To Harra or to Harret...

Transliteration of Arabic into English is not a perfect art - many place names will have multiple spellings in circulation making life a little difficult.
We received some clarification from a native Arabic speaker who is also fluent in English regarding 'harrat' - lavafields, over which many of the prehistoric stone built structures such as kites, pendants and wheels are built. The follow advice we hope you will also find informative and useful.

If you are talking about one lavafield it is harra (singular).
Two or more is harrat (plural). (Harrat Khaybar would mean the lavafields (plural) of Khaybar).
Used in conjunction with a specific name it becomes Harret - The great lavafield sprawling across northeast Jordan and into its neighbours is Harret al-Shaam. In Jordan they commonly simply refer to it as Al-Harra.

Lost in Translation

Westerners delight in pointing out examples of unfortunate translations into their language(s) from Arabic, Chinese etc. It can work the other way, too, as we discovered last Sunday when visiting an old friend, Colonel Bassem Halawani in his office at Mafraq Air Force Base. On his wall was a photo of a helicopter in flight. It had been presented by a French team that had worked with the RJAF and made the photo, framed it and added a brass plate, briefly commemorating the occasion. The French colleagues had written their names in roman script but had used an online translator for the date and the name of their organization. Unfortunately, knowing no Arabic, they did not realise that when they asked for the Arabic for ‘Cooperation Gendarmerie’ the software returned a message saying "We apologize for finding no search results". That went on the plate …. much to the amusement of the RJAF pilots.

-DLK