Note 28 — The Thirteenth New Year’s Feast

I28 am amazed to think what pleasure or goodness the founder of this city could have seen in a spot so devoid of the favour (of God) as to build a city on it. After him, others, too, have passed their lives in precious trouble in this dustbin. Its air is poisonous, and its soil has little water, and is of sand and dust, as has already29 been described. Its water is very bad and unpalatable, and the river, which is by the side of the city, is always dry except in the rainy season. Its wells are mostly salt and bitter, and the tanks in the neighbourhood of the city have become like buttermilk from washermen’s soap. The upper classes who have some property have made reservoirs in their houses, which they fill with rainwater in the rainy season, and they drink that water until the next year. The evils of water to which the air never penetrates, and which has no way for the vapour to come out by, are evident. Outside the city, in place of green grass and flowers, all is an open plain full of thorn-brakes (zaqqūm), and as for the breeze that blows off the thorns, its excellence is known: