Mahra
مهرة
A sandy and barren land that only its camels can cross, famed for their speed. Al-Idrisi gives its length as about nine hundred miles and says its people live on dried fish, dates and milk and know little of wheat. 1 Al-Hamdani calls them 'the desert-dwellers', soft-hearted lovers of star-lore who magnified and prostrated to the sun, and preserves the famous lore of their ambergris camels: on the shores of the Yemen sea, a camel that catches the ambergris scent kneels upon it and will not rise until its owner misses it and comes to scrape it off 2.
At a glance
- Region
- Arabia
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Overview
Mahra is a sandy, barren land which only the camels named after it inhabit, famous for their speed. Al-Idrisi says its length is about nine hundred miles, and that its people live on dried fish, dates and milk, and know little wheat. 3
In al-Hamdani
Al-Hamdani named them "the people of the wastelands", and mentioned that they used to venerate the sun and prostrate to it. He also related of their camels on the shores of the Yemeni sea that when a camel smells ambergris it kneels over it and does not leave until its owner comes to pick it up, and that the camel sometimes dies of hunger. 4
Sources
- Al-Idrisi, Nuzhat al-Mushtaq fi ikhtiraq al-afaq (Cairo: Maktabat al-Thaqafa al-Diniyya, 2002), 2 vols., p. 155
- Sifat Jazirat al-Arab of al-Hamdani (Müller ed.), pp. 20-21
- Al-Idrisi, Nuzhat al-Mushtaq fi ikhtiraq al-afaq (Cairo: Maktabat al-Thaqafa al-Diniyya, 2002), 2 vols., p.155
- Sifat Jazirat al-Arab of al-Hamdani (Müller ed.), pp.20-21
Cite this page
islam.museum contributors. “Mahra”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/place/mahra/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Accessed 2026-10-17.