214 THE EMPTY QUARTER

attendance on bis sovereign at Riyadh. He was of course
accompanied by a following of his tribesmen with their
tents and families, and with him was his own family consist-
ing only or mainly of his mother. According to the honour-
able custom of Arabia the maintenance of the whole party
devolved on the State Treasury, and it so happened that one
day the steward in charge of the distribution of rations sent
away the young Shaikh's mother empty-handed. She
informed her son, who immediately sought the royal presence
with vigorous complaints against the dispenser of the royal
hospitality. Get you to work for your mother ! the prince
had replied peevishly. On my head ! Muhammad had
replied, the ordering is the King's ordering. With that he
had withdrawn with his following into the pastures of the
Rub' al Khali, whence he had fared forth with seven other
kindred spirits to make war on the world. The little band
soon came to be known as Al Ziqirt1—' the gens d'armes '
as we might say—by reason of their constitution as a military
force under active service conditions, i.e. without women-
folk or other encumbrances. The wilder spirits of the south-
ern sands—from the Rashid, Manahil and other tribes—
hastened to join the campaign of raiding and highway
robbery that was initiated by the gang, whose first act had
been to establish a base of operations in some unknown and
unfrequented spot. Having selected a likely looking place
they had proceeded to dig these wells, by which we were
now encamped, and the watering has ever since commem-
orated in its name the memory of their once famous exploits.
Another district, far off to the north, and north-eastward of
Haradh, has earned from those same exploits the name of
Hawair al Ziqirt—apparently a pasture tract with depres-
sions liable to retain water for a few weeks or months after
rain.

Of the three wells of Ziqirt one appeared to be quite
€ dead' although the marks of the haulage ropes are clearly
visible—deeply scored in the rock mouth of the shaft. The

1 The term is derived through the Turkish from the Italian * sacurta '
or French * securiteY just as the common Turkish (and Arabic) word for
police, * Sharfca,* is derived from * sureteV