Those Are, Hadda To The West, Asfan To The North, Wady Mohrem
To The East, And Zat Ork To The South.
Aly Bey el Abbassi has
represented this district, in his map, as a particular province or
sacred territory called Belad el Harameyn:
But in fact, no such province
has ever existed; and the title of Belad el Harameyn is given, not to
this sacred space, but to both the territories of Mekka and Medina.
[p.466] No. VII
Philological Observations.
MANY Arabic terms which have become obsolete in other places, and are
found only in the good authors, many expressions even of the Koran, no
longer used elsewhere, are heard at Mekka in the common conversation of
the people, who retain, at least in part, the original language of the
Koreysh. Some neighbouring Bedouin tribes, especially those of Fahm and
Hodheyl, use a dialect still more pure and free from provincialisms and
grammatical errors. I sometimes attended the lectures of a Sheikh in the
mosque, who to his own excellent native Arabic had added the result of
his studies at Cairo: and I never heard finer Arabic spoken. He prided
himself in sounding all the vowels, not only in reading, but even in
conversation; and every word he uttered might be noted as of standard
purity.
It is to their extensive commerce with foreigners that we must ascribe
the corruption of the Mekkan dialect when compared with that of the
neighbouring Bedouins, though it still serves as a model of softness to
the natives of Syria and Egypt.
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