Once Lehi left the
Valley of Lemuel, he and his party crossed the River Laman and traveled in a
south-southeast direction for four days. Nephi writes: “And we did pitch our tents again; and we did call the name of the place
Shazer” (1 Nephi 16:13). Here they rested for a time while Nephi and his
brothers went hunting.
The area of Shazer in the Wadi Agharr, full of trees and water between the mountains and the Red Sea
This area Lehi called
Shazer was likely the Wadi Agharr, an extensive oasis valley near both the Red
Sea and the branch of the Frankincense Trail. The wadi lies in a narrow valley,
perhaps a hundred yards across, bounded on each side by high walls stretching
up a few hundred feet and filled with trees. The name Shazer (valley with
trees) is aptly given to this valley set amid the barren landscape of Midian. There
is a gap in the mountains that allows entrance to the valley that is filled
with palm trees and runs for miles in each direction. Fields of potatoes and a
few old wells dot the landscape and archaeological sites suggest the valley was
fertile anciently.
The Hijaz, and the
mountains around are filled with the Ibex, a wild goat (left), that frequented
the rough dry terrain of the high mountains along the coastal range, as well as certain areas of the peninsula and throughout Israel. Standing about two to three
feet high at the shoulder, and weighing 110 pounds, they were hunted anciently as
well as today. In addition, wild camels, flocks of deer, gazelles, sheep, mules
and oxen roam the area and have since before the first millennium B.C.
After leaving Shazer
along the Red Sea, Nephi writes: “And we did follow the directions of the ball,
which led us in the more fertile parts of the wilderness” (1 Nephi 16:16).
The more fertile parts of the desert are
those areas that are watered from underground channels or the aquifer, which
can run for many miles, though they shift from year to year
The more fertile
parts of the desert down the coastal Frankincense Route along the Red Sea. These
spots of fertility shift with the seasons, and it took the Liahona to point out
to Lehi where they were located (1 Nephi 16:16). These fertile parts are where
bushes and vegetation grow over the underground water channels or aquifers,
which sometimes run for hundreds of miles. In the area Lehi traveled, of
course, there are no permanent rivers or lakes and very little rainfall. Water
is scarce and aquifers are a major source of water. These vast
underground reservoirs of water have always existed, yet as late as the 1970s,
were relatively unknown until the Saudi government undertook a major effort to
locate and map them and estimate their capacity. As a result, tens of thousands
of deep tube wells were dug in the most promising areas for both urban and
agricultural use. But in Lehi’s time, where these aquifers and channels were
located was not always known, even to those who lived in the desert all their lives.
However, many uninformed
writers and historians have scoffed at “fertile parts” of this barren desert
strip between the sea and the Mountains. In fact, the famous explorer Richard
Burton described the Hijaz in these words: “Nowhere had I seen a land in which
the earth’s anatomy lies so barren, or one richer in volcanic or primary
formations.”
If Joseph Smith, or
anyone else, had made up the Book of Mormon, one has to wonder what could have
possessed him to state that there were “fertile parts” in this type of
landscape. Here would be an obvious place to show that the Book of Mormon was a
fraud. Yet what might at first seem to be a great flaw in Nephi’s text is
actually one of the most compelling witnesses for its historical accuracy, for
not only were the large oasis towns mostly located on the Frankincense Trail
(al-Bada a, al-Aghra at Wadi Agharr, Shuwaq, Shagbh, Dedan, Medina, etc.), but
also each of these oases had a farming community associated with it.
In fact, the slopes
of these hills are strewn with wadis, the courses of ancient rivers, where
underground aquifer channels continue to be fed by rains that are channeled
into them. As a result, some of these wadis are actually fertile. In the Hijaz,
wells are abundant, and springs are common in the mountainous areas. Elsewhere,
in the Wasai, the largest aquifer in Arabia, there is more water than contained
in the entire Persian Gulf. It is not that there is no water, but knowing where
to find it. Obviously, when Nephi tells us the ball showed them the more
fertile parts, the Lord was guiding them through these areas that would not
actually be known that well until one or two thousand years later.
Some of the more fertile parts of the desert
through which Lehi traveled along the Frankincense Trail
Yet there is a
second, equally compelling argument supporting the veracity of Joseph Smith’s
translation. In pre-Islamic times there was a series of villages along a
215-mile section of the Frankincense Trail, incorporating the 12 halt
settlements between Dedan and Medina. They were known anciently as the Qura Arabiyyah or the “Arab Villages.”
These villages with their cultivated lands were linked together by the
Frankincense Trail. Surrounded by thousands of square miles of barren terrain,
the cultivated lands stood out from the surrounding desert like pearls adorning
a chain along the south-southeast course of the trail. The old name for this
area is interesting in light of the fact that Nephi refers to it as “the most
fertile parts.” According to the Saudi Arabian Department of Antiquities and
Museums, Wadi Ula (Qura) at the northern end of the Qura Arabiyyah, where the ruins of Dedan were, was called Hijr in antiquity
(alternatively spelled Hājir or Mahājir), which means, among other things, “a
fertile piece of land.”
In his book Tahdhib, the Islamic geographer al-Azhar
explains that the Arabs who lived in the Qura
Arabiyyah (the villages along the Frankincense Trail) were called the
Muhājirun, meaning “the fertile pieces of land” (the plural form of Hājir or
Mahājir). Thus when Nephi describes that the family traveled in the most
“fertile parts,” it is quite probable that he was using a real name for this
area. It is interesting that the name Muhājirun, or “fertile parts,” occurs
nowhere else in Arabia and is situated only on the Frankincense Trail, after
the two locations that would appear to perfectly fit Nephi’s descriptions of
both the Valley of Lemuel and of Shazer—quite a coincidence!
Obviously, Nephi’s
narrative supports that of a person who had an eyewitness account of the area,
which is borne out in three descriptive events:
1. Nephi’s
description of the trail depicts declining fertility, from “the most fertile
parts” (1 Nephi 16:14) to “more fertile parts” (16:16) to an area where the party
had to pitch their tents and go into the mountains to hunt for food—the camp where
Nephi broke his bow (1 Nephi 16:17, 30)—and finally to an area of presumably no
fertility where the family was starving and near perishing (1 Nephi 16:35).
This is exactly what is found along this branch of the Frankincense Trail. This
change is borne out today by seeing that there are an average of one cultivated
area every eleven miles, but beyond the point mentioned, there is only one
every 50 miles, showing the change from most fertile to fertile to little, if
any fertility, and the latter part of that route to where it turned east, with
a cultivated area every 160 miles!
2. As already
mentioned, the wood necessary to construct a bow (after Nephi broke his steel
bow and his brother’s bows lost their spring), is found along this trail at the
appropriate point—an area which is high in the mountains just west of the trail
near the halt of Bishah.
3. After some 1,400
miles traveling about a “south-southeast direction,” the family reached a place
that, as Nephi informs us, “was called Nahom” (1 Nephi 16:34). Here a great
drama unfolded with the death of Ishmael and the direct intervention of the
Lord to both chasten and save the travelers (1 Nephi 16:39). Numerous
researchers have placed this area, matching all the information in the seven
verses covering this stop where Ishmael was buried (1 Nephi 16:33–39).
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