Every desert traveller in every caravan is led by a principal camel driver called a Khabīr…This reminds me of the owners of boats on the Rhône. You call them Captain so that they not think badly of you, even though they know little more than an ordinary sailor.
-Journal de Voyage de Siout [Asyut] à El-Obéid, 1857-1858, Charles Cluny
It was good that Cluny did not tell his Khabīr how little he regarded the latter’s knowledge of the desert, knowledge so advanced that Al-Khabīr is one of Islam’s ninety nine names of God, as in the meaning given by Lane, He Who Knoweth What Hath Been and What Is and Will Be.