George Sale, The Koran, commonly called the Alcoran of Mohammed, translated into English immediately from the original Arabic; with Explanatory Notes, taken from the most approved Commentators. To which is prefixed A Preliminary Discource (1734)

had the crown resigned to him by his uncles the Jorhamites ¹, tho’ others say the descendants of Ismael expelled that tribe, who retiring to Johainah, were, after various fortune, at last all destroyed by an inundation ².

Of the kings of Hamyar, Hira, Ghassân, and Jorham, Dr. Pocock has given us catalogues tolerably exact, to which I refer the curious ³.

The subsequent Government there to the time of Mohammed.
After the expulsion of the Jorhamites, the government of Hejâz seems not to have continued for many centuries in the hands of one prince, but to have been divided among the heads of tribes; almost in the same manner as the Arabs of the desart are governed at this day. At Mecca an aristocracy prevailed, where the chief management of affairs till the time of Mohammed was in the tribe of Koraish; especially after they had gotten the custody of the Caaba from the tribe of Khozâah ⁴.

Besides the kingdoms which have been taken notice of, there were some other tribes, which in latter times had princes of their own, and formed states of lesser note; particularly the tribe of Kenda ⁵: but as I am not writing a just history of the Arabs, and an account of them would be of no great use to my present purpose, I shall wave any further mention of them.

Of the Government of Arabia in succeeding times.
After the time of Mohammed, Arabia was for about three centuries under the Khalîfs his successors. But in the year 325 of the Hejra, great part of that country was in the hands of the Karmatians ⁶, a new sect who had committed great outrages and disorders even in Mecca, and to whom the Khalîfs were obliged to pay tribute, that the pilgrimage thither might be performed: of this sect I may have occasion to speak in another place. Afterwards Yaman was governed by the house of Thabateba, descended from Ali the son-in-law of Mohammed, whose sovereignty in Arabia some place so high as the time of Charlemagne. However it was the posterity of Ali, or pretenders to be such, who reigned in Yaman and Egypt so early as the tenth century. The present reigning family in Yaman is probably that of Ayub; a branch of which reigned there in the 13th century, and took the title of Khalîf and Imâm, which they still retain ⁷. They are not possessed of the whole province of Yaman ⁸, there being several other independent kingdoms there, particularly that of Fartach. The crown of Yaman descends not regularly from father to son, but the prince of the blood royal who is most in favour with the great ones, or has the strongest interest, generally succeeds. ⁹.