Shaubek, the “Mons regalis” of the Crusaders, thirty-six miles from Kerak, was also a strong place. Burckhardt tells us that a ravine, three hundred feet in depth, encircles the citadel, which is in a better state of preservation than the one at Kerak or Krak, called also Petra deserti from its proximity to the ancient city of that name, and to which a part of Arabia owes the name of Arabia Petrea; its situation is characteristically described by Pliny: “oppidum circumdatum montibus inaccessis, amne interfluente”. The valley in which this ancient city was situated, the “vallis Moysi” of the Crusaders, now Wady Mousa (Raumer, _Palæstina_, etc., 271–277), five hundred feet in depth, is watered by a stream and surrounded by steep rocks (Laborde, _Voy. dans l’Arabie pétrée_, 55). According to an Arabian author quoted by Quatremère (_l. c._ II, i, 245), the road near these two cities was so peculiar that it could have been held by one man against a hundred horsemen. Another reason for the supposition that the bridge seen by Schiltberger was in one of these passages, lies in the fact that the same writer includes the tomb of Iskender among the holy places of pilgrimage in this ancient country; but he does not determine the individuality of that Iskender. On the hypothesis that “Allenklaisser’s” limb was near the tomb of Iskender, I should be inclined to look in the same locality for the bridge that was constructed, according to the inscription it bore, two hundred years before Schiltberger saw it. Judging from other passages in his work, the author was in Egypt probably about the year 1423, the date of the construction of the bridge being therefore 1223; this, however, can scarcely have been the case, because the feuds between Saladin’s successors, which commenced soon after his death in 1193, had not ceased, and the Ayoubites were continually in conflict with the Crusaders. It should be borne in mind that although Schiltberger knew that the year 825 of the Hegira corresponded to A.D. 1423, he may not have been aware that the Mahomedan is shorter than the Christian year, whereby 200 Mahomedan years are equal to 193 solar years only; and thus he calculated that the construction of the bridge took place in 1223 instead of 1230. This was the time when Al-Kamyl the nephew of Saladin, having become reconciled with the emperor Frederick II., was recognised by the princes of his house as their suzerain lord, and he thereafter, until his death in 1238, held Syria and Egypt, with the exception of the fortresses of Kerak and Shaubek which he had to cede in 1229 to his nephew Daud or David. This circumstance, no doubt, induced the “king-sultan” to order the construction of a bridge for keeping up communication between two parts of his kingdom, the new bridge being near the old one that was kept smeared with oil, a condition that had the effect of persuading the guileless Bavarian that it was indeed a gigantic bone.—BRUUN. CHAPTER XLV.