joktan or yoktan (,  qahá¹­Än; literally, "little") was the second of the two sons of eber (gen. 10:25; 1 chr. 1:19) mentioned in the hebrew bible. his name means "small" or "smallness". in the book of genesis 10:25 it reads: "and unto eber were born two sons: the name of one was peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother's name was joktan." joktan's sons in the order provided in gen. 10:26-29, were almodad, sheleph, hazarmaveth, jerah, hadoram, uzal, diklah, obal, abimael, sheba, ophir, havilah, and jobab. in pseudo-philo's account (ca. 70), joktan was first made prince over the children of shem, just as nimrod and phenech were princes over the children of ham and japheth, respectively. in his version, the three princes command all persons to bake bricks for the tower of babel; however, twelve, including several of joktan's own sons, as well as abraham and lot, refuse the orders. joktan smuggles them out of shinar and into the mountains, to the annoyance of the other two princes.pseudo-philo the traditional history of the ethiopian orthodox church also maintains that joktan's sons would take no part in the tower building, and that they were thus allowed to preserve the original ge'ez language &mdash; which their descendants, the agazyan, carried across the red sea into ethiopia as they mixed with the cushitic and agaw people to form the hybrid habesha race. ==in pre-islamic literature== details about the three of joktan's sons, sheba, ophir and havilah, were preserved in a tradition known in divergent forms from three pre-islamic arabic and ethiopic sources: the kitab al-magall (part of clementine literature), the cave of treasures, and the conflict of adam and eve with satan. kitab al-magall: "he [nimrod] died in the days of reu, and the third thousand since adam was completed. in his days the people of egypt set up a king over them called firnifs. he reigned over them for sixty-eight years. in his days also a king reigned over the town of saba and annexed to his kingdom the cities of ophir and havilah, his name was pharaoh. he built ophir with stones of gold, for the stones of its mountains are pure gold. after him there reigned over havilah a king called hayul. he built it and cemented it, and after the death of pharaoh women reigned over saba until the time of solomon son of david." cave of treasures: "and in the days of reu, the mesraye, who are the egyptians, appointed their first king; his name was puntos, and he reigned over them sixty-eight years. and in the days of reu a king reigned in shebha (saba), and in ophi
Descendants_of_Eber Torah_people