'Southern Nejd: Journey to Kharj, Aflaj, Sulaiyyil, and Wadi Dawasir in 1918.' [‎30v] (65/100)

— 52 —
heightened by his politely-worded refusal of the customary gift,
which I sent for his acceptance on the last morning of my soiourn
under his roof.
East of Dam and at a distance of about one mile lies the
small unwalled hamlet of Muqabil owned by absentee Badawin
of the Dhaluq subsection of Rijban and inhabited by a population
of about fifty negro tenants—an element which figures largely
in all the settlements of the wadi A seasonal or intermittent watercourse, or the valley in which it flows. . The hamlet is situated near
the edge of the palm-belt which from this point spreads over
both banks of the channel for about a mile, and is owned by a
large and almost entirely nomadic independent section of the
Dawasir called A1 Mukharim. This section appears at one time
to have been more settled than it is now, if one may judge by
the extensive ruins, mostly of isolated qasrs, lying along the edge
of the palm-belt; the only village of this section is Matala lying
about half a mile south-east of Muqabil, unwalled, more than
half in ruins and containing a population of not more than 200
sOuls, of whom a large proportion are negroes.
A gap of half a mile separates the Mukharim palm-belt
from the best palm block in the oasis, known as the Lughaf,
and belonging with the villages in it or on its borders to the
Misaara, one of the three main sections of the Dawasir tribe.
The palm-belt is perhaps two miles long and nearly one mile
across its broadest part projecting into the sand hills and
extremely dense. • Within its southern fringe lies Nazwa, a small,
compact unwalled village of some 300 inhabitants of the Albu
Sabban subsection. About a quarter of a mile south of Nazwa
he the two walled villages of Quaiz and Nuaima with only a
few yards between them ; the former containing 300 souls of
the Albu Hasan subsection while the latter is occupied bv the
Buraik, some 400 all told. The walls of both villages are pierced
at frequent intervals by low doorways giving direct access to
the outer houses while in the case of Nuaima there is a regular
gateway on the north side. Towards the eastern extremity
of this section lie the remains of the hamlet of Darsa (generally
called Hanabija) in the bed of the wadi A seasonal or intermittent watercourse, or the valley in which it flows. . This village reduced
by feuds with the Amur population of Ruwaisa to a state border
ing on desolation was finally swept off the face of the earth by
last year's flood and all that remains of it is a few houses standing
m a patch of cornfields lying slightly out of the main course of