Near the asphalt beds of Ma’mûreh, about an hour south-west of Hît, lie the ruins of a village clustered round a minaret (Fig. 57). All the buildings were constructed of small unsquared stones set in mortar; the minaret was plastered on the outside and seemed to have been built of large blocks of stone and mortar, firmly welded together before they had been placed in position. The round tower, narrowing upwards and decorated at the top with a zigzag ornament, was placed upon a low octagonal structure which in turn rested upon a square base (Fig. 58). I climbed the winding stair that I might survey the country through which Nâif was to take us. It was incredibly desolate, empty of tent or village save where to the west the palm-groves of Kebeisah made a black splash upon the glaring earth. The heavy smoke of the pitch fires hung round Hît, and the sulphur marshes shone leprous under the sun--a malignant landscape that could not be redeemed by the little shrines which were scattered like propitiatory invocations among the gleaming salts. [Illustration: FIG. 58.--MA’MÛREH, MINARET.] About a mile from Ma’mûreh there is a still more remarkable ruin known as Madlûbeh. It is a large, irregularly shaped area marked off from the desert by heaps of stones half buried in sand. Standing among these heaps, and no doubt in their original position, there are a number of large monolithic slabs placed as if they were intended to form a wall (Fig. 59). Many of these must have fallen and been covered with the sand if the enclosure were at any time continuous, and perhaps the heaps are composed partly of buried slabs. Two stand in line with a narrow space between like a door (one of them was 5 m. long × 1·3 m. thick, and it stood 2 m. out of the ground); in another there was a small rectangular cutting that suggested a window-hole on the upper edge (it was 10 m. long × 1·3 m. thick, and stood about 3 m. out of the ground). The stones were carefully dressed on all sides. They may have formed the lower part of a wall of which the upper part was of sun-dried brick or rubble, but at what age they were placed in those wilds a cursory survey would not reveal. When I returned to the khân, Fattûḥ greeted me with the intelligence that the Deleimî had broken his engagement. Nâif admitted that for ordinary risks the money we had offered would have been sufficient, but Kheiḍir lay in the land of his blood enemies, the Benî Ḥassan, and he would not go. Perhaps he hoped to force us to a more liberal proposal, but in this he was disappointed. A bargain is a bargain, and we fell back upon my boast that the English have but one word. In this dilemma Fattûḥ suggested that he should see what could be done with the Mudîr, and having a lively confidence in Fattûḥ’s diplomacy, I entrusted him with my passports and papers, of which I kept a varied store, and gave him plenipotentiary powers. He returned triumphant.