and encompasses it in its entirety. Allah has given that surrounding land exactly the same ruling of sanctity as the city itself, together with all the legal consequences that flow from it; therefore, its limits must be precisely known. Our Sunni Saudi government established two committees: the first to verify the boundaries of the Ḥaram, the second to place markers along its outer edge in the ḥill (the zone outside the Sanctuary). Their work, however, has still not been completed (1408 AH).

As for the main highways, they already carry old signposts: toward Ṭāʾif on the ʿArafāt road the boundary lies 19 kilometres away; toward Najd and Iraq, 11 kilometres; on the Jiʿrānah route, 15 kilometres; toward Medina via Tanʿīm, 7 kilometres; toward Jeddah, 23 kilometres; and toward Yemen, 9 kilometres.

There is some disagreement, yet these distances are the closest to correct. In the present year (1410 AH) the committee charged with tracing the full circuit of the Meccan Sanctuary completed its task. Its members include the author of this book, Shaykh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh ibn Sabil, and Shaykh ʿAbdullāh ibn Sulaymān ibn Maniʿ. We were assisted by knowledgeable residents from every side of the Ḥaram and consulted specialized works on place-names to determine the limits. Our findings were approved by the Council of Senior Scholars, which issued a resolution to that effect and assigned us to supervise the installation of markers around the entire circumference of the Sanctuary. A royal directive has been issued to the Ministry of the Interior to carry this out.

• al-ʿaqrab (the scorpion): a small arachnid whose sting injects venom.
Al-Damīrī writes: It is a creeping creature classed among vermin; the same word serves for both male and female, though the feminine sense predominates. The female may be called ʿaqrabah, and the male ʿaqraban. Some have said that the ʿaqraban is a many-legged creature.

• al-ḥidāʾah (the kite): pronounced with a kasrah on the ḥāʾ, a fatḥah on the dāl, followed by a hamzah; the word ends in a shortened form with a hamzah. Its plural is ḥidā, not ḥidāʾāt. One of its harms is that it swoops down to snatch poultry and food.