Page:The Northern Ḥeǧâz (1926).djvu/69

 riders. They were Terâbîn, who were encamped by the Mediterranean Sea to the south of Gaza and were riding to the Saʻîdijjîn clan, whose encampment we had seen at 8.09 in the šeʻîb of al-Ḫajjâṭ, in order to arrive at an agreement concerning the consequences of a crime. A fellow tribesman of theirs had killed a member of the Terâbîn and had fled to the Saʻîdijjîn to save his life. He had offered blood money to the avengers of the murdered man; the offer was accepted, and the dead man’s relatives were now riding to meet him with his surety, for the purpose of collecting the stipulated amount.

At 9.50 we entered the Roman highroad which leads from the ruins of al-Ḥomejma along the aqueduct as far as the spring of al-Ḳena’ and along the southern slope of al-Ḳrajjeʻe to the ridge of aš-Šera’. On the elevation of aṯ-Ṯuṛra, to the left, there lay a great heap of stones, Ab-an-Nsûr, the remains of a watchtower. At 10.09 the guide showed me the ruins of al-Baradijje to the east and, to the northeast of them in a steep rocky wall, the cave of Harâbt ammu Sanâjeḥ. From 10.24 to 12.20 the camels satisfied their hunger with ʻaẓam plants, while we drew a sketch map of the surrounding country (temperature: 27.5° C). From here on the journey was even more troublesome than before. The ravines became deeper and deeper, their sides more and more precipitous, so that we were obliged to lead the camels. If one of the animals began to gallop, it lost the articles hung from the saddle, or else its load slipped over to one side, and we had to collect the lost articles or put the load straight again. The Roman highroad branched off of our route in a north-northeasterly direction, leading south of the ruins of Ṭâsân to those of Swêmre and there turning off northward past al-Ḳrên and Ẓôr to the ruins of aṣ-Ṣadaḳa. At 12.40 P. M. we descended into a deep basin in which there are numerous caves, Harâb ad-Dukkân (temperature: 30.2° C).

At one o’clock, having ʻAjn az-Zwejde on our left hand, we made our way cautiously down to the large spring  ʻAjn Burḳa (Fig. 13), where we remained from 1.30 to 4.15. Below the spring a rectangular pool had been constructed from large hewn stones, into which the water flowed and from which it was distributed over the surrounding gardens. The pool, however, was entirely clogged up, and there remained nothing of the gardens save the small walls which were built to keep