Tales from the Queen of the Desert by Gertrude Margaret

Tales from the Queen of the Desert by Gertrude Margaret

Author:Gertrude Margaret [Gertrude Bell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780944166
Publisher: Hesperus Press Ltd.
Published: 2014-01-15T00:00:00+00:00


4

Salcah, the city of King Og in Bashan, must have been a fortified place from the beginning of history. The modern village clusters round the base of a small volcano, on the top of which, built in the very crater, is the ruined fortress. This fortress and its predecessors in the crater formed the outpost of the Haurān Mountains against the desert, the outpost of the earliest civilisation against the earliest marauders. The ground drops suddenly to the south and east, and, broken only by one or two volcanic mounds in the immediate neighbourhood, settles itself down into the long levels that reach Euphrates stream; straight as an arrow from a bow the Roman road runs out from Salkhad into the desert in a line that no modern traveller has followed beyond the first two or three stages. The caravan track to Nejd begins here and passes by Kāf and Ethreh along the Wādi Sirhan to Jōf and Hāil, a perilous way, though the Blunts pursued it successfully and Euting after them. Euting’s description of it, done with all the learning and the minute observation of the German, is the best we have. Due south of Salkhad there is an interesting ruined fort, Kal’at el Azrak, in an oasis where there are thickets full of wild boar: Dussaud visited it and has given an excellent account of his journey. No doubt there is more to be found still; the desert knows many a story that has not yet been told, and at Salkhad it is difficult to keep your feet from turning south, so invitingly mysterious are those great plains.

I went at once to the house of Nasīb el Atrāsh and presented Fellāh ul ’Isa’s letter. Nasīb is a man of twenty-seven, though he looks ten years older, short in stature and sleek, with shrewd features of a type essentially Druze and an expression that is more cunning than pleasant. He received me in his mak’ad, where he was sitting with his brother Jada’llah, a tall young man with a handsome but rather stupid face, who greeted me with ‘Bonjour,’ and then relapsed into silence, having come to the end of all the French he knew. Just as he had borrowed one phrase from a European tongue, so he had borrowed one article of dress from European wardrobes: a high stick-up collar was what he had selected, and it went strangely with his Arab clothes. There were a few Druzes drinking coffee in the mak’ad, and one other whom I instantly diagnosed as an alien. He turned out to be the Mudīr el Māl of the Turkish government – I do not know what his exact functions are, but his title implies him to be an agent of the Treasury. Salkhad is one of three villages in Jebel Druze (the others being Sweida and ’Areh) where the Sultan has a Kāimakām and a telegraph station. Yūsef Effendi, Kāimakām, and Milhēm Iliān, Mudīr el Māl, were considerably surprised when I turned



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