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Updated: May 2, 2025
Even in Midian, Burton was dogged by Ovid, for when he looked round at the haggard, treeless expanse he could but exclaim, quoting the Ex Ponto, "Rara neque haec felix in apertis eminet arvis Arbor, et in terra est altera forma maris." The expedition then made for Maghair Shu'ayb, the Madiama of Ptolemy and the old capital of the land.
The northern side is subtended by three large cisterns, all strengthened at the inner angles by the stepped buttresses first noticed when we were exploring Maghair Shu'ayb. The sandy bed, disposed east-west, is streaked, dotted, and barred with walls and outcrops of the hardest greenstone porphyry; and those which run north-south must arrest, like dykes, the flow of water underground.
Perhaps the most interesting discovery is that of catacombs, proving a civilization analogous to Maghair Shu'ayb, but ruder, because more distant from the centre. The "caves" are hollowed in a long reef of loose breccia, which, fronting eastward, forms the right bank of the smaller branch.
The ruins belong to the Maghair Shu'ayb category, and the guides compare the Hawawit with those of Madain Salih. Now it is simply El-Bada: the name of the "Prophet" Jacob, supposed to have visited it from Egypt or Syria, being clean forgotten. The rolling plain is floored with grey granite, underlying sandstones not unlike coral-rag, and still in course of formation.
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