[73] Yâḳût mentions Kebeisah as the oasis four miles from Hît upon the desert road. There are, he says, a number of villages there, the inhabitants of which live in the extreme of poverty and misery, by reason of the aridity of the surrounding waste.
[74] The central division wall in the long south chamber is a later addition.
[75] Described by Choisy: L’Art de bâtir chez les Byzantins, p. 31.
[76] For example Ḳasṭal (Brünnow and Domaszewski: Provincia Arabia, Vol. II. pl. xliv.); Ḳaṣr el Abyaḍ (de Vogüé: La Syrie Centrale, Vol. I. p. 69); Deir el Kahf, founded in A.D. 306 (Butler: Ancient Architecture in Syria, Section A, Part II. p. 146); Ḳuṣeir el Ḥallâbât, dated A.D. 213 (ditto, p. 72); barracks at Anderîn, dated A.D. 558 (ditto, Section B, Part II. pl. viii.).
[77] Ṭuba with a triple court (Musil: Ḳuṣeir ’Amra, Vol. I. p. 13); Kharânî (ditto, p. 97); Khân ez Zebîb (Provincia Arabia, Vol. II. p. 78).
[78] The whole area of ruins is known as Kherâb = ruin.
[79] It is not necessarily so late, for the Baghdâd Gate at Raḳḳah has the same arch, and it is certainly earlier.
[80] See Rothstein: Die Dynastie der Lakhmiden in al Ḥîra, p. 25. He gives reasons for believing that the art of writing Arabic was first practised at Ḥîrah. The population was largely Christian (the ’Ibâd of the Arab historians); Ḥîrah was the seat of a bishopric, and frequent allusion is made to churches and monasteries in and near the town.
[81] Meissner: “Ḥîra und Khawarnaḳ”, Sendschriften der D. Orient Gesell., No. 2.
[82] I have already published the plan in the Hellenic Journal for 1910, Part I., p. 69, in an article on the vaulting system of the palace. Ukheiḍir was visited in the year 1907 by M. Massignon, though this fact was unknown to me until I returned to England in July 1909. He has published an account of it, together with a sketch plan made under circumstances of great difficulty, in the Bulletin de l’Acad. des Inscr. et Belles-Lettres of March 1909, in the Gazette des Beaux Arts of April 1909, and in the Mémoires de l’Institut français du Caire, vol. xxviii. (The last named has not yet appeared, but he has been so kind as to let me see an advance copy.) Neither to M. Massignon nor to me belongs the honour of discovery; an unknown Englishman had visited the palace in the eighteenth century, and his brief report is given by Niebuhr (Reisebeschreibung, vol. ii., p. 225, note): “Ich habe in dem Tagebuch eines Engländers, der von Haleb nach Basra gereist war, gefunden, dass er 44 Stunden Südfost nach Osten von Hit, eine ganz verlassene Stadt in der Wüste angetroffen habe, wovon die Mauer 50 Fuss hoch und 40 Fuss dick war. Jede der vier Seiten hatte 700 Fuss, und in der Mauer waren Thürme. In dieser Stadt oder grossem Castell, findet man noch ein kleines Castell. Von eben dieser verlassenen Stadt hörte ich nachher, dass sie von den Arabern El Khader genannt werde, und nur 10 bis 12 Stunden von Meshed Ali entfernt sei.” I cannot feel any doubt that the “forsaken town” referred to in the diary, the existence of which was confirmed by the Arabs, who spoke of it to Niebuhr under the name of Khader, is our Ukheiḍir. So far as I have been able to discover, the nameless Englishman was the first modern traveller to visit the site.