“At the Benî Ḍafî’ah,” answered Fattûḥ, surprised at the stupidity of the question. I gave it up, neither do I know to this hour whether we were or were not raided in the night. Two days later my plan was finished. I had turned one of the vaulted rooms of the stable into a workshop, and spreading a couple of waterproof sheets on the sand for table, had drawn it out to scale lying on the ground. Sometimes an Arab came in silently and stood watching my pencil, until the superior attractions of the next chamber, in which sat the muleteers and the zaptiehs, drew him away. As I added up metres and centimetres I could hear them spinning long yarns of city and desert. Occasionally Ma’ashî brought me coffee. “God give you the reward,” said I. “And your reward,” he answered gravely. The day we left Kheiḍir, the desert was wrapped in the stifling dust of a west wind. I have no notion what the country is like through which we rode for seven hours to Kerbelâ, and no memory, save that of the castle walls fading like a dream into the haze, of a bare ridge of hill to our right hand and the bitter waves of a salt lake to our left, and of deep sand through which we were driven by a wind that was the very breath of the Pit. Then out of the mist loomed the golden dome of the shrine of Ḥussein, upon whom be peace, and few pious pilgrims were gladder than I when we stopped to drink a glass of tea at the first Persian tea-shop of the holy city. THE PALACE OF UKHEIḌIR I do not propose to enter here into a detailed account of the palace of Ukheiḍir, which must be reserved for a subsequent publication, but it is well to give a short elucidation of the plan, and to consider briefly the theories which have been formed with regard to the origin of the building.[82] The palace consists of a rectangular fortification wall set with round bastions, with larger round bastions at the angles, and of an oblong building surrounded on three sides by a court, together with a small annex in the eastern part of the court (Fig. 79). That part of the oblong building which adjoins the northern fortification wall is three storeys high; the remainder of the palace is one storey high. Outside the enclosing fortification wall there is a structure composed of fourteen vaulted parallel chambers, with a small open court at the southern end. To the west of the small court and of the first five chambers lies a larger court with round bastions on its western side. Between each of these bastions there is a door and either one or two groups of windows, each group consisting of three narrow lights. I noticed foundations of masonry which ran down from near the northern end of this [Illustration: FIG. 91.--UKHEIḌIR, COURT D AND NICHED FAÇADE OF THREE-STOREYED BLOCK.] [Illustration: FIG. 92.--UKHEIḌIR, VAULT OF ROOM I.] [Illustration: FIG. 93.--UKHEIḌIR, ROOM I.] [Illustration: FIG. 79.--UKHEIḌIR, GROUND PLAN.]