Page:An Essay on the Age and Antiquity of the Book of Nabathaean Agriculture.djvu/95

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Kanaan, son of Kúsh, son of Ham. They inhabited the province of Babylon, and had for their king Nimrod the great.[1] The same thing is found in the Kitáb tabacáth al-úmem, the Sâid of Toledo: “The Chaldæans are a nation illustrious from the antiquity of their empire, and the celebrity of their kings, who were descended from the Nimrods the giants, of whom the first was Nimrod, son of Cúsh, son of Ham.”[2] M. Chwolson himself thinks that Masoudi has borrowed what he says of his Nimrodian dynasty, from Christian sources. Who knows, that the name of Canaanites is not in this instance one of those con-

  1. Quatremère, pp. 56, 57, 62.
  2. Here is the entire passage, according to the MS. of M. Schefer, p. 19: وامّا الامّة الثالثة وهم الكلدانيون فكانت امّة قديمة الرياسة نبيهة الملوك كان من النماردة والجبابرة الذين اوّلهم النمرود بن كوس بن حام باني اعجول (؟) الذي ذكره الله في كتابه العزيز فقال‎, etc. According to the passage in the Koran, xvi. 28. The plurals جبابرة‎ and نماردة‎ formed, after the same analogy, from גִּבֹּר‎ and נִמְרֹד‎ (Gen. x. 8-9), betray in themselves a biblical origin. Some lines below there is, in the Said, the identical genealogies given by Masoudi.