Note 261 — Chapter V · —Geographical Location

A somewhat similar scattered location is found in arid deserts, where population is restricted to the oases dropped here and there at wide intervals amid the waste of sand. But unlike those fragments of human life on the frozen outskirts of the habitable world, the oasis states usually constitute links in a chain of connection across the desert between the fertile lands on either side, and therefore form part of a series, in which the members maintain firm and necessary economic relations. Every caravan route across the Sahara is dotted by a series of larger or smaller tribal settlements. Tripoli, Sokna, Murzuk, Bilma and Bornu form one such chain; Algiers, El Golea, Twat, the salt mines of Taudeni, Arawan and Timbuctoo, another. Bagdad, Hayil, Boreyda and Mecca trace the road of pilgrim and merchant starting from the Moslem land of the Euphrates to the shrine of Mohammed.261