90
THE NORTHERN ḤEǦÂZ
in the šeʻîb of al-Arwaḥ in order to let the camels graze a little, and here we made a fire from the long-thorned branches of the sejâl, this being the only wood we could find (temperature: 40.8° C).
Fig. 31—ʻAḳabat Ajla, watchtower of al-Brejǧ.
At 6.50 we rode across the šeʻîb of al-Ḥeṣâni. The road leads along the seashore itself, beneath a brittle slope of white marl, about six meters high, through which the šeîb of al-Ḫalal—which we crossed at 7.08—has worn away a deep channel. After 7.30 we proceeded across the marshy soil of al-Mamlaḥ, which extends to the southeast as far as the low hills of Ḥeḳînt ar-Rimṯ. Later we crossed the šeʻîb of al-Mrâtijje (formed by the union of al-Ḳrejẓi and an-Nwêbʻe) and beyond it al-Esâwed.[1]
- ↑ The poet an-Nâbiṛa, who was a member of the Ḏubjân tribe to which the land east of the region of Ḥesma’ belonged and who lived about 600 A. D., mentions (An-Nâbiṛa, Dîwân [Derenbourg], p. 292: [Ahlwardt], p. 21; Jâḳût, op. cit., Vol. 4. p. 797) the camping places between the fertile lowland of Nuʻmi and the valleys of al-Aǧâwel and al-Asâwed.—As he was well acquainted with the camping places of the northern Ḥeǧâz and mentions them often in his poems, we must locate these three spots in the northern Ḥeǧâz. Rowẓe Nuʻmi would then be identical with the fertile lowland by the well of an-Naʻemi: the valleys of al-Aǧâwel with the broad lowlands near Mount Ǧawla; and the valley of al-Asâwed, if this name is accurately given, we should locate in the vicinity of the well of al-Esâwed.Az-Zamaḫšari (Jâḳût, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 587) locates the lowland of an-Nuʻmi on the seashore, the Tihama, thus confusing it with the valley of al-Aǧâwel. Burḳa Naʻmi is the name of a half-reddened, half-black cone above the well of the same name.
