'Many a day,' explained Muhammad, 'we are out only to rob. Then if we meet a few horsemen who try to escape from us, we pursue, crying, "Your mount, lad!" And if they surrender and deliver to us their mares, their lives are safe, even if they should prove to be blood enemies.' It is usual to make light of the courage called forth by Arab warfare, and I do not think that the mortality is, as a rule, high; but I have on one or two occasions found myself with an Arab guide under conditions that might have proved awkward, and I have never yet seen him give signs of fear. It is only to town-dwellers like Fawwaz that the wilderness is beset with terrors. Shefatha is an oasis of 160,000 palms. The number is rapidly diminishing, and on every side there are groups of headless trunks from which the water has been turned off. This is owing to the iniquitous exactions of the taxgatherers, who levy three and four times in the year the moneys due from each tree, so that the profits on the fruit vanish, and even turn to loss. The springs are sulphurous, but very abundant. The palm trees rise from a bed of corn and clover; willows and pomegranates edge the irrigation streams, and birds nest and sing in the thickets. To us, who had dropped out of the deserts of the Euphrates, it seemed a paradise. The glimmering weirs, the sheen of up-turned willow leaves, the crinkled beauty of opening pomegranate buds were so many marvels embraced in the recurring miracle of spring that grows in wonder year by year. Through these enchanted groves we rode from our camp to the Castle of Sham'un, the citadel of the oasis. Its great walls, battered and very ancient, tower above the palm trees, and within their circuit nestles a whole village of mud-built houses. There is an arched gateway to the north, but the largest fragment of masonry lies to the east, a massive shapeless wall of stone and unburnt bricks, seamed from top to bottom by a deep fissure, which the khalif, 'Ali Abu Talib, said my guide, made with a single sword cut. Among the houses there are many vestiges of old foundations, and a few vaulted chambers, now considerably below the level of the soil. It was impossible to plan the place in its present state; I can only be sure that it was square with bastioned corners. My impression is that it is pre-Mohammedan, repaired by the conquerors, and local tradition, to which, however, it would be unwise to attach much value, bears out this view. Possibly Sham'un was the main fortress of 'Ain et Tamr. At Shefatha I parted from Hussein, Muhammad, and the camel riders. Kheidhar was reported to be four hours away, a little to the south of the Kerbela road. The Qaimmaqam could supply me with two zaptiehs, and Fattuh had hired a couple of mules to carry our diminished packs. The four men intended to travel back together, making a long day from Rahhaliyyeh to Themail so as to avoid a night in the open desert. They started next morning in good heart, fortified by presents of quinine, a much prized gift, and other more substantial rewards. Muhammad would gladly have come with us to Kerbela, but we remembered the Beni Hassan and decided that it would be wiser for him to turn back, though before he left we had laid plans for a longer and a more adventurous journey to be undertaken another year, please God! We had not gone more than an hour from Shefatha before we met a company of the Beni Hassan coming in to the oasis for dates, a troop of lean and ragged men driving donkeys. They asked us anxiously whether we had seen any of the Deleim at Shefatha. 'No, wallah!' said Fattuh with perfect assurance, and I laughed, knowing that Muhammad was well on his way to Rahhaliyyeh. We had ridden to the south-east for about three hours, through a most uncompromising wilderness, when, in the glare ahead, we caught sight of a great mass which I took for a natural feature in the landscape. But as we approached its shape became more and more definite, and I asked one of the zaptiehs what it was. 'It is Kheidhar,' said he. 'Yallah, Fattuh, bring on the mules,' I shouted, and galloped forward. Of all the wonderful experiences that have fallen my way, the first sight of Kheidhar is the most memorable. It reared its mighty walls out of the sand, almost untouched by time, breaking the long lines of the waste with its huge towers, steadfast and massive, as though it were, as I had at first thought it, the work of nature, not of man. We approached it from the north, on which side a long low building runs out towards the sandy depression of the Wady Lebay'a. A zaptieh caught me up as I reached the first of the vaulted rooms, and out of the northern gateway a man in long robes of white and black came trailing down towards us through the hot silence. 'Peace be upon you,' said he. 'And upon you peace, Sheikh 'Ali,' returned the zaptieh. This lady is of the English.' 'Welcome, my lady khan,' said the sheikh; ' be pleased to enter and to rest.' He led me through a short passage and under a tiny dome. I was aware of immense corridors opening on either hand, but we passed on into a great vaulted hall where the Arabs sat round the ashes of a fire. 'My lady khan,' said Sheikh 'Ali, this is the Castle of Nu'man ibn Munthir.' I intend to publish a detailed study of the Castle of Kheidhar the name is the colloquial abbreviation of Ukheidhar, which means nothing more than a small green place, i.e. an oasis; but I may here take occasion to say that I doubt whether local tradition is right in ascribing it to the Lakhmid princes. There is no ques tion but that it is the work of Persian builders; the affinities between it and some of the Sassanian palaces, notably Kasr-i-Shirin, are conclusive on that point; but it is more difficult to determine whether it was constructed before or after the Mohammedan invasion. In When I returned to England I found that Kheidhar had been visited the preceding year by M. Louis Massignon, and that a ground plan, not very accurate in detail, had been published by him during my absence. (Garette des Beaux Arts, April 1909, and Bulletin de l'Acad. des Inscrip. et Belles Lettres, March 1909, p. 202.) His survey did not include the annex to the north (probably stables and cattle sheds), nor has he given plans of the two upper storeys of the palace. My thanks are due to Mr Watts, a member of Sir William Willcock's irrigation survey; he spent a few hours at Kheidhar while I was there, and was so kind as to take the bar outer measurements of the enclosing walls and the interior court. When I had finished the plotting of the whole, I found that I had come within 30 centimetres of his calculations, so that the errors in the plan cannot be great. The plans will appear in an article on the vaulting system of the castle, which will be published in the next number of the 'Journal of the Hellenic Society, |