The Bedouins have a legend of the terrible Djin, who are doomed to everlasting imprisonment in the stony Hammada. The Djin were formerly the souls of a great people inhabiting this region. By reason of their great number and strength they not only disdained all humanity, but defied both law and justice, and made themselves feared by all of their neighbors.
King Solomon sent them an apostle, who might bring them to worship one God. They, however, not only spurned and mocked at the precepts and religious ceremonies of the apostle, but put him to death.
Not satisfied, they in derision placed a pig in their temples in imitation of the sacred niche which in the wall of the mosque indicates the direction of Mecca.
These and other sacrilegious acts they committed, trusting that their great isolation, and the vast distance which separated them from all neighbors, would prevent any accounts of their impiety from reaching the ears of the great Solomon.
It happened that there were many cranes in the land. These were so scandalized at the impious acts that they sent one of their number as a deputy to carry the news to the great prophet. Filled with indignation at what had taken place, he sent a summons to the lapwing, his favorite bird, commanding him to call together all the cranes upon the face of the earth.
When they were assembled they formed so vast a number that they became a great cloud, which threw the earth into shadow from Misda, near Tripoli, to Murzuk, the capital of Fezzan.
Each crane held a stone in its beak. At a preconcerted signal all dropped their loads upon the heads of the wicked infidels, whose souls, set free, still wander over the solitary waste; while never has a crane been able to fly through this space of torment.
Some writers trace a resemblance between this Mohammedan legend and the story of the "Pigmies and the Cranes."
The northern part of the district consists for the most part of hills of a perfectly bare sandstone. There are no rivers nor brooks among these hills to irrigate the soil or to render it fertile. The southern part is mostly a level waste of desert sand, of which only about one tenth is capable of cultivation.
In the neighborhood of the villages of Fezzan, some ninety in number, situated mostly in the wadies, or apologies for valleys, we find wheat, barley, and other grains under cultivation. Camels and horses are raised in great numbers, and many wild animals and birds of prey are frequently found.