The palace consists of a quadrangular area bounded by a wall which measures 163·60 metres from east to west, and 175·80 metres from north to south (Map 2). It is almost exactly oriented. The wall is provided with round towers, projecting 2·70 metres from its face, and with a gate in the centre of each side. At the north-west angle, at a distance of 13·25 metres from the palace wall, a building consisting of fifteen vaulted rooms runs out due north. It has a length of 81·20 metres and a width of 11·45 metres. To the west of the six southerly chambers lies a rectangular court, 35·20 metres from north to south and 25·80 metres from east to west, with round towers like those of the main palace, projecting 2·75 metres. North-east of the palace there is a small irregularly-shaped building, known to the Arabs as the Ḥammâm, the bath. Its greatest length is 12·90 metres and its greatest width, including the rectangular buttresses, 8·65 metres. With the exception of the Ḥammâm, these edifices have been enclosed by a second stone wall, but this wall cannot have been a considerable structure, for at the only point where its width can be determined, north of the palace, it is but 1 metre thick. Its present aspect is that of a low mound of sand, and in places even this mound is by no means clearly to be traced. Owing to the very fragmentary character of the northern line of the outer wall, it is not possible to fix the position of the north gate, though there can be little doubt that a gate existed opposite the north gate of the palace, at a distance of about seventy paces from it. South of the Ḥammâm the wall is easier to make out. It runs parallel to the east wall of the palace, and is broken by a gateway opposite the eastern palace gate. At intervals large heaps of stones seem to indicate the presence of towers. Two hundred and thirty paces to the south of the palace, this outer towered wall turns to the west and runs parallel to the south wall of the palace. Traces of a gate can be seen opposite the south gate of the palace. From the south-west angle of the palace wall a second low sandy mound runs down to join the outer wall, and immediately to the west of this division wall there had been another gate in the outer wall, which then ran on westward for two hundred paces. The west wall is not exactly parallel to the palace; it was broken by a gate opposite the west gate of the palace. The north-west angle of the outer wall is very nearly obliterated. It turns off eastward almost at right angles and joins an inner dividing wall which comes up from a point about twenty paces west of the north-west tower of the palace, and seems to have been connected with that tower by a cross-wall. At the point of junction between this dividing wall and the outer wall, a mound runs out north-west for a great distance into the desert. I did not follow it, but from the top of the palace its course can be traced for more than a mile. The northern