volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

Sulphur Springs of ^ukhnah. 193
continued their journey with us and made them pay
" way money." About noon, near a place called Al-
Kubbah, where there were several mounds, but whether
natural or artificial I could not tell, we overtook a
good-sized caravan which was making for Sukhnah.
Presently, its owner, an elderly man, made his camel
kneel and got off it, and Muhammad leaped down from
his camel, and the two men ran towards each other
and embraced and kissed ; again two old friends had
met. We then journeyed on towards Sukhnah, and
the karawan-bashi told me that he was going there to
buy camels. I learned that breeders of camels from all
parts of the country assembled there once a year with
the beasts they wanted to sell, and that much business
was done on these occasions. We arrived at Sukhnah
at two o'clock and pitched our tent a little way from
the town.
The name " Sukhnah " means " hot," and the town
owes this name to the hot sulphur springs which abound
there ; Yakut refers to these^ and says it was peopled
by Arabs. Ibn Batutah visited the place and mentions
that baths were set apart there for women, and that the
people took their baths at night and stretched themselves
out on the terraces to get cool.* Caravan roads
from aU parts of the country meet here, and in mediaeval
times it was a great trading centre. I saw a few very
badly built and mean houses up the hill. The baths
were of the depth and form which nature gave to them,^
and they reminded me of the baths of Hammam 'Alt
near Mosul. In the late afternoon Muhammad took me
to look at the camels that were tethered in rows near
the town, literally by thousands. He pointed out to
me many very fine camels and described their pedigrees
at great length, and I came to the conclusion that he
carried a sort of camel peerage in his head. It was an
extraordinary sight and I was glad to see it. Many of
the owners of the camels knew Muhammad and were
ready to do anything for us. But I found it impossible
* Vol. iii, p. 52. " Vol. iv, p. 315.