JABRIN	95
the oasis of Jabrin when I saw it by the light of the morning.
Only the distant hillocks of Dharbun and Mutrib stood out
prominent like watch-towers in the south-east, while the twin
Jawamir gloomily guarded the Hasaward approach and the
tumbled upland of Summan closed the western horizon like
a wall.
A wolf and a fox made an inspection of our camp during
the night but got nothing for their pains and left nothing but
their tracks. A cold breeze sprang up at dawn but the day
broke fine and sunny, while we took our ease to celebrate the
completion of the first stage of our journey—the exploration
of Jafura and its fringes. These three days (January 19th
to 21st) we would devote to a thorough examination of
the last outpost of civilisation towards the Great South
Desert of the Empty Quarter, on which we would then em-
bark. Meanwhile it was pleasant to think of restful days,
good pasturing for the camels, water and food for ourselves
and perhaps even human society, though we had so far seen
no signs of man. Yet here many centuries ago there was
something like civilisation and a well-organised society,
though human memory retains little of the past beyond the
one romantic fact that the poet Farazdaq was born and lived
in Jabrin to sing of the chivalry whose champions are forgot-
ten or merged in legend.
Yet their works live after them in the ruinous remnants of
a dozen mansions, solidly though simply built of clay and
coarse masonry for protection rather than display, and
scattered about the oasis to remind us of a past at least more
impressive than the present. And when was that ? Was it
in the tenth century of our era or, as Major Cheesman sug-
gests, about 600 years ago ? Or was it in the ' Days of the
Ignorance ' before the dawn of Islam ? We know not and
cannot say, though we may be certain that the history of
Jabrin as a centre of human activity goes back to a very
early period in the annals of man, if only we could unearth
the necessary material for its reconstruction. Perhaps we
should find some corroboration of the vague and seemingly
valueless local legend that the original inhabitants of Jabrin
were driven forth into the desert by 'Ad ibn Kin'ad himself,