sharr

Updated: May 5, 2025

For months the Jebel Sharr, the grand block which backs El-Muwaylah, had haunted us, starting up unexpectedly in all directions, with its towering heads, that shifted shape and colour from every angle, and with each successive change of weather. Their stony heights, they said, contain wells and water in abundance, with palms, remains of furnaces, and other attractions.

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

The site of the camp made sleep well-nigh impossible a bad preparation for the only long ride of this excursion. The track then struck to the north-west, across and sometimes down the network of Wadys that subtends the south-western Sharr their names have already been mentioned.

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

The dull gorge introduced us to what was then a novelty in Midian; but we afterwards found it upon the cold heights of the Sharr, where it supplied us with many a dainty dish. The coat, the clock! clock! and the nimble running over the rocks, ever the favourite haunt, denote the "perdix."

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

Further south we have noted how this tall eastern bulwark of the great Wady el-'Arabah bifurcates; forming the Shafah chain to the east, and westward of it, in Madyan Proper, the Jibal el-Tihamah, of which the Sharr is perhaps the culmination.

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

Now this house belonged to the Chief of the Caliph's Serjeant-ushers, a man of great wealth in fields, houses and allowances, called the Emir Hasan Sharr al-Tarik, or Evil of the Way, and therefor called because his blow forewent his word. And so things went on till one day, he went to the Divan and saw that each Emir had with him a son or two.

Anonymous - The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 07

We were far from water, but the evening was pleasant, and the night was still more agreeable. The "Mountains of the Plain," so called because they start suddenly from a dead level, are a section of the Tihamat-Balawiyyah range; yet they are worthy links of a chain which boasts of a Sharr.

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

So the donkey-boy said to Zurayk, "What aileth thee to fry fish so early and annoy pregnant women with the smell? I have here the wife of the Emir Hasan Sharr al-Tarik, and she is with child; so give her a bit of fish, for the babe stirreth in her womb. O Protector, O my God, avert from us the mischief of this day!"

Anonymous - The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 07

Behind us lies the Tihamat-Balawiyyah, the equivalent of the Ghats of North Midian, from the Zahd to the Sharr. The items are the little Jebel 'Antar, which, peeping over the Fiumara's high left bank, is continued south by the lower Libn.

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

The great Sharr, looming unusually large and tall in the Scandinavian mountain-scene, grey of shadow and glancing with sun-gleams that rent the thick veils of mist-cloud, assumed a manner of Ossianic grandeur. After three hours and a half we were abreast of Ziba, around whose dumpy tower all the population had congregated.

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

The partial ascent of the mighty Sharr gave an admirable study of the mode in which the granites have been enfolded and enveloped by the later eruptions of trap.

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