el-muwaylah

Updated: June 27, 2025

We have now left the region explored by Europeans; and our line to the south and the south-east will lie over ground wholly new. In front of us the land is no longer Arz Madyan: we are entering South Midian, which will extend to El-Hejaz. As the march might last longer than had been expected, I ordered fresh supplies from El-Muwaylah to meet us in the interior via Ziba.

Sir Richard Francis Burton - The Land of Midian — Volume 2

When abreast of us the range becomes a tall, fissured, and perpendicular wall: this apical comb, bluff to the west, reposes upon a base sloping, at the angle of rest, to the environing sandy Wady. To complete the resemblance, even the queer "Pins" are not wanting; and I should expect to find in it all the accidents of the giant of El-Muwaylah.

Sir Richard Francis Burton - The Land of Midian — Volume 2

Its approach is that of a large encamping-ground, and such, indeed, it is; the Egyptian pilgrim-caravan here halts on the fourth day from El-Muwaylah. The broken, untidy environs, strewed with bones and rubbish, show low mounds that mean ovens; stone rings, where tents are pitched; and the usual graves, amongst which a reverend man, Shaykh Salih, rests in a manner of round tower.

Sir Richard Francis Burton - The Land of Midian — Volume 2

This reticence explained how, on our first visit, the two Staff-officers sent to prospect the diggings had been misdirected to a block lying north of the townlet, the "Red Hills," alias the Jebel el-Shegayg. Shortly after I left Egypt an Italian, Sig. F , returned to Suez from El-Muwaylah, with some fine pearls worth each from L20 to L30, and turquoises which appeared equally good.

Sir Richard Francis Burton - The Land of Midian — Volume 2

There is game, ibex and leopard, in these mountains; but the traveller, unless a man of leisure, must not expect to shoot or even to sight it. There remained work to do before we could leave El-Muwaylah.

Sir Richard Francis Burton - The Land of Midian — Volume 2

For the same reason the travellers were unable to sight the immense development of granite-embedded quartz, which lurks amongst the hills to the inland or east, and which here subtends the whole coast-line. They imagined themselves to be in a purely Secondary formation of gypsum and conglomerates, cut by a succession of Wady-beds like the section between El-Muwaylah and 'Aynunah.

Sir Richard Francis Burton - The Land of Midian — Volume 2