"كتيّب الجزيرة العربية. المجلد I. ١٩١٧" [‎١‎٤] (٧٤٨/٢٣)

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14 PHYSICAL SURVEY
ranges, is a strictly oasis settlement—i.e. an urban centre in a dis
trict isolated "by desert, . ,, .-i T^Vvoi
2 Qasim, situated beyond the steppe in the south of Jebel
Shammar, is divided into two main parts. The lower owes
fertility to constant ground-water and occasional surface-flow
in the middle course of the great Wadi Rummah (see above). As
is to be expected in a wadi-basin where the level of ground
water varies, Qasim is rather a string of oases lying SSW. and
NNE. than a continuously fertile tract. The string is something
less than a hundred miles in length. Tongues of nefud ov steppe
divide its component oases, of which the two central and principal
support the urban settlements of Aneizah and Boreidah, the largest
and most commercial towns of Central Arabia. Besides these
towns, there are some fifty settlements, large and small. Upper
Qasim (Q. el-A c la) is the steppe to north of Lower Qasim. It is a
pastoral tract, dependent on wells, which support some forty small
settlements, . ,.
3. Nejd. This, by far the most extensive group, covers, with its
steppe intervals, some 10,000 square miles, and is, geographically,
not so homogeneous as the other two^ groups. It consists, princi
pally of a more or less continuous chain of oases, lying either upon,
or under the flanks of, the plateau of Jebel Toweiq. A series of
urban settlements and large villages reaches from the (or
Sudeir) district in the north to that of (generally pronounced
Harlj or Hang) in the south. The present chief town, Riyadh, lies
in 'Aridh, the central oasis. On this central chain depend also
certain detached oasis-districts, west and south.
The whole Nejd group has dahanah east and south of it, nejud and
steppe on the north, and steppe on the west, the last probably
interrupted, after a certain distance, by more than one fertile wadi
descending from the watershed in the SW. of the peninsula. Such,
for example, is the still unexplored Wadi Dawasir, which is believed
to provide a chain of watering-places between Nejd and Yemen or
Asir
Outer Ring of Oases, &C. —The other fertile tracts of the peninsula
form a discontinuous outer ring on or near the sea-coasts, the zone
of fertility being widest on the Red Sea side and on the south-east.
On the east, this ring is at first very thin and interrupted by wide
intervals. For about a third of the Gulf Coast, from Koweit as far as
Qatif, both shore and hinterland are almost continuous steppe-desert.
Thereafter, while a series of springs at some distance inland creates
a chain of oases which forms the settled part of Hasa, there are only
small spots of fertility on the shore, at rare wadi-mouths, until the
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