The
Enterprising Traveller Approved Of Both The Notes And The Map, And
Expressed It As His Opinion That It Might Be Useful To Append Them To
The New Edition.
I therefore thought proper to recast them, and to
present them herewith to the reader.
At Sufayna, Burton found the Baghdad Caravan. The regular
Baghdad-Meccah Road, of which we have two itineraries, the one
reproduced by Hamdany and the other by Ibn Khordadbeh, Qodama, and
others, keeps to the left of Sufayna, and runs parallel with the
Eastern Madina-Meccah Road to within one stage of Meccah. We find only
one passage in Arabic geographers from which we learn that the
Baghdadlies, as long as a thousand years ago, used under certain
circumstances to take the way of Sufayna. Yacut, vol. iii. p. 403, says
“Sufayna ([Arabic] Cufayna), a place in the caliya (Highland) within the
territory of the Solaymites, lies on the road of Zobayda. The pilgrims
make a roundabout, and take this road, if they suffer from want of
water. The pass of Sufayna, by which they have to descend, is very
difficult.” The ridges over which the road leads are called al-Sitar, and
are described by Yacut, vol. iii. p. 38, as a range of red hills,
flanking Sufayna, with defiles which serve as passes. Burton, vol. ii.
p. 128, describes them as low hills of red sandstone and bright
porphyry. Zobayda, whose name the partly improved, partly newly opened
Hajj-Road from Baghdad to Meccah bore, was the wife of Caliph Harun,
and it appears from Burton, pp.
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