through a thick belt of underwood tenanted by swarms of midges, with a
damp chill air crying fever, and a fetor of decayed vegetation smelling
death. To this succeeded a barren flat of silt and sand, white with salt
and ragged with salsolaceous stubble, reeking with heat, and covered with
old vegetation. Here, says local tradition, was the ancient site of Zayla
[1], built by Arabs from Yemen. The legend runs that when Saad el Din was
besieged and slain by David, King of Ethiopia, the wells dried up and the
island sank. Something doubtless occurred which rendered a removal
advisable: the sons of the Moslem hero fled to Ahmed bin El Ashraf, Prince
of Senaa, offering their allegiance if he would build fortifications for
them and aid them against the Christians of Abyssinia. The consequence was
a walled circuit upon the present site of Zayla: of its old locality
almost may be said "periere ruinae."

During my stay with Sharmarkay I made many inquiries about historical
works, and the Kazi; Mohammed Khatib, a Harar man of the Hawiyah tribe,
was at last persuaded to send his Daftar, or office papers, for my
inspection. They formed a kind of parish register of births, deaths,
marriages, divorces, and manumissions. From them it appeared that in A.H.
1081 (A.D. 1670-71) the Shanabila Sayyids were Kazis of Zayla and retained
the office for 138 years. It passed two generations ago into the hands of
Mohammed Musa, a Hawiyah, and the present Kazi is his nephew.

The origin of Zayla, or, as it is locally called, "Audal," is lost in the
fogs of Phoenician fable. The Avalites [2] of the Periplus and Pliny, it
was in earliest ages dependent upon the kingdom of Axum. [3] About the
seventh century, when the Southern Arabs penetrated into the heart of
Abyssinia [4], it became the great factory of the eastern coast, and rose
to its height of splendour. Taki el Din Makrizi [5] includes under the
name of Zayla, a territory of forty-three days' march by forty, and