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"They say also that in the journey from El Katif to Medina he travelled behind the caravan when he might have been first." "I see not the virtue in that. The hill-men love best to attack the van." "Tell me, O Emir, which wouldst thou rather face, a hill-man or the Yellow Air?" "The hill-man," said the other decidedly. "And thou knowest when those in front abandon a man struck with the disease?"
Hard by the point on the north at which it begins its inland bend rise the whitewashed, one-story mud-houses of the town El Katif. Belonging to the Arabs, the most unchangeable of peoples, both the town and the bay were known in the period of our story by their present names.
Amongst the thousands who arrived at El Katif in the last of June, 1448, was a man whose presence made him instantly an object of general interest. He came from the south in a galley of eight oars manned by Indian seamen, and lay at anchor three days before landing. His ship bore nothing indicative of nationality except the sailors.
Ptolemy in his map places Gerrha, the mart of ancient Indian trade and the starting-point for caravans on the great road across Arabia, on the coast just opposite the islands, near where the town of El Katif now is, and accepts Strabo's and Pliny's names for the Bahrein Islands, calling them Tharros, Tylos or Tyros, and Arados.
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