Page 82 - Arabiab Studies (IV)

72 Arabian Studies IV
porates a corner of a very much earlier building. Made of finely
jointed fielded ashlar of a golden yellow colour, this section of the
building is easily identified as being in the pre-Islamic style and the
fineness of the joints and uniformity of the stonework indicate that
the blocks in this corner have never been disturbed. At the highest
point, at the apex of the comer, there are eleven visible courses of
apparently undisturbed stonework. The courses are made of long
blocks and become progressively thinner the higher they are. I did
not have an opportunity to inspect the inside of the house. The
mosque, its associated reservoir and this remnant of an earlier
building are near the centre of the present village and there is
nothing to suggest that the mins from which the inscribed stones
have been taken were not on the same site.

Hamidah
389751
yamidah (or yamudah)13 is situated in a valley, which forms an
incision into the Jabal on the eastern side. Two of the five
inscriptions which were shown to me there include the name of the
town (dhgm frmdw &c.) and they are certainly from close by.
Local legend states that the stones were taken from the ruins of the
palace Raljban of the king ‘Awn but I was not shown the ruins of
any large building. Somewhat surprisingly also, al-Hamdanl does
not mention any palace or castle in Hamidah and so it is likely that
there were no mins of any note even in his time.
yamidah is now a sizeable settlement in the valley, Qa‘
yamidah, on one of the routes to the Jabal ‘Iyal Yazld. Three of
the inscriptions shown to me are built into the walls of two of the
mosques there. One particularly well preserved is used as the lintel
for a mosque doorway. This inscription of four lines of perhaps
forty words seems to be complete but is partly obscured by the
roof of a porch built onto the outside of the mosque. The other two
inscriptions are built into house walls.

Access to the sites
Al-Nahirah and yamidah are best approached from the main road
from $an‘a’ to $a‘dah, al-Nahirah from ‘Amran and Hamidah from
Raydah. The remaining sites, along the top of the Jabal, could be
visited on a single journey, but the track between al-Luml and
Da“an is almost non-existent so that the northern sites are best
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