These Enclosures
Contain The Cattle Of The Inhabitants; They Have Strong Wooden Doors,
Shut At Night To Prevent "Lifting," And They Are Capable Of Being
Stoutly Defended.
The inhabitants of the suburb are for the most part
Badawi settlers, and a race of schismatics who will be noticed in
another chapter.
Beyond these suburbs, to the South, as well as to the
North and Northeast, lie gardens and extensive plantations of
palm-trees.
[FN#1] To the East he limits Al-Hijaz by Yamamah (which some include in
it), Nijd, and the Syrian desert, and to the West by the Red Sea. The
Greeks, not without reason, included it in their Arabia Petraea.
Niebuhr places the Southern boundary at Hali, a little town south of
Kunfudah (Gonfoda). Captain Head (Journey from India to Europe) makes
the village Al-Kasr, opposite the Island of Kotambul, the limit of
Al-Hijaz to the South.
[FN#2] Or, according to others, between Al-Yaman and Syria.
[FN#3] If you ask a Badawi near Meccah, whence his fruit comes, he will
reply "min Al-Hijaz," "from the Hijaz," meaning from the mountainous
part of the country about Taif. This would be an argument in favour of
those who make the word to signify a "place tied together," (by
mountains). It is notorious that the Badawin are the people who best
preserve the use of old and disputed words; for which reason they were
constantly referred to by the learned in the palmy days of Moslem
philology.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 507 of 571
Words from 140400 to 140652
of 157964
