Havilah  

• General Notes
  • There were two Arabian tribes known under the name of Havilah. The first was of Hamitic descent, which settled in the eastern regions of the Arabian peninsula. Their land was known to Arabian cosmographers as Hawlan. Kautsch identifies them as the Huwailah, a people who settled on the Arabian shore of the Persian Gulf. The Semitic tribe, however, with whom we are dealing here, remained distinct, and occupied areas on the opposite side of the peninsula. In Strabo's day, they were still occupying areas of northern Arabia, their name being recorded by him as the Khaulotaei. Josephus knew them as the Euilat. The Arabian cosmographer Yakut, informs us that their dialect, Hawil, was spoken by 'the descendants of Midian, the son of Abraham. ' This Semitic tribe of Havilah also occupied the southernmost tip of the Arabian peninsula, crossing from there the Bab-el-Mandeb to the African coast. Here, both Ptolemy and Pliny refer to their city of Aualis on the Red Sea coast of Africa, which lay next to the modern state of Djibouti. This city (Aualis) is known today as Zeila.
    (Refs: IDB 2:537. NBD 506. JA 1.vi.4. P 1:29)