The classical Arabic, be it observed, in consequence of an extended empire, soon split up into various dialects, as the Latin under similar circumstances separated into the Neo-Roman patois of Italy, Sicily, Provence, and Languedoc. And though Niebuhr has been deservedly censured for comparing the Koranic language to Latin and the vulgar tongue to Italian, still there is a great difference between them, almost every word having undergone some alteration in addition to the manifold changes and simplifications of grammar and syntax. The traveler will hear in every part of Arabia that some distant tribe preserves the linguistic purity of its ancestors, uses final vowels with the noun, and rejects the addition of the pronoun which apocope in the verb now renders necessary. But I greatly doubt the existence of such a race of philologists. In Al-Hijaz, however, it is considered graceful in an old man, especially when conversing publicly, to lean towards classical Arabic. On the contrary, in a youth this would be treated was pedantic affection, and condemned in some such satiric quotation as, There are two things colder than ice, A young old man, and an old young man.""

Maulid Hamzah, a little building at the old Bab Umrah, near the Shabayki cemetery. Here was the Bazan, or channel down which the Ayn Hunayn ran into the Birkat Majid. Many authorities doubt that Hamzah was born at this place.

The reader must now be as tired of "Pious Visitation" as I was.