An-Nekhel Fortress

[3] Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, who visited the site in the first decade of the 19th century, reported a large building with stone walls and no habitations around it.

[4] In the nineteenth century, when the route was still used by pilgrims, the road was infested with hyenas, dabba, which fed on the dead camels which had fallen by the wayside.

[5] An explorer at the beginning of the 20th century describes it as a square fort on "absolutely barren ground", built as a place to provide Haj pilgrims with water.

All food was transported from Gaza or Suez, though the villagers cultivated small patches of ground with corn and maize when Wadi el-Arish flooded.

[8] Two British cavalry columns with three aeroplanes, commanded by Colonel William Grant, approached an-Nekhel on 17 February 1917, to find that it had been abandoned.

T. E. Lawrence writes, in chapter 59 (Seven Pillars of Wisdom), of passing near the fort ruins on his way from the capture of Aqaba in July 1917 to report to the Egyptian British command.

Travelling by car, the road to an-Nekhel was slow due to water gullies, several inches deep, every two or three hundred yards, reducing the vehicle's speed to 25 miles per hour.

Starting from Nitzana, the only seriously defensive position the Brigade faced was at Thamad, which was garrisoned by a company of Sudanese members of the Egyptian Frontier Force.

[10][11][12] In the 1967 War an-Nekhel fell on 7 June to the IDF's 14th Armored Brigade, a force belonging to (now General) Ariel Sharon's 38th Division.