'Southern Nejd: Journey to Kharj, Aflaj, Sulaiyyil, and Wadi Dawasir in 1918.' [‎10v] (25/100)

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conquerors (for Yamama was undoubtedly an Arab city as the
scanty remains of its mud walls and houses testify), having
driven out the original settlers, themselves settled down to
enjoy the fruits of their labour. The capital was Yamama
comprising an immense city surrounded by palm-groves of
corresponding size ; Sulaimiya probably existed as an outlying
suburb and large cornfields doubtless extended southward for
a considerable distance up the valley and along the right bank of
Wadi A seasonal or intermittent watercourse, or the valley in which it flows. Hanifa. Whether outlying palm patches and villages
existed on the sites of modern Dilam and Naajan it would'be
difficult to say : it is not improbable that they did, but it is certain
that Yamama contained the bulk of the population of the
district including the court and palace of a once powerful king.
How it came to fall will probably never be known. War and
pestilence are possible explanations, but the situation of the
city low down on the right bank of Wadi A seasonal or intermittent watercourse, or the valley in which it flows. Hanifa tempts to the
theory that it was laid low by some appalling flood, which,
sweeping the great city before it, passed on leaving behind it
a trail of sand to complete the destruction of what remained of
the city and its palms by a process of slow encroachment not
yet complete. The irrigation system doubtless suffered con
siderably at the same time.
Thus perished mediaeval Yamama the remnants of whose
inhabitants probably sought safety from the floods by migration
up the valley where they founded the present capital of Dilam
and the villages around it and whence doubtless they returned
cautiously and by slow degrees to the scene of the great disaster
to repair such damage as was not irreparable and to live again
amid the wreckage of their former glory; but Yamama has
never recovered from the catastrophe and probably never will.
During the past century Kharj has been the scene of perpetual
strife, in the course of which the aqueducts have been partially
destroyed time and again, but an era of hope dawned again for
the district with the establishment of Ibn Sand once more on
the throne of Riyadh and already considerable progress has
been made in the task of restoring the irrigation system to some
thing of its former vigour. The Firzan Kariz was undergoing
lepans at the time of my visit and when restored will give new
life to the moribund palm-groves of Sulaimiya, while the flourish
ing lucerne fields of Quram are an earnest of what may yet be