'Southern Nejd: Journey to Kharj, Aflaj, Sulaiyyil, and Wadi Dawasir in 1918.' [‎22r] (48/100)

2Z
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about five miles in diameter and draining from all sides into a
number of small bush patches, known collectively as A1 Kar-
midiyat, in the centre, crossing which to its further lip we
descended the gentle outer slope of the Biyadh along the course
of Shaib Muraikha to its confluence with a large bushy
depression called Shaib Hauzaiyya about five miles from the
edge of the Karmidiyat saucer.
We were now out of the Biyadh tract whose outer cliff
runs from this point south for two miles to the head of the
Maqran depression and thence south-west, its sides enclosing,
with the distant edge of the Tuwaiq, a vast triangular depression
dotted with broken ridges between which a number of broad
channels run down to a central basin or junction (Maqran)
from which a single channel carries their superfluous water
through the heart of the Biyadh towards the southern sands.
Of these channels the most important are the Shutba and
Dhabahiyya which drain the Tuwaiq plateau from its western
rim and emerging on the plain at its eastern extremity run down
in broad bushy channels on either side of a large isolated ridge
called Mughali until they meet in the Maqran. The Hauzaiyya
already mentioned drains a small isolated ridge called Fard
standing out from Tuwaiq into the Shutba, which also receives
the drainage of the Biyadh slope from a small Shaib called Hawi.
From the west and south-west the Dhabahiyya receives the
drainage of two channels namely Shaib Atur, separated from it
by a thin tongue of sand and apparently rising in a low group of
ridges called Farda ibn Muwwash, and Shaib Sahab running
down from the southern watershed of the Maqran system
between the rim of the Biyadh and the eastern edge of Farda
ibn Muwwash, which to all intents and purposes forms a second
triangular projection of the Biyadh towards Tuwaiq.
The junction or Maqran itself is a large well-wooded basin,
well stocked with gum-bearing Acacias (Talha) and other trees
of considerable size, and chiefly remarkable for its three large
ponds (Khafs), which though of recent formation, have for several
years held a permanent supply of water, to which the Badawin
flock in vast numbers from the waterless pastures around and
which has resulted in a substantial shortening of the Aflaj-
Sulaiyil road by cutting off the detour formerly made for water
to the hamlet of Shotba at the edge of Tuwaiq. These ponds,
ranging in size from eighty by thirty yards to twenty by fifteen