rocks Sarbûṭ Amṛar, we perceived a woman with three asses, who hastily took to flight when she caught sight of us. Our guide Ḥammâd wished to pursue her, in order to evade the taunts and reproaches which Ismaʻîn and Mḥammad were heaping upon him for having extolled the caves of ʻAntar as resembling the caves at Wâdi Mûsa and for declaring that he knew of a boulder near ʻAlaḳân baked in golden flour. It was with great difficulty that I soothed his feelings. I had realized that he was well acquainted with the whole territory of his tribe, and I knew that we should need him to protect us against the aggression of his fellow tribesmen.
Accompanied by Ḥammâd and Tûmân, I went to the top of al-Waraḳa and drew a map of the surrounding territory. It took us over forty minutes to reach the summit, and it was a very difficult climb, as we had to scramble from boulder to boulder and from rib to rib. Scarcely had we set about our work than we heard a number of muffled shots below us, followed by shouts that sounded like bellowings. Running to the very edge of a wall of rock, I gazed down at our encampment. The camels were grazing among the broken fragments of rock at the foot of al-Waraḳa. The baggage was lying about two hundred meters to the east of the animals. Ismaʻîn, Mḥammad, Šerîf, and Sâlem were lying hidden in a semicircle behind four boulders and were defending themselves against some thirty assailants. The attackers had come from the northwest, some on camels, the majority on foot. Among them and behind them came women and boys, armed with
very probable that the name has not been accurately preserved and that its proper form was ʻAzza or something similar. There is an encampment ʻAzâza known to the modern nomads in the former territory of the Ǧuḏâm tribe situated at the entrance to the al-Bdejje pass, through which the road from Tihama runs eastward across the rocky plateau of al-Ǧeles. I locate al-Ḫabt in the modern al-Ḫbejt, on the eastern side of the wâdi of al-Abjaẓ. Al-Muna’ is unknown to me. Bejt Zummâra’ may be identical with the modern range of Zunnâra, for in the Arabic dialects m is often interchanged with n. More probably, however, Bejt Zummâra’ has been preserved in the modern Abu Zummârîn, which is the name of an important passage from the eastern plateau to the shore. The encampment of ʻUrâd of the poet Mâlek ibn Ḥarîm can very reasonably be identified with ʻArd and ʻArâjed, for the poets often adapted place names to their particular requirements. Al-Marrût denotes the whole region, the position and extent of which we can determine if we find the wells of Uṣejheb, al-Mâʻeze, al-Hawi, aṯ-Ṯmâd, and as-Sdêra.
Uṣejheb is the modern well and šeʻîb of aṣ-Ṣahab near al-Weli Samʻûl. The spring of al-Hawi flows out about ten kilometers north of aṣ-Ṣahab. Al-Mâʻeze suggests al-Maʻâzi, twenty-five kilometers northwest of al-Hawi. I identify aṯ-Ṯmâd with the wells of al-Maʻajjenât, ten kilometers south of al-Maʻʻâzi. Ṯmâd is the general name of shallow wells in a river bed, and al-Maʻajjenât are of this description. About fifteen kilometers from them are the hills of as-Sedâra, in which there are several wells west of al-Hawi, and it is there that I locate as-Sdêra. Near al-Maʻâzi rises the šeʻîb of al-Mrâtijje, the root of the name of which suggests the diminutive Marrût. This, accordingly, denotes the zone between aṣ-Ṣahab to the south and al-Mrâtijje about forty-five kilometers to the north.The Prophet granted in fief to Ḥuṣejn ibn Mušammet the wells near the important transport route that passes from north to south through the western district of the Ǧuḏâm territory, and Ḥuṣejn was entitled to demand remuneration from the trade caravans.