"كتيّب الجزيرة العربية. المجلد I. ١٩١٧" [‎٣‎٦‎٨] (٧٤٨/٣٧٧)

368
NEJD
the fork of the south-eastward range, and its principal settled area
is a slightly depressed strip down the centre of this plateau which
includes the heads of several sha'l or water-courses, which mostly
take a direction from SW. to NE., following a slight depression
between the western and eastern ridges. These wadis are divided
one from another by stony steppe, and the villages are all isolated
oases. There are also spots of settlement out on the eastern ed^e
of the plateau, both in the north to the east of Zilfl and Meima'
and also in the south in the upper part of the fork.
Though the central depression carries a series of flourishing
villages, it offers so narrow and intermittent a habitable strip, and
there is so little settled life outside it, that the number of settlements
is small compared to the whole area of the district. Shakespear was
informed in" 1914 that Sedeir contained no more than eighteen
villages altogether. We may put the population of the whole
eighteen settlements at a little under 20,000.
All the villages of any importance lie on a main route, dealt with
later (see Route No. 16). Among them the following seem to be
reckoned towns :—
1. Mejma', in the north, situated on the S. side of a wadi
running into the Mishqar valley. The levy of the whole district
marches under its banner, and like Aneizah in Qasim it is autonomous,
choosing its own emir but paying tribute to Ibn Sa'ud, under the
agreement by which it surrendered to the latter after a very long
resistance in 1906. Its sympathies were, and are, Rashidite.
Its population is about 3,500. It is walled, and has a castle or
tower on a knoll to the west. The wells vary from 35 to 70 feet
in depth, and are precarious. The sug has 50 shops. The date-
gardens are large, and the Emir occupies a house near the walls,
finely enough built and decorated to be called palatial according
to Nejd standards.
2. Zilfi, sometimes reckoned to Qasim and sometimes neither to
that district nor to Sedeir, lies in the extreme north, in a plain (1,800
ft.) enclosed between Toweiq E. and N. and high dunes W.
Palgrave (1862) described it as a single wealthy and commercial
town, but Shakespear (1914) found it split into two walled towns,
Shamaliyah, on the NW.—the older town—and Jumbra on the E.,
which he was told had formerly been joined. The first stands out
in the bare plain; the other in extensive gardens, about 1 mile
distant, Raunkiaer (1912) visited only the first and heard of the
other as a suburb. The local Emir lives in Shamaliyah, which Raun-
kiaer estimated as a quadrangle with sides from 250 to 300 metres
in length. The mud walls are about 16 feet high, with three towers