat difficult to ascertain, and it is probable that the ancient Midianites, like some of the larger and more powerful Bedawin tribes of the present day, wandered far and wide, and that their limits shrunk or extended according to their numbers, or the resisting power of their neighbours. ”

“ Midian has seduced Israel to idolatry and its constant companion, sensual sin. The old lawgiver has for his last achievement to punish the idolater. 'Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites, afterwards thou shalt be gathered to thy people.' So each tribe gives its contingent to the fight, and under the fierce and prompt Phinehas, whose javelin had already smitten one of the chief offenders, they go forth. Fire and sword, devastation and victory, mark their track. The princes of Midian fall before the swift rush of the desert-born invaders. ”

“ But Midian, though punished, had not been destroyed; and now, after the lapse of nearly two hundred years, we find it a very powerful nation, against whose numerous hordes the Israelites seem to have made no attempt to defend their homes—so completely was the warlike spirit crushed in the descendants of those who had triumphed under Moses and Joshua when they fought the battles of the Lord. ”

“ The men are unwashed and filthy; the women walk abroad unveiled, and never refuse themselves, I am told, to the higher blood.
The Arabs of Midian always compare the Hutaym with the Ghagar (Ghajar) or Gypsies of Egypt; and this is the point which gives the outcasts a passing interest. I have not yet had an opportunity of carefully studying the race; nor can I say whether it shows any traces of skill in metal-working. ”

“ As long as we remain in presumptuous self-confidence, the Midianites rest in possession; when we cast ourselves in earnest prayer at the feet of the Saviour, He maketh us more than conquerors.
We contemplated Faith, when last we met here, as the tree which in winter stands bare of foliage, black and leafless, yet with life within it. With Gideon now that tree had felt the warm breath of spring—the Lord had looked upon it, and the living sap had risen under the beams of the Sun of Righteousness ”

“ Mines of Midian,” is confined to the descendants of the third brother.
The Huwaytát tribe is not only an intruder, it is also the aggressive element in the Midianite family of Bedawin; and, of late years, it has made great additions to its territory. If it advances at the present rate it will, after a few generations, either “eat up,” as Africans say, all the other races or, by a more peaceful process, assimilate them to its own body.
We also consulted Shaykh Hasan and his cousin Ahmed, alias Abú Khartúm, concerning the origin of his tribe, the Beni ‘Ukbah. ”

“ They slew all the males (v. 7) , that is, all they met with as far as they went; they put them all to the sword, and gave no quarter. But that they did not slay all the males of the nation is certain, for we find the Midianites a powerful and formidable enemy to Israel in the days of Gideon; and they were the Midianites of this country, for they are reckoned with the children of the east, Judg. vi. 3. (2.) They slew the kings of Midian the same that are called elders of Midian (ch. xxii. 4) , and the dukes of Sihon, Josh. ”

“ M. Lacaze, unlike the rest, took a violent fancy for the Wady Sharmá: the water-scenery enchanted him. His sketches were almost confined to the palm-growth, and to the greenery so unexpected in arid Midian, where, according to the old and exploded opinion, Moses wrote the Book of Job. The idea of Arabia is certainly not associated with flowing rills, and waving trees, and rustling zephyrs. Every morning I used to awake surprised by the song of the Naiad, the little runnel whimpling down its bed of rushes, stone, and sand; and the response of the palms making music in the land-breeze. ”

“ This line seems to drain inland; presently it bends round by the east and feeds the Wady Dámah. Rain must lately have fallen, for the earth is “purfled flowers,” pink, white, and yellow. The latter is the tint prevailing in Midian, often suggesting the careless European wheat-field, in which “shillock” or wild mustard rears its gamboge head above the green. Midian wants not only the charming oleander and the rugged terebinth, typical of the Desert ”

“ In South Midian the varieties of quartz are incomparably more numerous, and almost every march shows a new colour or constitution.
About the Jebel el-Abyaz, as in many mining countries, water is a serious difficulty. The principal deposit lies some three miles east of the camping ground in a Nakb or gorge, El-Asaybah, offsetting from the great Fiumara, "El-Simákh;" and apparently it is only a rain-pool. Throughout Midian, I may say, men still fetch water out of the rock. ”

“ The greater part of this division was more exclusively the possession of the Midianites, or land of Midian; where Moses, having fled from Egypt, married the daughter of Jethro, and spent forty years keeping the flocks of his father-in-law: no humiliating occupation in those days, and particularly in Midian, which was a land of shepherds; the whole people having no other way of life than that of rearing and tending their flocks, or in carrying the goods they received from the east and south into Phenicia and Egypt. ”

“ Not the least pleasant part of our evening’s work was collecting information concerning the origin of the tribes inhabiting modern Midian; and, as on such occasions a mixed multitude was always present, angry passions were often let rise. As my previous volume showed, the tribes in this Egyptian corner of North–Western Arabia number three—the Huwaytát, the Maknáwi, and the Beni ‘Ukbah ”

“ This human lair is encircled by barrier-reefs of coralline, broad to the south-west and large in scattered places: eastward they form a shallow wall-like ledge, beyond which blue water at once begins. The island-formation is that of the opposite coasts, Midian and Sinai, grey granite dyked with decaying porphyritic trap, and everywhere veined with white and various-coloured quartzes. The shape is a long oval of about three hundred and twenty by one hundred and fifty-two metres; a saddleback with two stony heads, the higher to the north, rising a hundred feet or so above sea-level. ”

“ Yet the Bedawin of Midian have till late years been a turbulent "mixed multitude," and are ready to become troublesome again. It is only by building forts and by holding the land militarily, that the civilized can hope to tame this vermin. I repeat, however, my conviction that the charming Makná Valley is fated to see happy years; and that the Wild Man who, when ruled by an iron hand, is ever ready to do a fair day's work for a fair wage (especially victuals) , will presently sit under the shadow of his own secular vines and fig-trees. ”

“ We have now left the region explored by Europeans; and our line to the south and the south-east will lie over ground wholly new. In front of us the land is no longer Arz Madyan: we are entering South Midian, which will extend to El-Hejáz. As the march might last longer than had been expected, I ordered fresh supplies from El-Muwaylah to meet us in the interior viâ Zibá. A very small boy acted dromedary-man; and on the next day he reached the fort, distant some thirty-five and a half direct geographical miles eastward with a trifling of northing. ”

“ The plain unvarnished tale of the travel in Midian, undertaken by the second Expedition, which, like the first, owes all to the liberality and the foresight of his Highness Ismail I., Khediv of Egypt, forms the subject of these volumes. During the four months between December 19, 1877, and April 20, 1878, the officers employed covered some 2500 miles by sea and land, of which 600, not including by-paths, were mapped and planned; and we brought back details of an old-new land which the civilized world had clean forgotten. ”

“ A mottle of clouds sheds moving shadows over the hill-crests, and relieves them from the appalling monotony of yesterday. Brilliant rainbow hues, red, green, mauve, purple, yellow and white clays, gleam in the lowlands, and form dwarf bluffs; while inland, peering above the granites, the syenites, and the porphyries of the coast, pale quoins and naked cones again show the familiar Secondary formation of Midianitish Makná. ”

“ A Midianite remained to guide the Israelites through the wilderness, and the Kenites, who took part with the tribe of Judah in the conquest of Canaan, appear to have migrated from Midian. It was not until just before the invasion of Palestine that the old bonds of friendship and mixture between Israel and Midian were broken asunder. Midianite hosts had overrun the land of Moab as at a later time they overran the land of Israel, and the Israelites had forsaken Yahveh for the worship of the Midianite Baal-Peor. ”

“ Richard's Midian was an utterly unknown country along the east coast of the Gulf of Akabah, one of the two narrow inlets in which the Red Sea ends. When I say unknown, it has been practically unvisited and its shores unexplored until now. There is abundant evidence of a former population and a cultivated period; there are ruins of large towns, of solid masonry, roads cut in the rock, aqueducts five miles long ”

“ Let me here warn future collectors of botany in Midian that throughout the land the vegetable kingdom follows the rule of the mineral: every march shows something new; and he who neglects to gather specimens, especially of the smaller flowers, in one valley, will perhaps find none of them in those adjoining.
A denser row of trees lower down the Wady Hujayl led to the water of Amdán (Mídán?) , about an hour and a half from our last nighting-place; yesterday it had been reported six hours distant. High towering on our left (north) rose three huge buttresses of the Girágir. ”

“ We halted on the Sath el-Nakb ("the Passtop") to expect the caravan, and to prospect the surrounding novelties. Heaps and piles of dark trap dotted the summit like old graves; many of the stones were inscribed with tribal marks, and not a few were capped with snowy lumps of quartz detached from their veins in the porphyry. This custom, which appears universal throughout Midian, has many interpretations. According to some it denotes the terminus of a successful raid; others make it show where a dispute was settled without bloodshed ”

“ The engineer, M. Marie, when asked aloud, and with all publicity, by the Khediv whether he was sure that such and such specimens contained gold, shirked a direct reply, evasively declaring that “Midian is a fine mining country.” He had pointed out to me the precious metal during our exploration of Umm el-Karáyat; but such is the wretched result of “knowing the people,” instead of telling the truth like a man. ”

“ Guards were placed around the camp; and a wholesome dread of the Ma'ázah kept them wide awake. The only evil which resulted was that none dared to lead our mules to water; and the poor animals were hardly rideable on the next day.
Of the Hismá in its present state, we may say as of Ushant, Qui voit Ouessant, voit la mort. Nothing can be done towards working the mines of Midian until this den of thieves is cleared out. It is an asylum for every murderer and bandit who can make his way there—a centre of turbulence which spreads trouble all around it. ”

“ Faint, yet pursuing, Gideon and his band followed on the track of Zebah and Zalmunna, the kings of Midian. These, with about fifteen thousand men who had escaped from the slaughter which followed the sounding of the trumpets, had reached Karkor, and believed themselves there to be secure from further attack. Faint, but pursuing. Thus, in his life-long warfare against sin, presses on the Christian from grace to grace, till God receives him to glory. He must not sheathe the sword of the Spirit while one evil passion remains unsubdued ”

“ Mr. E. Stanley Poole (loc. cit.) says that the Arabs dispute whether the name “Medyen” be foreign or Arabic; and whether “Medyen” spoke Arabic. He considers the absurd enumeration of the alphabetical kings (El–Mas’údi, quoted above) to be curious, as possibly containing some vague reference to the language of Midian. When these kings are said contemporaneously to have ruled over Meccah, Western Nejd, Yemen, “Medyen,” Egypt, etc., it is extremely improbable that Midian ever penetrated into Yemen, notwithstanding the hints of Arab authors to the contrary. ”

“ To each one amongst us to whom a present Saviour has been revealed by faith, the word of the Lord hath come as to the son of Joash. We may have rejoiced in the promise, but have we obeyed the command? Let us be honest with ourselves, my brethren; if the altar of Baal be yet standing, can we hope to drive the Midianites out of the land? Faith, if real, must appear in obedience; show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works, saith the inspired apostle. ”

“ There were also bursts of heat, ending in the normal three grey days of raw piercing norther; and followed by a still warmer spell. Upon the Gulf of El-'Akabah a violent gale was blowing. On the whole the winter climate of inland Midian is trying, and a speedy return to the seaboard air is at times advisable, while South Midian feels like Thebes after Cairo. The coast climate is simply perfect, save and except when El-Aylí, the storm-wind from 'Akabat Aylah, is abroad. ”