Now in earlier times the camel merchants travelled only by night, looking to the stars for guidance, and like the mariners carried their water with them, but now they have constructed watering places, having dug down to a great depth…
-Strabo’s Geography, Book XVII
That old saw about Arab seamen still rubs raw. But I do find it ironic that mariners dropped only a single-rope bucket in order to draw their water while KhairAllah needed triple that in order to draw his, just as mariners threw their chains fifty fathoms down to hold their ships while KhairAllah anchored his and his camels’ toes into what once had been the sandy bottoms of the Sahara’s paleo-sea.