Tabūk

Position

Tabūk sits in the northwest, on the route that has always joined the Ḥijāz to the Levant. Its wells made it the standard halt on that road, and everything about the place follows from that: it is a stage on a journey, and its history is the history of who was passing.

Later

The Ḥijāz railway ran through it in the fourteenth century AH, following essentially the same line as the caravan road, and the surviving station buildings still mark the route.

Setting

North of it the land opens toward al-Jawf and the Levant; south, the Ḥijāz begins.