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Geographical Notices of the Country northward and eastward of Medina. THE stations of the caravan between Damascus and Medina are well known. The most interesting spot on this road, within the limits of Arabia, appears to be Hedjer, or, as it is sometimes called, Medayen Saleb, seven days north of Medina.
Under this impression, Abou Dhaher refused an offer of fifty thousand dinars as a ransom for the stone; but after his death, the Carmates, in A.H. 339, voluntarily sent it back, having been convinced by experience that their expectations of wealth, from the possession of it, were ill founded, and that very few moslems came to Hedjer for the purpose of kissing it.
In this route I wished to visit Hedjer, on the Syrian Hadj road, where I expected to find some remains of the remotest antiquity, that had not been described by any other traveller, while the interior of the country might have offered many other objects of research and curiosity.
The small town of Teyme is three days from Khaibar, and as many from Hedjer, in an eastern direction. It is inhabited by the Aeneze Arabs, and abounds with dates. It belongs neither to Nedjed nor Kasym, and, like Kbaibar, was an independent Bedouin settlement before the time of the Wahabys.
During the Khalifat of Motasem b'illah, the well of Zemzem was covered above: it had before been enclosed all round, but not roofed. The space between the Hedjer and the Kaaba was laid out with fine marbles. At that time there was a gate leading into the space enclosed within the Hedjer.
In circumference Hedjer extends several miles; the soil is fertile, watered by many wells and a running stream: here are generally large encampments of Bedouins. The Wahaby chief, Saoud, intended to build a town on this spot; his olemas deterred him, by declaring that it would be impious to restore a place that the Almighty had visited with his wrath.
The wall bears the name of El Hatym, and the area which it encloses is called Hedjer, or Hedjer Ismayl, on account of its being separated from the Kaaba: the wall itself, also, is sometimes so called; and the name Hatym is given by the historians to the space of ground between the Kaaba and the wall on one side, and the Bir Zemzem and Makam Ibrahim on the other.
This tradition, although current among the Metowefs, is at variance with history, which declares that the Hedjer was built by the Beni Koreysh, who contracted the dimensions of the Kaaba; that it was united to the building by Hadjadj, and again separated from it by Ibn Zebeyr. It is asserted by Fasy, that a part of the Hedjer, as it now stands, was never comprehended within the Kaaba.
Twenty years after the last-mentioned date, El Hadjadj Ibn Yousef el Thakafy, then governor of Mekka, disliking the enlarged size of the Kaaba, reduced it to the proportions it had in the time of the Koreysh, cutting off six pikes from its length; he also restored the wall called Hedjer, which Ibn Zebeyr had included within the building.
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