ḲANAWĀT, THE BASILICA
The Ṣafa ran out to a dark mass of volcanoes, lying almost due north and south, but we were so high above them that their elevation was not perceptible. Beyond them again we could see a wide stretch of Beiḍa which was the Ruḥbeh plain. To the east and south on the immensely distant horizon a few little volcanic cones marked the end of the Ḥaurān outcrop of lava and the beginning of the Ḥamād, the waterless desert that reaches to Baghdad. To the north were the hills round Dmer, and still further north the other range bounding the valley ten miles wide that leads to Palmyra, and these ran back to the slopes of Anti-Libanus, snowcapped, standing above the desert road to Ḥomṣ. We turned east to Shibbekeh, a curious place built above a valley the northern bank of which is honeycombed with caves, and north to Sheikhly and Rāmeh on the southern brink of a very deep gully, the Wādi esh Shām, down which are the most easterly of the inhabited villages, Fedhāmeh and Ej Jeita. The settlements on this side of the Mountain have an air of great antiquity. The cave villages may have existed long before Nabatæan times; possibly they go back to the prehistoric uncertainties of King Og, or the people whom his name covered, when whole towns were quarried out underground, the most famous example being Dera'a in the Ḥaurān plain south of Mezērib. We left Mushennef to the west, not without regrets on my part that I had not time to revisit it, for mirrored in its great tank is one of the most charming of all the temples of the Jebel Druze, not excepting the magnificent monuments of Ḳanawāt. El Ajlāt, north of the Wādi esh Shām, is perched on top of a tell high enough to touch the February snow line, and another valley leads down from it to the Ṣafa—I heard of a ruin and an inscription in its lower course but did not visit them. We got to Umm Ruweik about four o'clock, and pitched tents on the edge of the mountain shelf, where I could see through my open tent door the whole extent of the Ṣafa.
Sheikh Ghishghāsh was all smiles. Certainly I could ride out to the Ruḥbeh if I would take him and his son Aḥmed and Fāiz with me. He scoffed at the idea of a larger escort. By the Face of the Truth, the Ghiāth were his servants and his bondmen, they would entertain us as the noble should be entertained and provide us with luxurious lodgings. I dined with Ghishghāsh (he would take no refusal), and concluded that he was an easy tempered, boastful, and foolish man, extremely talkative, though all that he said was not worth one of Fāiz's sentences. Fāiz fell into comparative silence in his company, and Aḥmed too said little, but that little was sensible and worth hearing. Ghishghāsh told great tales of the Ṣafa and of what it contained, the upshot of which was that beyond the ruins already known there was nothing till you travelled a day's journey east of the Ruḥbeh; but that there you came to a quarry and a ruined castle like the famous White Ruin of the Ruḥbeh which we were going to see, but smaller and less well preserved. And beyond that stretched the Ḥamād, with no dwellings in it and no rujm—even the bravest of the Arabs were forced to desert it in the summer owing to the total lack of water. My heart went out to the mysterious castle east of the Ruḥbeh, unvisited, I believe, by any traveller; but it was too distant a journey to be accomplished on the spur of the moment without preparation. "When you next return, oh lady——." Yes, when I return. But I shall not on a future, occasion rely on the luxurious entertainment of the Ghiāth.
ḲANAWĀT, DOORWAY OF THE BASILICA
ḲANAWĀT, A TEMPLE