JABRIN 97

exploring and making a plan of the fairly extensive ruins. In
them we found all manner of remnants of the past—broken
bangles, scattered beads, fragments of pottery and an earthen
jar of some size which unfortunately feU to bits as we removed
it from its grave of sand and ashes. Major Cheesman does
not appear to have visited these ruins, but the material I
collected from them has elicited from Miss Gertrude Caton-
Thompson—a distinguished authority in such matters—the
guarded suggestion that they may date from the twelfth cen-
tury or earlier. Such a date would perhaps indicate a con-
nection with the Carmathian occupation of the Hasa and the
Persian Gulf littoral, but the remains are probably too frag-
mentary aud undistinguished to justify any dogmatic deter-
mination of their date.

About a couple of miles south-east of these ruins lies the
simpler but better-preserved square building of Qasr
Tuwairif,1 wholly constructed of the local salt-impregnated
clay which seems to wear better than its crumbling appear-
ance suggests. It is about 25 yards each way but of no great
interest except as a conspicuous landmark just outside the
north-eastern fringe of the oasis.

From the palms of Salih ibn Minya southwards to the
spring of 'Ain ibn Marshad, with a width of perhaps throe
miles east and west, extends the richest palm-tract of tho
oasis. The shallow springs which feed the untended palms—
for the experiment of artificial fertilisation, noted by Major
Cheesman as having been introduced in 1924 for the firnt
time, has of course been abandoned with the exodus of tho
colonists—are far too numerous to mention. Some arc dead ;
others are choked by the struggle of reeds and palms to mono-
polise their pits ; while others again are alive and active. On
the whole the palms are degenerate, but here and there are
groups of well-grown and apparently prosperous trees, while
the pleasantest part of this tract, to my eye, was a fairly
extensive jungle of the species of acacia called 'Aqul, whono
russet foliage and brown, fruit-like galls made a pleasant con-
trast with the dark green of the palms and the lighter green
shades of the tall reeds. In this neighbourhood too are to bo

1 Major Cheesman has two illustrations of it. Ibid, p. 27 K