by peasants, if the safety of our lives and property could be guaranteed. We are told about Paradise which we have not seen, but the whole of our coast could be made a single paradise and we could dwell in it.”
“Who taught thee, ʻAfnân, to speak thus?”
“My father, my uncles on my father’s side, and all with whom I meet. Betake thyself, O Mûsa, to al-Mwêleḥ or Ẓbe’ or Ẓaḥakân, and everywhere thou wilt hear the same thing that I, ʻAfnân, am telling thee.”
We were disturbed in our conversation by three riders on camels arriving from the south. They were going on the Darb ar-Rakak road as far as the aš-Šarma valley, where they had branched off to the oasis, and, having discovered that ʻAfnân was sojourning at al-Ḫrajbe, they had wished to go there to see him. But the slave, whom ʻAfnân had sent into the oasis for the sheep, had told them that ʻAfnân was to be found on the peninsula of al-Mṣajbe, and they had therefore journeyed to us. While ʻAfnân was discussing things with one of them, the other two drew in the sand for me a map of all the surrounding neighborhood from al-Ǧeles to the sea, indicating the hills and mountains by means of small stones and cutting the courses of the various šeʻibân. They were admirably acquainted with the whole region, especially the elder, who, quite unabashed, declared that when he had been a young man he had been fond of going on marauding expeditions and that he had spent months at a time in the ravines of the granite mountains which separate the coast valleys from the northern highlands. From his indications we drew a map of the whole coast area and fixed the position of the mountains in sight, from Mount Ṛâl in the south as far as Ornub in the east and az-Zihed in the north.
Mṣajbet Šarma is actually the eastern extremity of a strip of dry land which formerly extended westward nearly as far as Râs al-Ḳaṣba. This strip was broken through by the sea in six places, and of it there remain six larger islets and several smaller ones. Between them and the northern mainland there is a bay about twenty kilometers broad and sixty-five kilometers long. During the reign of the Ptolemies these islets were explored, and detailed accounts of them and the coast have been preserved to us from the second century before Christ.[1]
- ↑ See below, pp. 302—308.
