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<\/a>(Wikimedia Commons photo by Mohammad Nowfal)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Another few hundred words:<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n It was at Nahom, incidentally, that Lehi and his party abruptly turned due east after their long period of travel along the coast of Arabia in a southeasterly direction. A glance at the map shows that by doing so, they missed the area of what has long been known as Yemen. Instead, they moved along behind the mountains that form the natural division between Yemen and the rest of the Arabian penin\u00adsula. (Most of Yemen is mountainous. The tallest measured peak is 12,336 feet high.) This may or may not have been deliberate. But I suspect that it was, and for several reasons. First of all, whether they knew it yet or not, they needed to find a place in which they could find shipbuilding materials. Few such places exist, so the direction of their travel had to be quite deliberately chosen. (Whether it was chosen by the travelers themselves or by the Lord, for them, is imma\u00adterial.) But Lehi may well have wanted to avoid the relatively civi\u00adlized area of Yemen, the ancient Sheba. For one thing, it would have constituted a real temptation to his sons Laman and Lemuel, for whom he still had some faint hope. For another, Yemen repre\u00adsented the Arabian end of the major frankincense trail. There could well\u00a0have been Jewish merchants there, and, if Hugh Nibley is correct in asserting that Lehi himself came from a merchant background, there might have been people in the towns of Yemen who would actually have known him.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 Given the circumstances of his escape from Palestine, including the death of Laban, it might have been unwise to have met such people. Even Lehi\u2019s vision of the Tree of Life may suggest something of the image that wealthy, mercantile Yemen could well have had in his mind. The \u201cgreat and spacious building,\u201d standing \u201cas it were in the air, high above the earth\u201d and \u201cfilled with people . . . [whose] manner of dress was exceedingly fine,\u201d seems very like the ancient \u201cskyscraper\u201d architecture of Yemen. These multi-story Yemeni buildings, many of which still stand, have no windows on the ground floor, so as to be less vulner\u00adable to thieves and robbers. At night, or in the \u201cmist of darkness\u201d reported by the prophet, it would indeed seem that the people who leaned out of the windows \u201cin the attitude of mocking and pointing their fingers\u201d were in a building that floated \u201cas it were in the air, high above the earth.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Thus, Arabia and the Arabs play an important role in the early portion of the Book of Mormon. They figure prominently in the other scriptures as well. Some of the mountains of northwest Arabia, for example, are volcanoes that\u00a0are now reckoned to be extinct (although eruptions are recorded into medieval times). Some scholars have seen in the smoke and fire and earthquake of Mount Sinai a description of a volcanic eruption (Exodus 19:18) and have argued that Moses\u2019 reception of the stone tablets of the law actually took place in what is today Saudi Arabia, rather than at the traditional site in the Sinai Peninsula.[3]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n It isn\u2019t certain just when the Arabian peoples first appear in history. As early as 854 B.C., an inscription of Shalmaneser III men\u00adtions \u201cGindibu the Arabian,\u201d who had assembled a camel corps to oppose the Assyrians. In the very south of the Arabian Peninsula, an advanced civilization seems to have developed as early as 1200 B.C., although we\u2019re only now beginning to have some idea about it. The island of Bahrayn, off the eastern coast of Arabia in the Persian Gulf, may be the ancient Sumerian Dilmun. The genealogical tables in the Old Testament include recognizably Arabian groups among the children of Cush, Aram, and Eber, as well as among the children of Abraham by Keturah and by Hagar.[4]<\/a> The complexity of the situ\u00adation is increased by Arabian peoples being known throughout the Old Testament by a number of different (and occasionally puzzling) names, including, most prominently, Ishmaelites, Midianites, Dedanites, and Sabeans. It isn\u2019t easy in the present state of our knowledge to reconcile all of these accounts, but we know that they contain truth because many of the names can be plausibly related to known peoples and places in Arabia.<\/span><\/p>\n The Hebrew word Arab<\/em> properly means \u201cnomad,\u201d which tells us a great deal about these early people.[5]<\/a> The description of Ishmael, in Genesis 16:12, as \u201ca wild man,\u201d whose \u201chand will be against every man, and every man\u2019s hand against him,\u201d well describes the life of the nomad, who has been famous from the beginning of history for his raids against settled folk.[6]<\/a> It was a group of Sabeans\u2014listed above as an Arabian people\u2014who raided Job\u2019s lands, killing his herdsmen and riding off with his cattle as booty.[7]<\/a> This is the kind of life (though possibly without the thievery) that Ishmael seems to have led, wandering the desert and dwelling in a tent. \u201cAnd God was with the lad; and he grew, and dwelt in the wilderness.\u201d[8]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> In the period just prior to the rise of Islam, a Jewish kingdom was actually established for a brief time in southern Arabia. And persecuted Jews often fled to Arabia even at that relatively late time. See Shmuel Safrai, in Ben-Sasson, A History of the Jewish People, <\/em>358\u00ad-359, 380. \u00a0[Insert Nibley reference.]<\/span><\/p>\n [2]<\/a> 1 Nephi 8:23, 26-27.<\/span><\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Galatians 4:25 places Mount Sinai in \u201cArabia.\u201d But, since even the traditional Sinai falls within the biblical definition of that term, this probably means nothing.<\/span><\/p>\n [4]<\/a> Genesis 10:7, 23, 25-30; 25:1-4, 13-16.<\/span><\/p>\n [5]<\/a> Later, in the Arabic language itself, the Qur\u2019an contrasts the settled peoples of the oases with the nomads, whom it terms \u201cArabs.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n [6]<\/a> The Amalekite raid on Ziklag recorded in 1 Samuel 30 is a good example of this, as is the Arabian raid that carried off Jehoram\u2019s family and possessions, mentioned in 2 Chronicles 21:16-17, 22:1. (In Psalm 83, the Ishmaelites and the Hagarenes are depicted as the hereditary enemies of Israel.) Such raiding provoked pursuit, and the oracle of Isaiah 21:13-17 seems to be addressed to a group of fleeing Arabs.<\/span><\/p>\n