The dune sea north of Hadramawt, the Mahra country and Dhofar, which Arab tradition calls al-Ahqaf, the land of the lost people of 'Ad.
Only its southern fringe, with its few wells and the rains' grazing, is used by herders; the deep sands are empty. No ruler or tribe is recorded as master of it in 1200. Its south-western lobe, the eastern Ramlat al-Sab'atayn, laps round the ruins and salt domes of Shabwa; the western Sab'atayn towards Ma'rib is on the Yemen records.
Who holds it
- Name
- Not known: the camel herders of the Hadrami tribes and the Mahra use the sands' edge in the wet seasons
- Title
- No ruler
- Since
- Not known
- Confidence
- low
What it holds
- Wells and seasonal grazing on the southern edge of the sands
Allies and rivals
Not recorded.
How things stand that morning
Empty or tribal grazing; no ruler.
Where the sources disagree
Evidence: Geography; no source of the period describes the herders.
On the map: The northern edge is arbitrary: the sands go on to the hij and Persia sheets' ground.
Primary sources for The Bedouin
Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.
- History of the Observant Traveller (A Traveller in Thirteenth-Century Arabia), Ibn al-Mujawir (Jamal al-Din Yusuf ibn Ya'qub) (about 1226 to 1232). A merchant-traveller's description of western and southern Arabia a generation after 1200: Mecca and the Hijaz ports, the Red Sea crossing, Zabid and the Tihama, Aden with its customs and tariffs, the Hadramawt coast, Dhofar and Oman, Socotra, and the opposite African shore at Zeila and the Dahlak islands. Read online
Sources and studies
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.