Dhat al-Humam

It was also a Persian tradition to describe the ecumene as an animal, often a bird: "The appearance of the world here below is divided in five: it is like the head of the bird, the two wings, the chest, the tail. The head of the world is China... The right wing is India and, beyond India, the sea after which there is no one; the left wing is al-Khazar; the chest of the world is Mecca, Hejaz, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt; the tail reaches from Dhat al-Humam to the Maghreb, and the worst part of the bird is the tail."

2018, Nicholas Elliott translating Christophe Picard as Sea of the Caliphs..., pp. 89–90