At Eight Hours And Three Quarters From Aaere, And At A Short Distance To
The Right, Is The Village Obta [Arabic]; Our Route N.W. By N. Nine Hours
And A Quarter, We Saw, At One Hour To The Left, The Village El Kherbe
[Arabic].
Nine hours and three quarters, Shemskein [Arabic], one of the
principal villages in the Haouran.
As we had rode at a very brisk pace,
the above distance of nine hours and three quarters may be computed at
nearly twelve hours of the common travelling. Shemskein, a village
containing upwards of one hundred families, is situated on the Hadj
road, on the side of Wady
[p.240]Hareir [Arabic], over which a solid bridge has been built on one
side of the village: this Wady comes from the north-east at four or six
hours distance, and flows south-west. It is one of the largest torrents
of Haouran, and was at this moment full of water, while most of the
other Wadys were nearly dried up. The Sheikh of Shemskein has the title
of Sheikh el Haouran, and holds the first rank among the village Sheikhs
of the country. In the time of Hadj he collects from the Haouran and
Djolan about fifteen hundred camels, and accompanies them to Mekka. His
income is considerable, as the peasants of the different villages of the
Haouran, when engaged in disputes with neighbouring villagers, or with
their Sheikhs, generally apply in the first instance to his tribunal.
We alighted at the Sheikh's house, in the court-yard of which we found
almost the whole population of the village assembled:
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