Page:The Northern Ḥeǧâz (1926).djvu/191

 Ǧowf. Going on foot from camp to camp, they had reached the camp of the Ǧmêʻânijjîn clan, belonging to the Beni Aṭijje, near the railway station of al-Mdawwara. They gave a greeting, their greeting was returned, and yet they were surrounded by some shepherds and completely robbed. Their good clothes were taken from them and old ones thrown at them in return. They fled to the chief, Maṭlaḳ eben Rbejjeʻ, asking him for his protection and the recovery of their stolen property. But Maṭlaḳ declared that he did not know the culprits, that he must first search for them; and yet they were pointed out to him sitting in front of his tent. Sbejḥ declared that this was not true, that Muṭalleḳ was lying, and that if he thought that he had been badly treated he should go to Tejma, bring out his kinsmen thence, and let them punish the rapacious Beni ʻAṭijje. The inhabitants of the oasis of Tejma had, in the last few years, been robbed several times both by the Beni ʻAṭijje and by the Âjde and Fuḳara’, belonging to the Weld ʻAli, and even by several clans of the Šammar. The gendarme Ḫalîl said that he had been at Tejma for three months. Many houses there had been ruined, many gardens laid waste, and many warriors had perished. When Zâmel eben Subhân marched into Tejma, he had all the ad-herents of the Turkish Government, nine in all, beheaded in front of the gendarmes.

At 7.06 we rode between the mountains of al-Muʻezz and Rdejhat al-Ḥamẓ. To the east rose the dome of Ḫanǧûr, to the south Ḥamra’-š-Šwârbi, with which elevation the huge mountain of al-Mizwâr is connected. In these mountains there are many ibexes and beasts of prey, especially nimr (leopard) and fahad (a leopard-like cat, smaller than a nimr). In the sand we perceived the fresh tracks of a nimr and of a gazelle, which it had dragged into a ṭalḥ thicket and devoured there. Only a few fragments of the legs remained. The nimr, it seems, is larger than the fahad and so strong that it can drag away a young camel; it therefore often attacks camels. Before the railway was built the antelopes are said to have come into the region of Ḥesma, but now they are afraid of the railway line and remain to the east.

At 7.20 we had on our left the šeʻîb of Zhejlîl, which comes from the mountain of the same name, the peak of which projects far above the table-land. At 7.30 we at last found some fresh arṭa shrubs, a proof that we had already