volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

The Oasis of Karyatin. 179
Homs, and the lady had found the journey very trying.
Just before the evening closed in I went and looked
at the lake which lay to the east of the village, and
found that its edges were deeply encrusted with salt.
A little way off it looked like a huge turquoise set in
white enamel lying upon a tawny skin.
We all left 'Utni at eleven o'clock, just as the
moon was rising, and marched steadily on until 5 a.m.,
November 3rd. There was a slight haze when we started,
but this disappeared soon after midnight, and the sky
became clearer and clearer, the stars brighter and
brighter, and the cold greater and greater ; it was the
bitter coldness of the dawn wind which forced us to
halt and boil water to make coffee. We started again
at six, and our track lay through a howling wilderness,
and nothing was to be seen except stones and sky. As
the sun rose over the Jabal al-Wustani its warmth was
very comforting, and the mule men began to sing with
closed lips. At ten we passed Khan al-Abyad, which
was in ruins, and an hour or so later the ruins of another
building ; at two o'clock we reached Karyaten thoroughly
tired. The Turkish officers went on into the town, but
Muhammad decided to pitch our tent near the well
called Ras al-'Ain, about twenty minutes' walk from
the town, where there were some good-sized trees and
shade.
Karyaten stands near or on the site of the city called
" Nazala " in the " Notitia Dignitatum,"i and there
were remains of many buildings of the Roman period,
pillars, columns, capitals, inscribed slabs, etc., built into
the walls of its houses and mosque. It was one of the
towns captured by KhaHd ibn Walid in his victorious
march on Damascus in the early years of the Hijrah,^ and
is mentioned by Yakut.' I was told that its population
was about 2,000, of whom 1,200 were MusHms and 800
Syrian Christians (Jacobites). Seen from a distance it
looks like an oasis, and many of its gardens are large
^ Ed. Seeck, p. 67. ' BMdhurt, ed. de Goeje, p. 112.
' iv, p. 78.
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