Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/96

 633–4] Damascus). The point in dispute is whether he passed from ʿAin at-Tamr to Arak via Dūmat al-Jandal (as Sir William Muir, following Ibn al-Athīr, believed), or by a direct north-westerly march (as M. de Goeje, after weighing the evidence of the various sources, concluded). This much is certain that the untraced part of the route included a long march through waterless desert—between two points called respectively Ḳorāḳir and Suwā, of which, however, the sites are not known. Ibn al-Athīr thus describes this daring achievement:—Khālid reached Ḳorāḳir (a watering-place belonging to the Kelb tribe) and bethought him how he should proceed to Suwā, a desert journey of five days. He found a guide whose name was Rāfiʿ, son of ʿOmeira, of the tribe of Ṭaiʾ, who warned him that to travel with horses and baggage was impossible. "For, by Allah, even single horsemen fear to follow this track." Khālid replied: "There is no other way, if we are to fetch a compass round the Greeks and not let them cut us off from succouring our friends." So he ordered the leader of each company to take water for five days, and to deprive a sufficient number of the best camels of water, and then let them drink once and again until they could hold no more. Next they must tie up the camels' ears and bind their lips so that they should not ruminate. So haply might the water last. At each stage across the wilderness, ten such camels were slain for each troop of a hundred lances. The water drawn from their bodies was mixed with their milk for the horses. On the fifth day the supply was at an end. When they had reached the neighbourhood of Al-ʿAlamein (the two waymarks), where water should have been, the guide cried in despair: "Look if you see the box-thorn; it is about the height of a man sitting." They replied that they could not see any. Then he cried: "To God we belong and unto Him do we return. You are lost, by God! and I am lost along with you" (for his sight had become affected). "Look again, ill be upon you!" So they looked and found one tree. It had been cut down, so that only the root remained. Then they shouted, Allāhu Akbar!—God is most great. So they dug and found a spring and all drank. "By God!" said the guide, "I never came before to this spring except once with my father when I was a boy."