'Southern Nejd: Journey to Kharj, Aflaj, Sulaiyyil, and Wadi Dawasir in 1918.' [‎12r] (28/100)

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Ain al Dhila about 100 by seventy paces in extent with a sheer
precipice of forty feet on the cliff side and walls of lesser height
on the other sides, and Ain Mukhisa, a pretty pond surrounded
by reeds and tamarisk bushes about 150 by eighty paces in area
with banks about two or three feet high. As I have already
noted the remains of subterranean aqueducts connecting these
last two reservoirs with the Saih stream are still in evidence.
Owing to the immense depth of these reservoirs, which in spite of
countless attempts have never been fathomed,the water appears to
be almost black though in reality extraordinarily limpid and trans
parent, a stone cast into it remaining visible for an incredible time.
Leaving the Aiyun one strikes across the valley over a
tract of saline loam traversed by the extremities of the southern
drainage channels until at a distance of three and a half miles
from Ain Mukhisa one reaches the village of Dhabaa, an Akhwan
settlement founded only last year by the Beni Amir section of
the Subai on the site of an earlier settlement now in ruins.
Round the village lies a considerable area of well cultivation,
cornfields for the most part with scattered patches of mis
cellaneous crops—cotton, pepper, saffron and the like, and the
village itself consists of an untidy straggling collection of mean
mud huts grouped around a pretentious mosque of typical
Wahhabi pattern with a Liwan or portico of seventeen pointed
arches. In estimating the population of an Akhwan settlement
one must bear in mind the fact that all Akhwan are Badawin
and to a large extent retain their nomadic tendencies, using their
permanent settlements mainly as rallying points for religious
exercise at such seasons as Ramdhan and of course at harvest
time (in their case the wheat harvest). Ibn Saud himself told
me that the able-bodied Akhwan population of Dhabaa was
1,000, a figure which includes all males above, say, twelve years
old: on the other hand the total number of rifles distributed to
this village is said to have been only 300 while the existing
mud huts certainly do not number more than 250. I should
be inclined to estimate the population of the settlement at not
more than 1,.000 souls all told, many of whom have not yet begun
to build, though the total may in course of the next few years
rise to 1,500 or 2,000 souls if and when the whole of the Beni
Amir section settle down more or less permanently.
From Dhabaa one passes south-west across the bed of Shaib
Ain to the small oasis of Naajan one and a half miles distant,