The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 by Richard Burton

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M. Philipin here remained sixteen days (February 18--March 5),
during our absence in the East Country; on return we found our
good blacksmith much changed for the worse. Whilst in hard work
he had been half-starved, the Jerafin Bedawin of the
neighbourhood having disappeared with their flocks; he had been
terribly worried by the cameleers, and he had been at perpetual
feud with the miserable quarrymen. I never saw a man less fitted
to deal with (two-legged) "natives." The latter instinctively
divined that he would rather work himself than force others to
work; and they acted accordingly.

The Expedition was thus divided into four, three working parties
and one of idlers. Anton and Petros were left behind to do
nothing as magazine-men.

Lieutenant Darwaysh (the linesman) who was too weak to ride, and
Sub-Lieutenant Mohammed (the miner) who was too old to travel,
had charge of the sick; both found the far niente equally sweet.
On February 17th I again bade adieu to the gunboat Mukhbir, and
marched with the largest party upon our camp at El-Muwaylah,
distant about six miles (=one hour and forty-five minutes). The
path from Sharm Yaharr crosses the hard sands of the maritime
plain, metalled with the natural macadam of the Desert. The stone
is mostly dark silex, the "hen's liver" of the Brazil, and its
surface is kept finely polished, and free from "patina," by the
friction of the dust-laden winds. The line is deeply gashed by
short, broad gullies: the Hajj-road, running further east, heads
these ugly Nullahs. The third and largest channel is Wady Surr,
the great valley of El-Muwaylah, which may be regarded as the
southern frontier of "Madyan" (Proper): we shall trace it to its
head in the Hisma.

I had left the camp-pitching at El-Muwaylah to the Egyptian
officers, who naturally chose the site nearest the two northern
wells; a wave of ground hot by day, cold at night, windy and
dusty at all times; moreover, the water was near enough to be
horribly fouled. No wonder that in such a place many of the men
fell ill, and that one subsequently died--our only loss during
the four months' march.

On February 18th we proceeded, under the misguidance of a
Bash-Buzuk of the fort, Ahmed Salih el-Mal'un, to inspect a
neighbouring ruin called Aba Hawawit--"the Father of (Dwelling-)
Walls." Wallin (p. 30) declares that, "finding no mention made of
Muweilih in Arab manuscripts, nor traces or traditions among the
existing generation in the land, pointing to a high antiquity,"
he is inclined to consider it a town of modern origin, in fact
the growth of the Egyptian pilgrimage. His error is excusable. He
was a passing traveller; and I well remember that for a whole
year the true name of a hill immediately behind our house at
Damascus remained unknown to me: we had called it after our own
fashion, and the term had at once been adopted by all our
over-polite native friends. Indeed, this is one of the serious
difficulties to be encountered, throughout the East, by the
scrupulous traveller whose greatest fear is that of misleading
others. The Expedition had paid four several visits to
El-Muwaylah, and had never heard a word about ruins, when I
happened to read out before the Shaykhs assembled at Maghair
Shu'ayb a passage from El-Makrizi treating of the destroyed
cities of Madyan. They at once mentioned half a dozen names lying
within short distances of the "little salt." Amongst them was Abu
Hawawit, literally meaning "tenement walls," but here applied, in
the short form Hawawit, to ruins in general.

Had "Wali Haji," as Wallin was called by the Bedawin, looked only
ten feet beyond the north-eastern tower of the fort, near the ruins
of a modern Mastabah ("masonry bench"), he would have found long-
forgotten vestiges of ovens and slags containing copper and iron.
The same will prove to be the case about the inland defence of El-
Wijh; in fact, all these works seem for obvious reasons to have been
built upon sites that have been utilized long before their modern
day. El-Muwaylah was probably a more important place than it is at
present, when the reef-harbour, which now admits native craft only
by a gap to the south-west, had not been choked by shoals. The sandy
soil wants only water to produce a luxuriant perennial growth, and
every garden can have its well. But more life is wanting; a man
heaps up a thorn-hedge, or builds a swish-wall of the brick-clay
underlying the Wady, and he forgets only to lay out the field
within. Local history does not, it is true, extend beyond two
hundred years or so, the probable date of Shaykh Abdullah's
venerated sepulchre, a truncated parallelogram of cut coralline on
the Wady Sughayyir to the north of the settlement. Yet this "little
salt" is too remarkable a site to have remained unoccupied. Possibly
it is the "," the Horse Village (and fort ?), which Ptolemy
(vi. II) places in north lat. 26 40' (true 27 40'), whilst his
"" would be the glorious Sharr, correctly consigned to north
lat. 27 20'. This argues an error of nearly sixty miles by the
geographer or his copyists. But Chapter XII. will attempt to show
that the latitude of , the modern Shuwak, is also one degree
too low. So on the East African coast Ptolemy places his Aromata
Promontorium, which can only be "Guardafui," between north lat. 5
and 7 , whereas it lies in north lat. 11 41' 4".

The Awwal Hawawit, or first ruins, begin on the right bank of the
Surr after one mile and three quarters from camp; and bear
north-east (55 mag.) from the minaret of El-Muwaylah Fort. The
position is a sandy basin, containing old Bedawi graves, bounded
by a low ridge forming a boulder-clad buttress to the Wady, while
the circuit of the two may be a mile and a half. A crumbling
modern tower, crowning the right bank, and two Mahrakah
("rub-stones") were the principal remains. The situation must
have been well chosen in the days when the heights were wooded,
and the Wady was a river. We afterwards mapped the body of the
place, lying about three miles from the fort, showing the Yubu'
bank to north-west (298 mag.); and nearly due west (260 mag.)
El-Muwaylah's only house, the Sayyid's. The site is a holm or
island in the Wady Surr, which here runs east-west, and splits:
the main line is the southern, and a small branch, a mere gully,
occupies the northern bed-side.

The chief ruin is an oblong of twenty metres by sixteen, the
short ends facing 195 (mag.); the whole built of huge pebbles.
The interior is composed of one large room to the north, with
sundry smaller divisions to the south, east, and west. Defence
was secured by a wall, distant 142 metres, thrown across the
whole eastern part of the islet: outside it are three large pits,
evidently the site of cisterns. The people also told us of a
well, the Bir el-Ashgham, which has long been mysteriously
hidden. Immense labour has also been expended in revetting the
northern and southern banks, both of the islet and the smaller
branch-bed, for many hundreds of yards with round and
water-rolled boulders, even on a larger scale than at Maghair
Shu'ayb. What all this work meant we were unable to divine.
Perhaps it belonged to the days when the seaboard of Midian was
agricultural; and it was intended as a protection against the two
torrents, the Wadys el-Zila' and Abu Zabah, which here fall into
the northern bank.

The 18th of February also made itself memorable to the second
Expedition. M. Marie was strolling near the old furnaces to the
north-east of the fort where, in 1877, he had picked up an
auriferous specimen, unfortunately lost before it reached Cairo.
Here he again found a fragment of serpentine, broken and
water-rolled into the semblance of half a globe; it showed crust
and stains of iron, filets of white quartz, and a curve (~) of
bright yellow dots, disposed like the chainlet of an aneroid.
Thereupon, we gravely debated whether these were the remains of a
vein, or had been brought to the surface by the rubbing and
polishing of the stone in water.

I could not but remark that the interior, which appeared
pyritiferous, did not show the slightest trace of precious metal.
Still the discovery gave fresh courage to all our people. The
trophy was shown to every Bedawi, far and near, with the promise
of a large reward (fifty dollars) to the lucky wight who could
lead us to the rock in situ. The general voice declared that the
"gold-stone" was the produce of Jebel Malayh (Malih): we
afterwards ascertained by marching up the Wady Surr that it was
not. In fact, the whole neighbourhood was thoroughly well
scoured; but the results were nil. In due course of time the
tarnishing and the disappearance of the metal reduced my
scepticism to a certainty: the "gold dots" were the trace of some
pilgrim or soldier's copper-nailed boot. It was the first time
that this ludicrous mistake arose, but not the last--our native
friends were ever falling into the same trap.

Amongst the minor industries of the Fort el-Muwaylah must be
reckoned selling gazelles. The Bedawin bring them in, and so
succeed in taming the timid things that they will follow their
owner like dogs, and amuse themselves with hopping upon his
shoulders. When thus trained, "Ariel" is supposed to be worth
half a napoleon. The wild ones may be bought at almost every
fort, as Ziba or El-Wijh.

Chapter X.

Through East Midian to the Hisma.

The Land of Midian is by no means one of the late Prince
Metternich's "geographical expressions." The present tenants of
the soil give a precise and practical definition of its limits.
Their Arz Madyan extends from El-'Akabah north (north lat. 29
28') to El-Muwaylah with its Wady, El-Surr (north lat. 27 40').
It has thus a total latitudinal length of 108 direct geographical
miles.[EN#149] South of this line, the seaboard of North-Western
Arabia, as far as El-Hejaz, has no generic name. The Bedawin are
contented with such vague terms, derived from some striking
feature, as "the Lands of Ziba," "of Wady Salma," "of Wady
Damah," "of El-Wijh," to denote the tract lying between the
parallels of El-Muwaylah and of Wady Hamz () in north
lat. 25 55' 15. Thus the north-south length of the southern
moiety would be 105 direct geographical miles, or a little less
than the northern; and the grand total would be 213 miles.

The breadth of this Egyptian province is determined by the
distance from the sea to the maritime mountains. In Madyan
Proper, or North Midian, the extremes would be twenty-four and
thirty-five miles. For the southern half these figures may be
doubled. Here, again, the Bedawin are definitive as regards
limits. All the Tihamah or "lowlands" and their ranges belong to
Egypt; east of it the Daulat Sham, or Government of Syria, claims
possession.

I have taken the liberty of calling the whole tract Midian; the
section above El-Muwaylah (Madyan Proper) I would term "North
Midian," and that below it "South Midian." In the days of the
ancient Midianites the frontiers were so elastic that, at times,
but never for a continuity, they embraced Sinai, and were pushed
forward even into Central Palestine. Moreover, I would prolong
the limits eastward as far as the Damascus-Medinah road. This
would be politically and ethnologically correct. With the
exception of the Ma'azah country, the whole belongs to Egypt; and
all the tribes, formerly Nabathaan, are now more or less
Egypto-Arab, never questioning the rights of his Highness the
Viceroy, who garrisons the seaboard forts. Of the other points,
historical and geographical, I am not so sure. My learned friend,
Aloys Sprenger, remarks: "Let me observe that your extending the
name 'Midian' over the whole country, as far south as the
dominions of the Porte, appears to me an innovation by which the
identity of the race along the shore of the Gulf of 'Akabah,
coast down to Wajh and Hawra, is prejudged. Would it not be
better to leave Midian where it always has been, and to consider
Bada[EN#150] the centre of Thamuditis, as it was at the time of
Pliny and Ptolemy, and as it continued to be until the Balee
(Baliyy), and other Qodha' (Kuda') tribes, came from Southern
Arabia, and exterminated the Thamudites?" This is, doubtless, a
valid objection: its only weak point is that it goes too far
back. We cannot be Conservatives in geography and ethnology; nor
can we attach much importance, in the nineteenth century, to a
race, the Beni Tamud, which had wholly disappeared before the
seventh. On the whole, it still appears to me that by adopting my
innovation we gain more than we lose; but the question must be
left for others to decide.

In our days, two great Sultanis or "highways" bound Madyan the
Less and Midian the Greater. The western, followed by the Hajj
el-Misri (Egyptian caravan), dates from the age of Sultan Selim
Khan the Conqueror; who, before making over the province to the
later Mamluk Beys, levelled rocks, cut through ridges, dug wells,
laid out the track, and defended the line by forts. Before that
time the road ran, for convenience of water, to the east or
inland: it was, in fact, the old Nabathaean highway which,
according to Strabo, connected Leuke Kome with the western
capital, Petra. Further east, and far beyond the double chain of
maritime mountains, is the highway followed by the Hajj el-Shami
(Syrian or Damascus caravan), which sets out from Constantinople,
musters at Damascus, and represents the Sultan. On both these
main lines water is procurable at almost every station; and to
them military expeditions are perforce limited. The parallelogram
between the two, varying in breadth, according to Wallin, from 90
to 120 miles (direct and geographical), is irregularly supplied
in places with springs, wells, and rain-pits, which can always be
filled up or salted by the Bedawin.

The main body of the Expedition, Mr. Clarke, MM. Marie and
Lacaze, Ahmed Kaptan, and Lieutenant Amir, set out from
El-Muwaylah at 6.30 a.m. (February 19th), escorted by the Sayyid
and the three salaried Shaykhs, including our friend Furayj. The
Remingtons numbered ten, and there were also ten picks, of whom
five waited upon the mules; of the sixty-one camels six were
dromedaries, and as the road grew lighter our beasts of burden
increased, somehow or other, to sixty-four. The caravan now loads
in twenty minutes instead of five hours; and when politike, or
fear of danger, does not delay us, we start in a quarter of an
hour after the last bugle-sound. This operation is under charge
of Lieutenant Amir, who does his best to introduce Dar-Forian
discipline: the camels being first charged with the Finatis
("metal water-barrels"), then with the boxes, and lastly with the
tents.

After passing the ruins of Abu Hawawit, we began at 9:15 a.m. to
exchange the broad Wady Surr of the flat seaboard, with its tall
banks of stiff drab clay, for a gorge walled with old
conglomerates, and threading the ruddy and dark-green foot-hills
of the main Ghat. As in the Wady el-Maka'dah and other
"winter-brooks," the red porphyritic trap, heat-altered argil,
easily distinguished by its fracture from the syenites of the
same hue, appeared to be iron-clad, coated with a thin crust of
shiny black or brown peroxide (?). This peculiarity was noticed
by Tuckey in the Congo, by Humboldt in the Orinoco, and by myself
in the Sao Francisco river; I also saw it upon the sandstones of
the wild mountains east of Jerusalem, where, as here, air and not
water must affect the oxide of iron. In both cases, however, the
cause would be the same, and the polish would be a burnishing of
Nature on a grand scale.

After six very slow miles we halted, for rest and refection, at a
thread of water in the section of the Surr which receives the
Wady el-Najil. The sides were crowded with sheep and goats, the
latter, as in the Syrian lowlands, almost invariably black; and
the adjoining rocks had peculiar attractions for hares, hawks,
and partridge. In these upland regions water is almost
everywhere, and generally it is drinkable; hence the Bedawin
naturally prefer them to the coast. An umbrella-shaped
thorn-tree, actually growing on a hill-top, and defined by the
sky-line, excited our wonder and admiration; for here, as in
Pontus--

"Rara, nec hac felix, in apertis eminet arvis
Arbor, et in terra est altera forma maris."

Indeed, throughout our journey this spectacle always retained its
charms, aiding Fancy to restore the barrens to what they had been
in the prosperous days of yore.

The Wady Surr now began to widen out, and to become more riant,
whilst porphyry was almost the only visible rock. After a total
of ten "dawdling" miles, marching almost due east, we found our
tents pitched in a broad and quasi-circular basin, called El-Safh
("the level ground of") Jebel Malih ("Mount Pleasant"?), which
the broad-speaking Bedawin lengthen to Malayh. Our camel-men had
halted exactly between two waters, and equally distant from both,
so as to force upon us the hire of extra animals. We did not
grumble, however, as we were anxious to inspect the Afran
("furnaces") said to be found upon the upper heights of the
Sharr--of these apocryphal features more hereafter. Fresh
difficulties! The Jerafin-Huwaytat tribe, that owns the country
south of the Surr, could not be reached under a whole day of
dromedary-riding: in reality they were camped a few furlongs off,
but anything to gain L8 per diem for doing nothing! Two Bedawi
shepherd-lads promised to act guides next morning, and duly
failed to appear, or, more probably, were forbidden to appear.
They had also romanced about ruins, fountains, palms, and rushes
in the Wady el-Kusayb, the south-eastern influent. At night Ahmed
el-'Ukbi, surnamed Abu Khartum, arrived in camp: he had travelled
more than once to Tabuk, carrying grain, and though he had failed
as a merchant, he retained his reputation as a guide. As regards
the furnaces, he also, like Furayj, could speak only from
hearsay. Opinions were divided in camp: I saw clearly that a
stand was being made to delay us for four or five days; and,
despite grumbling, I resolved upon deferring the visit till our
return from the interior.

The first march had led us eastward, instead of north-eastward,
in order to inspect the Wady Surr. From the seaboard, this line,
which drains the northern flank of the Sharr Mountains, appears
the directest road into the interior. We shall presently see,
however, why the devious northern way of the Wady Sadr has become
the main commercial route connecting El-Muwaylah with
Tabuk.[EN#151] During the evening we walked up the Wady Surr,
finding, in its precipitous walls, immense veins of serpentine
and porphyritic greenstone, but not a speck of gold. The upper
part of the Fiumara also showed abundant scatters of water-rolled
stones, serpentines, and hard felspars, whose dove-coloured
surface was streaked with fibrils and at times with regular veins
of silvery lustre, as if brought out by friction of the surface.
I offered a considerable sum to a Jerafin Bedawi if he would show
the rock in situ; he was evidently ignorant of it, but, like
others, he referred us to Jebel Malih.

The whole of the next day (February 20th) was spent in northing.
Leaving the noisy braying caravan to march straight on its
destination, we set out (6.15 a.m.) up the Wady Guwaymarah,
guided by Hasan el-'Ukbi, who declared that he well knew the
sites of the ruined settlements El-Khulasah and El-Zibayyib.
After walking half an hour we turned eastward into a feeder of
the Surr, the Wady el-Khulasah, whose aspect charmed me: this
drain of the inner Jedayl block was the replica of a Fiumara in
Somali-land, a broad tree-dotted flat of golden sand, bordered on
either side by an emerald avenue of dense Mimosas, forming line
under the green-stone hills to the right, and the red-stone
heights to the left. The interior, we again remarked, is
evidently more rained upon, and therefore less sterile and
desolate, than the coast and the sub-maritime regions; and here
one can well imagine large towns being built. At last, after
walking about an hour and a half (= four miles and a half)
towards the Sharr, with our backs turned upon our goal, the
rat-faced little intriguer, Hasan, declared that he knew nothing
about El-Khulasah, but that Zibayyib lay there! pointing to a
bright-red cliffy peak, "Aba'l-barid," on the left bank of the
Wady, and to others whose heads were blue enough and low enough
to argue considerable distance. He had intended his cousin Gabr
to be the real guide, and to take to himself all the credit; but
I had sent off the parlous "judge" in another direction.

Mr. Clarke, whose cantering mule had no objection to leave its
fellows, rode off with the recreant Hasan, whilst we awaited his
return under a tree.

Instead of hugging Aba'l-barid, behind which a watercourse would
have taken him straight to his destination, he struck away from
the Wady el-Khulasah. Then crossing on foot, and hauling his
animal over, a rough divide, he fell, after six miles instead of
two, into the upper course of the Wady Surr, which he reported to
be choked with stones, and refusing passage to loaded camels--as
will afterwards appear, the reverse is the case. The ruins of
El-Zibayyib lie at a junction of three, or rather four,
watercourses. The eastern is the Surr, here about five hundred
yards broad, forming a bulge in the bed, and then bending
abruptly to the south; a short line from the south-west, the Wady
Zibayyib, drains the Aba''l-barid peak; and the northernmost is
the Wady el-Safra,[EN#152] upon which the old place stands a
cheval. The western part is the larger and the more ruinous. The
thin line, three hundred yards long by thirty broad, never shows
more than two tenements deep, owing to the hill that rises behind
it: here the only furnace was found. The eastern block measures
one hundred yards by forty; both are razed to their basements,
resembling the miners' settlement on the Sharma cliff. They
attract attention only by their material, red boulders being used
instead of the green porphyries of the hills; and the now
desolate spot shows no signs of water or of palm-groves.

Mr. Clarke rejoined us after a couple of hours, having lost the
dog 'Brahim: under a sudden change of diet it had become too
confident of its strength, and thus it is that dogs and men come
to grief. We retraced our steps down the Wady el-Khulasah, whose
Jebel is the crupper of the little block Umm Jedayl. The lower
valley shows a few broken walls, old Arab graves, and other signs
of ancient habitation; but I am convinced that we missed the
ruins which lay somewhere in the neighbourhood. One Sulayman, a
Bedawi of the Selalimah-Huwaytat tribe, who had been rascalized
by residence at El-Muwaylah, was hunted up by the energetic
Sayyid; hoping, as usual, that no action would be taken upon mere
words, he declared that El-Khulasah stood on the top of a
trap-lump. We halted to inspect it, and Lieutenant Amir rode the
Shaytanah, his vicious little she-mule, up and down steeps fit
only for a goat. Again all was in vain.

We then travelled over granite gravel along the western
foot-hills of Umm Jedayl, in which a human figure or statue had
been reported to me: now, however, it became a Sarbut, or
"upright stone." Along the flanks of the chief outlier, the Jebel
el-Ramzah, distinguished by its red crest and veins, the slope
was one strew of quartz, whole and broken; like that which we had
seen to the north, and which we were to see on our southern
journey. Despising the "rotten water" offered in two places by
the Umm Jedayl, we pitched camp on the fine gravel of the Sayl
Wady el-Jimm. Here I heard for the first time, after sighting it
for many weeks, that the latter is the name, not of a
mountain,[EN#153] but of a Sha'b or "gully" in the Jebel Dibbagh
where waters "meet." The Wady Kh'shabriyyah, separating the Umm
Jedayl from its northern neighbour, the Dibbagh, looks like a
highway; but all declare that it is closed to camels by Wa'r, or
"stony ground." Of its ruins more when we travel to the Sharr.
This day's march of four hours (= ten miles and a half) had been
a series of zigzags--north, north-east, west, and again north.

After a cool, pleasant night we set out at 6.30 a.m. (February
21st), across the broad Sayl, towards a bay in the mountains
bearing north-north-west, the mouth of the Wady Zennarah.
Entering the block, we made two short cuts to save great bends in
the bed. The first was the Sha'b el-Liwewi', the Weiwi of Wallin
(p. 304)--wild riding enough; the path often winding almost due
east, when the general direction was north-north-east. We saw,
for the first time, pure greenish-yellow chlorite outcropping
from the granite. The animals were apparently hibernating, and
plants were rare; we remarked chiefly the sorrel and the blue
thistle, or rather wild artichoke, the Shauk el-Jemel, a thorn
loved by camels (Blepharis edulis), which recalled to mind the
highlands of Syria. The second short-cut, the Wady el-Ga'agah,
alias Sawawin, was the worse of the two: the deep drops and
narrow gutters in the quartz-veined granite induced even the
Shaykhs to dismount before attacking the descents. This is rarely
done when ascending, for their beasts climb like Iceland ponies.
One of M. Lacaze's most effective croquis is that showing monture
and man disappearing in the black depths of a crevice. Some of
the hill-crests were weathered with forms resembling the
artificial. At the mid-day halting-ground we saw a stone-mother
nursing a rock-child, which might still be utilized in lands
where "thaumaturgy" is not yet obsolete.

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