The foundations of Zebeed were laid by Ibn Ziad after his conquest of the Teháma in 204 A.H.[6] The city is described not only by Omarah but also by many other native historians, who one and all make mention of its political importance as well as of its size. The account most to the point, perhaps, is that of El Khasraji, who states that the city is circular in form; that near it to the south flows the river of the same name, while to the north is the Wadi Rima, the two ensuring a fertile situation and a constant water-supply. He adds that it stood midway between the mountains and the sea, and almost equidistant from both, the time taken to reach either the one or the other being half a day. Of Beit el-Fakih little need be said here, as to-day it is a place of but slight importance. Like all these cities of the Teháma, it is irregularly built of sun-dried mud bricks. Its name, “The House of the Scholar,” is derived from its being the place of burial of a certain Seyed Ahmed ibn Musa, whose tomb is still much reverenced and visited as a place of veneration. The town possesses no claim to interest either politically or commercially. The next portion of the Yemen of which notice must here be taken are the plains commencing from the Straits of Bab el-Mandeb, and extending to some sixty miles east of Aden. These plains are included in the Teháma, but in order to distinguish them from that part already noticed, I describe them as the southern Teháma. Like the western Teháma, they separate the mountains from the sea, and in many respects these two portions of desert bear great resemblance. The southern Teháma varies from fifty to a hundred miles in breadth, and is inhabited by wild tribes, the most important of which are the Subaiha, the Abdali, and the Foudtheli, the first being nomad in character. These plains boast no cities of any size except Howta, the capital of the Sultan of Lahej, chief of the Abdali tribe, which lies some twenty-seven miles north-west of Aden, and Taiz,—though the latter, from its situation on a spur of the mountains, may be said rather to dominate than to belong to these southern plains. Ibn Khaldun, in his geography of the Yemen, refers to Taiz as an important city overlooking the Teháma, and mentions that it had at all times been a royal residence. Without much further mention of this city, which the author did not visit, a few remarks may be made upon its later history. Owing to jealousies between members of its ruling family, a certain Seyed Kassim, uncle to the then ruling Imam, Ali Mansur, treacherously sold the place to the Egyptians in 1837, and it was taken without resistance by Ibrahim Pasha, a general in the service of the famous Mahammed Ali Pasha, who held it until in 1840 a fanatical Mahdi el-Fakih Saïd took the town, only to have it wrested from him in 1841 by the Imam Seyed Mahammed el-Hadi. During the late Yemen rebellion it fell into the hands of the Arabs, for formerly it lay within the limit